Dada the Bacon-Bringer

Dad's dream in life, so far anyway, is to be a geosciences-oriented professor at a relatively laid-back university. Now that we are nearing the end of our Ph.D.'s, this means Dad must pursue such jobs, a mildly scary prospect for him and a prospect so foreign to me as to be nightmarish. A job?!?!? The "real world"??!? Of these things I know not.

As I had alluded to previously, Dad went on a job interview last week to the University of Delaware. I of course only have second-hand reports, but I deliver them to you anyways. His interview went fabulously. He loved the campus, loved the people, and managed to smush his hour-long lecture into 45 minutes so he could race to the airport. Many things pointed towards success for him in this venture:

1) Several times during the process, different professors who would be his colleagues, and who would be voting whether or not to give him the job, said "when you get here" or "see you again soon" or the like.
2) He got along like old buddies with the two guys in the department who research in fields most like his. One even drove him back to the Philadelphia airport, in the snow, despite the fact that the department had reserved Dad a shuttle, just so they could chit-chat some more about guitars.
3) When he interviewed with the Dean of Arts & Sciences, the Dean told him "If it was the 'old days,' I'd offer you the job right here and now."
4) Dad specifically asked at one point whether "diversifying the department was an issue with this hiring" (read: are you going to diss me because I'm a white dude?), and they said "No."
5) Did I mention he was their top candidate?

While Delaware is admittedly far from home, we are getting excited about it. The housing market is no Indy, but it is also no Seattle, and we could buy a respectable-looking house to raise at least 2 kiddos in for $200K, which is doable on a prof's salary. Exciting also is the prospect of continuing to live in a place with easy access to cultural opportunities -- Newark, Delaware is within easy driving distance of Philly, New York City, Baltimore, and D.C. And, perhaps the nail in the coffin of it all, Dad has it on the authority of the Dean that there are like five drug companies HQ-ed in Delaware for its lenient corporate tax policies, which means when my services as a mothering professional are no longer needed I can hook myself up with a sweet-paying job in which I could actually make use of my Ph.D., too.

However, these Delaware fools are operating under the delusion that it would be wise of them to interview, like, four other lame-os, so we have to wait until the first week of February to hear from them. Dada has made an analogy: It's like when your girlfriend, on whom you have doted and spent considerable emotional energy, tells you that, while you are really great, she needs to go and sleep with these other dudes to make sure you are really the right guy for her, but it looks like maybe she'll be back next week. I think our poor Dada was losing sleep over it.

I say "was" because this morning, reminiscent of a Monday morning two weeks ago, Dada got a phone call from the Geology Department at Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, to whom he had also applied, informing him that he was their top candidate in the faculty search they were conducting, and would he still be interested in the job and available for an interview in the coming weeks? After he said yes, the Murray State folk said they would be back in touch later this week to work out a schedule with Dad to fly out there and do his thing. Needless to say, we are so very proud of our Dada, and so very stoked. Dada extended his analogy -- now it's like, upon your girlfriend initiating her sluttery with other dudes, you suddenly get a phone call from this supermodel you used to date who heard you were newly available and would you like to go for a cup of coffee?