And the winner is…

The City of the Crosses, a.k.a. Las Cruces, New Mexico! That’s right, my wife has officially accepted a tenure-track faculty position at New Mexico State University! At long last I can realize my dream of being a childless house-husband! Hallelujah, I knew this day would come!

I can’t even begin to express how excited we both are to be moving into this next phase of our lives. It’s been a tense week of negotiations and hashing out pros and cons, as my wife was also offered a job in beautiful Oregon. Of course, Las Cruces is pretty friggin’ gorgeous too, as you can see in the photos below, and NMSU’s job offer just didn’t have any cons. They’ll even let me take two courses per semester, for free, for life. Warm weather year round? Um.. yeah, I’ll take that.

Honestly, I can hardly wrap my head around the situation. I’ve been stuck in a holding pattern for the last two and a half years, hanging on and hoping my wife would be able to finish up her Ph.D. and then land a job in this tough economy. I’m really proud of everything she’s accomplished. She’s worked incredibly hard, nonstop, for the past seven and a half years, and the pressure to land a job this year has been pretty intense. We had just sat down not two weeks ago and had a big talk about how it looked like nothing was going to come through this year. I was dreading the thought of treading water for another year and we both agreed that I needed to move forward, quit my lame temp job, and do something big and bold, regardless of whether or not she could score a position at the eleventh hour. The next day she was offered the job at NMSU! When the folks in Portland found out about it, they made a counter offer a few days later. The days since then have been a wild roller coaster ride, and we’re finally able to catch our breath and enjoy the moment. We’re going to Las Cruces baby!

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