bronwynrh | (no subject)

Happy birthday, gurdonark!

Our 33 hours in Louisville were a success! I met with my future boss, and we got along very well. He said I'm "personable" and "articulate". . . *grin* aww, gee. He and my other boss have been working out a plan for a 2-year academic program funded by a pharmaceutical company. The pharmco will give us - me - new technologies, and I'll develop assays for them. This is right up my alley. I'll be poring through literature, designing molecular tools, optimizing, tweaking, writing protocols. . . all development of intellectual property that can be put to direct use in clinical testing.

The phrase, "academic program" frightened me a little bit, but he described precisely what they would expect over the course of each of the two years, all with the goal of training me as a specialist in pharmacogenetics and clinical chemistry. I'm coming at this field sideways; although I'll know what I'm doing, I won't really know what I'm doing . . . so it only makes sense that this position should involve serious training. What's so cool about it is that they've designed this position specifically for me, and when the two years is up, I'd be ready to go join some other company or university, or I could stay on and take a permanent position right there.

It feels like the best of both the academic and industrial worlds.

I start September 1, although it may slide back a little, depending on bureaucratic money mumbojumbo. After speaking with me and learning more about my writing and editing skills, he said he would see about getting my feet wet early, on a part-time basis. They have a business plan to write, and he wants me to write a review article (just like Thing1, who had me write that protocols chapter as soon as I arrived).

Yay!

Jeff also met with his future bosses, and since I tagged along, I was able to see first-hand that they got along well. Philosophies and stories were shared, and they even shared Jeff's sense of humor. Always a good sign :) They want him to start on Sept. 7 at a store near our house. After a month, they'll move him to a store farther away - one that is in trouble and needs to be shaped up. The GM he'll be working with was there at the meeting, so they had a chance to discuss some of the problems at the store, and ways they can work together to build the team and, of course, make the store more profitable.

It really sounds as though they're going to back Jeff up. It's going to be hard work, but my boy won't have to (we hope) feel as though he's just banging his head against the wall because there's no cohesion among the management. It also sounds as though they won't expect him to be in the trenches all the time, the way he has been here.

Oh! And Jeff's new boss offered to pay for the moving van :)

Unless we get an offer on the house before then, we're planning to move in 2 weeks.

*whew*

Let's see, what else?

Jeff picked out his tuxedo and I tried on my wedding gown. It looks like all I'll need is a hem alteration!

We went for brunch at Lynn's Paradise Cafe , where we were lucky enough to be seated in our favorite booth, and Jeff finally proposed to me. The dear boy didn't want to propose to me in Iowa :-D

Now I'm going to finish tidying up the house a little bit before I have to disappear for a while. We're having an open house tomorrow, but someone wants to see it this morning. So. Time to tidy up and take a little walk over to Hobby Lobby.