First off... how is it that I'm managing to blog everyday of conference/vacation, but not under normal circumstances? Anyway... onto the list type break down...

1. Hung out with Kevin's aunt and uncle and cousins. It was nice to spend some time with them because I've only met them once since they live outside of the normal visiting area.

2. Dinner with psych-big-wigs. Oh my, my head is still reeling from the conversation and the champagne. The dinner was in celebration of a new textbook and the publisher/editor wanted to gather a group of fun and interesting researchers to wine and dine with the main author (and this included me somehow?!). There were 8 of us (including me and the editor and the author who is big psychology celebrity). Four others are professors at various universities who have a lot of prominent research, and the last person was another grad student, but a girl who worked in publishing for a while before grad school. It was nerve-wrecking and amazing. The food and drink were awesome. I managed to talk up my research and it generated a great discussion and debate for a while, ending with one of the guys telling me what a great area of research it was. I talked with others about the job market and trying to find a position. The author told us how the first year he was on the market there were no jobs, so he got a post-doc at the last minute, and then the second year, he got only 2 interviews and one job (in late April). So I don't feel quite as discouraged as I was before about not hearing anything yet, but at the same time this finding an academic job thing is going to be hard. The editor woman was super sweet and we walked back to our hotels together. I talked with her for a bit about jobs in the publishing world, and I'm glad that I met her and hope to keep in contact with her because if academic jobs don't work out, something related in publishing could be good.

The moral of the story is that you may be shaking scared to walk into a situation with professionals in your field that you don't know, but you go and act confident and it can be awesome!

(Sorry if today's update is more rambling and typo-filled... I must cut back on the champagne!)