Happy New Year, everyone! I'm going to say it early because I'm absolutely beat and expect to be in bed well before the second hand moves one spot after midnight. The drive back from Philly was extremely smooth, but spending 7 hours -- no matter how uneventful -- in the car is still draining. We left the Westin this morning around 10:15 and got back into Carrboro shortly before 5. I don't know how Steffi can do it, but she's planning to spend at least some of this evening with friends. I'm looking forward to trying to read a book...

Yesterday Steffi had one last, early morning interview with Indiana University-Purdue Fort Wayne, concluding a long four days of hand-shaking, Q&A's, maintaining self-compsure, and trying to impress 11 different schools. While Steffi worried about her performance in a few of these interviews, I'm confident she's going to get a fair number of positive responses.

At this point, it's become a waiting game, as we won't hear from potential employers for at least another week. And then, it's hopefully on to Round 3 when Steffi'll have to go to on-campus interviews -- generally a three day visit to the school where she'll have to teach one or two undergraduate level German classes as a guest lecturer. There's no way I'd want to go through the same rigorous process.

The rest of the day (yesterday, the 30th) was spent on a walking tour of Philadelphia, since Steffi had only had the opportunity to sight-see on the way to and back from the 5 or 6 hotels for the interviews. We walked down South Street, through the Historic District, and - well - that was about it before landing in an Indian restaurant for a late afternoon buffet. That evening we continued to sate our cable TV fix, and after an exhausted Steffi fell asleep (quite early, understandably) I watched Texas Tech crush 4th-ranked California in whatever bowl game that was.

After all the sports, movies, and news we watched this past week, I know I'm going to experience some intense withdrawal symptoms for the next few days.

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And, finally, on the subject of cable TV: Is it just me, or has CNN become a really trashy news channel? It was bad enough watching Petra the Supermodel's agent go on and on about her client's miraculous survival of the tsunamis, but I nearly went mad when CNN started broadcasting the results of its recent poll regarding America's role model. According to the survey, the majority of American adults have chosen President Bush as the person they look up to most! I know I'm high strung, but what the $@%$$? I mean, come on, there are tons of far better qualified people: Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, Kobe Bryant, Lil' Kim... (or the Dalai Lama if you want a serious contender). ARRRRGHHH! That poll is pulling double-duty, simultaneously revealing the utter lack of intelligence of CNN's viewership...