Red fish; travel churn

So I'm beginning to wonder whether that whole business with the phone call I got last week about a job opportunity was just there to get me all agitated instead of letting me relax a bit. After submitting my resume, I've heard pretty much nothing. Granted, we just got back from a long holiday weekend, but I figured if they really were in such a hurry to fill this position, they would have given me a call first thing back Monday morning to schedule something. Then again, maybe I just have a misguided sense of the process and it takes longer to take care of this kind of thing -- I mean, really, I haven't done this in a while.

And despite the original sense I had from friends that the local job market has been improving, things still seem somewhat tepid. So, now that I've officially started looking into finding new job*, things are looking pretty lame. Figures. Maybe I should get my holiday plans in order, since I'm sure once that's set up, I'll have more calls than I know what to do with. Bah.

* I've actually been convinced by enough friends (including the SOOTTAD, who can be very convincing) that it'll be ok to hold off on the full-on search until next year. So I figure I've got this and one other thing in the pipe, and that'll be it until January.

And on the subject of holiday plans, things are brewing in the background, but like everything else, they're likely to implode like [insert colorful metaphor here] if even the slightest thing goes awry.

I was originally planning on heading back to L.A. for the holidays, and then spending New Year's with the SOOTTAD and some friends hiking around the Mojave again. But with the sudden appearance of available free time (barring a new job magically falling in my lap), I'm reconsidering a trip to China. Or rather, after initially dismissing the idea when my Dad brought it up, I finally realized that this might be the best chance I'm gonna have to make the trip. But now we've got the whole mess of evaluating prepackaged tours, figuring out flight itineraries and trying to coordinate schedules, all against the backdrop of having to balance all the special needs and particulars that the three of us have (related to destinations and trip duration and which I don't even want to start getting into here). Oh, and with a departure date sometime before the end of the month, not to mention the part where I have to get myself to L.A. to make all this happen.

I guess if it happens, it happens. And if it doesn't, it just wasn't meant to be, and we'll go back to plan A where we vaguely plan to take a month off sometime in the not too distance (but not too, uh, closer) future.

[UPDATE: I left a message with the hiring manager this afternoon, and when he called back, he told me that, because he's out of town next week, they'd try to set something up for the week after. So, I guess the ball really is rolling.]