My partner is trying to negotiate her PhD stipend. It's currently under 40k per year. For the bay area. A laughably low number. Should hear back sometime next week.

Hope y'all are well!

I'm also excited to hear how it turns out! We got a Sony a6700 with a Sigma 18-50 lens about a year ago and take it on hikes and to family events and definitely want to get pictures printed and framed but editing is an exercise in patience. Are you editing? If so, what does that process look like? Plus looking at printing options is overwhelming there are so many options but I haven't done the research to fully understand the differences in all of them, and I struggle to mentally picture the differences as well.

Met with my grad school's career services (they were expensive enough I get lifetime benefits lol) and they had some good advice on fancying up the CV. So I've done that and have started sending it out!

Spent the weekend making a homemade chocolate hazelnut cake. The frosting was divine. It included a pastry cream and homemade Nutella (minus the chocolate) which were then whipped together. That cake was deadly.

Huge thanks to all with the job advice. I'm new enough to the area I don't have a huge network but I'll start to push more with cold emails. Going to be exhausting but it'll be good. I've got a meeting with my MPH program career center to review my resume tomorrow morning so that'll be helpful hopefully. I normally use a CV and interested in their thoughts of resume vs CV too.

Camping went well. There was some rain Saturday night into Sunday but not as much as expected, which was great. We bought and brought a camp stove for the first time and it was great having warm food and drink too since it was cold there. I think in all Friday to Sunday we did about 18-20 miles, so we haven't been able to move much since getting home. Oh yeah and we got engaged on that trip too.

My partner and I watched the new Sly Stone documentary which we really liked but lamented the lack of political music out there today. Then we realized it's just in different genres we normally don't listen to. So here's an artist we found with some great lyrics and who is doing a ton of work to help his local community:

https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/bay-area-next-rap-star-backyard-20178178.php

You beat me to it! Thanks for posting :)

My job has been real rough again lately so I'm applying pretty hard right now. Plus with my partner getting into her PhD and the income cut that's going to give I'm looking for a good raise. But the use of technology in hiring these days is awful and takes out any human factors in hiring. I haven't had even a call back since my current job 1.5 years ago. It's incredibly frustrating and disheartening. Anyone know how to play the game these days?

Going camping this weekend and we got a campsite that's notoriously difficult to get so we have been really excited for it, and it looks like rain will be rolling in on our 2nd and 3rd of 3 days and if that's not planning camping in advance I'm not sure what is.

Environmental health/environmental epidemiology. She'll be looking at indoor air quality with gas vs electric/induction stoves and ovens. Hence funding has been a big concern lately but the school guarantees funding so that's good!

She got in! No word on funding/stipend yet, but she did it!

We've been casually looking for a house for like 6 months or so, mostly for fun and to understand the market in case we are ever able to afford something here. Well an absolute stunner of a house came up towards the top of our price range, so we reached out to the sellers agent to get disclosures and everything looked really solid so we found an agent (family recommended) to talk to and the agent was like "that's going to go for 30% or more over asking I won't even go through with helping you beyond a verbal offer" which like, she is probably right, but was a huge asshole about the whole thing. We aren't getting that place, we know that, but at least do your job and put in a formal offer. Don't be a gatekeeper and say no for the seller. So that's disappointing but not surprising. Oh well, something may come up or maybe the housing market will come crashing down and we can afford something even better in a year who knows!

Running a training today and tomorrow. It's with a FEMA contractor. They asked about citizenship status before and check gov IDs day of. Horrifying.

Then there's the protests happening today. Super poorly planned because it's a Wednesday but it's also weird because finding info on who organized it is difficult. Giving weird vibes.

In good news, to destress my partner got nerf guns and we had a pillow fort and nerf gun war last night. She won, my fort fell apart. I'll win the next battle!

Super wonderful newsletter this time! Sorry to hear about everything but great to hear from you, and thanks for sharing.

Good news: I found someone to pass around my resume to help find a new job!