A really great weekend, an intimidating week.

I've been absent for a bit because things have been busy and we have been blessed. My dad came to visit last Thursday and Friday and it was so great to see him. One of my favorite things about having my family visit is that I know we don't have to do anything special to have a good time. In fact, we got my driver's license (FINALLY!), went out to dinner, and went to a job interview. It was brief but totally great, and it made me thankful for my time off because he definitely couldn't have come down for the day if I'd been working. Plus, by the time we go home in 3 weeks we won't have seen our families for 2 months...which is a long time for us.

On Saturday, Luke and I headed to Memphis to visit our dear friends Allison and Steven. Allison is my best friend from nursing school who also lived down the street from me for the last two years. They moved to Memphis this summer and we miss them a lot. It's been especially tough during these recent weeks of job searching, because both Allison and I were jobless and I felt like we would have been spending so much time together if we were nearer to each other, or if I'd had some extra money to go visit. Thankfully, Allison just got a really awesome job, and hopefully I'm on my way to one. Anyway, it was so great to visit them and see their incredible new house. It was built in 1916 and it's so full of life. We got to go the the Vanderbilt v. Ole Miss game at Ole Miss, where Steven and Allison both went for undergrad, and we had such a great time getting to see their school and meet their friends. We also got to experience the most elaborate tailgating I could ever imagine. It was awesome and full of yummy food!

One of life's greatest blessings for me is getting to visit friends' homes and meet their friends and family. It always makes me understand a little bit more of who they are and how they became that person. I love putting faces with names for the first time, and getting to see where friends grew up or spent their time. It was really fun to meet so many of Allison's friends and discover why they are so special to her. As of this month, I've now been able to do that, in some form, with all of my closest friends except Marcia, and some day I hope I can visit her home in Iowa or her new home in Omaha.

I had a really successful interview on Friday in which someone was finally excited about my Spanish. It's been sort of frustrating because everyone says, "Oh, you're in nursing, you'll have no trouble finding a job," or "Oh, you speak Spanish, everyone will want to hire you," but the truth is that neither of these things have been correct. The apparent nursing shortage does not apply to nurse practitioners, and in spite of the fact that I speak Spanish and my greatest dream and goal in life is to serve the Hispanic population, it just doesn't seem to be much of a selling point. Or it hasn't, until now, so we'll see if that place is really as excited about it as they seemed to be.

This week I have a really intimidating job interview that is supposed to last over 2 hours. They actually mailed me a letter to tell me about it. I'm scared!

My incredible weekend made me realize how complacent I've grown in my unemployment. I don't mean about the actual lack of employment, because I look for jobs a lot and am busy applying. What I mean is that I'm starting to feel indifferent about the lack of productive work I have to do. I have limited motivation and I'm starting to fill my time with meaningless activities. This is not the kind of person I am, and it's not the person I want to become. I need some goals, so here are a few for the week:

1. Survive my interview on Tuesday
2. Finish my thank-you notes
3. Answer at least 50 ChaCha questions every day
4. Read 1 chapter of my book each day
5. Mail a lot of stuff that I've been putting off
6. Pick our final pictures for the wedding album
7. Make my album of the photobooth pictures
8. Order prints of the wedding pictures

I'll let you know how it goes.