This does answer the question some of you have been having about my poor luck finding jobs lately. While I did want to continue working at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San José, I failed to obtain a new position there after the Star Wars exhibit closed on March 23rd. For three months I worked twice a week at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk—hopefully my last sojourn there—conducting history tours for school groups visiting the park. Since then, I have wholly failed at finding a short-term job and, quite honestly, I don't mind. I've been cashing out my unemployment, which I won't be adding to for the next three years anyway, while working on my railroad book. For those of you who have been out of the loop, we meant no offense. We kept a controlled lid on the whole program because of Kara's work—we didn't want to imperil her continued employment.
So here's the plan: we are moving out of our apartment on July 31st and then going to stay at Jenna and Henrique's for two nights. On August 2nd, we move to Mesa, Arizona (Kara's parents' house) for around three weeks. While there, we are going to unload most of our stuff, visit the Grand Canyon and Tucson, and I am going to continue researching for my railroad book. On August 24th, we're heading out to Long Beach and our flight leaves the next day. We'll arrive in Christchurch (via Auckland) on August 27th (skipping a day in the process) and our program begins September 1st!
Being a British-style program, we will have no actual class hours at UC but after the first semester, we will be able to work part-time at the school and get hours tutoring and teaching small classes. Niko, our cat, is coming along too, though getting all his paperwork and treatments done has been an absolute pain in the behind. We are still working on housing and stuff so don't plan to send us anything until we've settled in. Shipping is a nightmare to New Zealand anyway—everything is slow to arrive and costs a fortune to ship.
Regarding my various projects and whatnot, well, I'm going to be reformatting my various blogs (of which, this is the eleventh!):
- Dynastology will become my dissertation discussion page and will be updated frequently over the next three years.
- Santa Cruz Trains & the Santa Cruz Trains Update Blog aren't going anywhere. Both are essential to my continued research on railroads in Santa Cruz County and I don't plan to ever end that project digitally, though I do hope to get the two to three books released before too long.
- Musings of the Great Khan will be updated to envelop all my minor projects such as Monarch Wars, Lost History of Eire, and Boardwalk Tales, as well as new projects such as film reviews, board game stuff, and other items. In effect, it will become my projects page. So kiss those three small pages goodbye as soon as I can move the information over.
- LEGO as an AfterThought is going away, being moved exclusively to Brick Set where I will continue writing reviews when I feel like it and have the time.
- Late Night with Zam Wesell I will keep up, but un-updated. The comic has concluded and I feel it is time to let it go. I don't want to erase it from memory quite yet, though.
- And last of all, The Incredible Crash Dummies was a valiant final attempt at creating a database of Tyco's Crash Dummies series of toys. I never felt Blogger was a great venue for it, and I can only continue to agree with that. That blog will be closed and the material will not be backed up. I have most of it on my computer already in case I ever want to reboot the project.
I think that pretty much summarizes everything. This blog, obviously, will document my adventures abroad in New Zealand and elsewhere. I will try hard to keep it updated and will always post the updates on Facebook. I'll try to install an email subscription service for those who prefer that, and there is already an RSS feature enabled on the page.
I'm going to the land down under, please follow along in my adventures. Cheers!
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