almost midnight, already?!

[kareina]

How did today disappear so quickly? I wish I could tell you I didn't notice how late it was getting because I've been a good girl and working hard all day, but I can't. What did I do? Well, we managed three loads of laundry, a trip to the "tip" to get rid of our household "rubbish" (fortunately, this house generates far more recycling than actual trash, so they charged us only $6 this time for the privileges of dumping our garbage). I went for a trike ride "around the big block (not quite 8 km in 40 minutes), and I applied for another couple of one-year visiting lecturer sorts of positions. These two ads read rather like the university has decided to go this route instead of hiring tenure track people as a budget saving device, which could explain why they have only just been advertised and the jobs start in August. It did rather surprise me to see new positions advertised, since most unis were asking for applications in Nov/Dec or Jan/Feb at the latest for the semester which starts in August. I have already seen enough "sorry, we won't be hiring someone after all due to budget cuts" and "sorry, we had a plethora of qualified applicants and have hired someone else" letters that I've been thinking that the few schools who haven't contacted me yet are likely in negotiation process of hiring someone and that I'd missed out on the chance to be hired for a teaching position this year. And, strangely, I haven't been very concerned about that. I'm enjoying my life, enjoying my work (on the days that I do it!), and am content to stay a bit longer in Tassie if that is how it works out. I figure that once I've finished the thesis I can try to get some part time work for the geology department "demonstrating" (as they call teaching assistants in this country) or something, while I write papers for publication and see if I can do some volunteer work as well to gain more experiance for next year's applications. But then these possibilities came up, so, why not try one last time for this year's round of hiring?