I'm dating a doctor

You read that right. Dude defended his PhD yesterday, so he's now Dr. Dude. That's cute. Maybe I'll start calling him that for fun. :)

Anyway... Dr. Dude said that it was possibly the worst experience of his life. One of his committee members lives out of town and refused to come in for the defense, so we had to set up a few electronic ways for her to be able to participate. Then he had major technical difficulties getting it set up. The talk went well, though I could tell he was nervous. Other people were like "he was so calm!" He and I were like "that was not calm." But he gave a good talk and did well in the question and answer part of the public talk. Then came the private defense. That's the part that he said was the worst experience of his life. Apparently the committee members who were physically present asked him some excellent questions and they had great discussions on them. Then the member who was electronically present decided to ask him about a ton of things that are WAY outside of his field of expertise. As in he is a chemist and she was asking about biological screens and neuroscience. (For those of you who are not in the science field, this is like asking a classics major about calculus. You may know a thing or two from a class or so, but you really don't know all that much about it and are definitely no expert.) Apparently he eventually felt so bad for saying "I don't know" that he started making things up. Then the committee members pounced. And that's when it went from bad to worse. But he passed, and that's what's important.

Dr. Dude supposedly has an offer letter in the mail for a post doc (which is required in the chemistry field before any kind of company will hire you). We have a former colleague who lives in that city who volunteered to help Dr. Dude find an apartment and show him all the cool places. We're both excited that he'll know someone if he moves there. Assuming he accepts the position, I'll probably start looking at jobs in that area. If I get an offer that is high enough to cover me getting out of my lease, I'll put in my resignation letter at my job. If not, I'll put in the letter for when my lease is over. We're not excited about this being apart thing, but we're going to try and make it work. My mother, on the other hand, is excited about this potential move because it's significantly closer to where I grew up than where I live now. She was like "you can go and visit him, and I can go and visit him, and the two of us can just go tour the city while we're there!" (In other words, he'll just be offering us a place to crash.)

Also, Dr. Dude will be meeting my family a few days after Christmas. He's a little excited and nervous. I think my family is excited. My mom sounds like she's going to pull out every possible southern redneck stereotype just for fun. My dad may decide that it's a good time to clean his guns. He also may take Dr. Dude "coon huntin'." It's gonna be great!