stop. rewind. play.

from the beginning -

it's probably better to let vanessa tell you how this started. from my persepctive, it was two long months of watching, encouraging, waiting. two phone interviews, one week in between each of wondering and hoping. oh, and that's not to mention the first email she received from google coordinator #1 saying thanks but no thanks. false alarm. turns out she didn't realize that vanessa was two years into her professional life, not a graduating senior. but in that moment we saw how quickly they could have crushed her hope. we even gave up for a couple of hours, until we re-read the email.

my thought all along was that if she could just make it through the phone interviews that she would be fine. google's basic philosophy, don't do evil, would probably be vanessa's personal mantra if she had one. i knew once she got in front of those googlers they would see that she was made for them. it was just a matter of getting there.

this is how it works. google gets roughly 4,769,152 applications per day. of these 4,769,152, roughly three make it to the desk of a recruiter. this is, of course, if you don't have an inside man who effectively drops your application right on the desk of this recruiter.

thankfully, we made the right friends in college.

our very own inimitable k2 was one of those select few who found his way to a job at google straight out of college. this should be all you need to know about k2. i think it is categorically correct to believe that without k2's help i wouldn't be writing this, and that's to say nothing of vanessa's credentials (obviously, since she's got a job), rather to draw attention to the incredible amount of well-qualified individuals that never even get a foot in the googly door.

from this beginning bloomed the aforementioned phone interviews (for which vanessa prepared as though she were getting ready to take the gre's) the first of which she was an hour late for thanks to daylight savings time. waiting to hear her fate after that was painfully stressful.

the next step was for her to be flown out to mountain view ('bout two weeks ago) to be interviewed by a number of people all in the same day. the adventure here involved cancelled flights, getting lost on the 15-minute ride from the airport to her hotel (took an hour) and adrenaline pumping so hard that on the biggest day of her professional life she'd clocked a total of about 15 minutes of sleep.

after being put through the ringer live and in person, we waited for the next two steps to be completed -- all of her info (including resume, cover letter, college transcript, interview feedback, blood pressure analysys, list of her top-five favorite foods) was forwarded to review board #1, and approval there resulted in analysis from review board # 2, the board of engineers. following this?

the first day we expected to hear back, she had an offer.

extreme excitement and abject terror gripped. this was four days ago. since then i've been cycling through both feelings on roughly 15-minute cycles, which means sleep has been sparse and focus on other things has been nearly non-existent. oh, by the way, i've just been promoted to manager at fastenal. yeah, so now i run my own store which is replete with all the requisite responsibilites and stresses you'd expect running a small business.

this weekend vanessa's parents and sister (jane) came to visit. this was very timely. her parents are generally right about everything and have an uncanny ability to navigate their way through situations like this with expert advice and planning. i've watched them help vanessa tackle some huge decisions in four+ years and every time the results have been ideal. having them here has been a tremendous help.

today we had a man from the realty agency talk to us about vanessa's options with regards to selling or renting her condo (which she bought less than a year ago). so there's that.

i think you're caught up now. maybe. every revelation and decision is met with as many new questions and considerations that need tackling. as i type i'm sure another thought has been hashed out and four new issues have come up. i hope i don't make it sound like i'm complaining -- if i am already then we're in trouble. there's at least two more months of this afoot. but i guess this is what you're supposed to do. ever since she applied i've been fielding some variation of this series of questions: what are you going to do? are you going to san francisco with her? how do you feel about going all the way out there? what will you do when you get there?

my stock responses have been a variation of: probably teach (people seem to forget that i've got a b.s in education and two minors in english and communications). and of course i'm going with her. we're in our mid-twenties, not married, no kids, and essentially no responsibilities to anyone else. if we don't take advantage of these opportunities now, when will we? i don't want to look back on my life in ten years when i'm hauling a van full of screaming 5 year-olds to baseball practice and wonder what i should have done differently. there's no guaranteeing moving to san francisco will eliminate this possibility, but at least i'll know i got out there and really did something. we may hate it and come back in a year (not bloody likely) or we'll love it and stay forever. i have no idea. i don't care right now. all i can think about right now is how cool it will be in 10 years when i'm talking to someone and i can say, "and then i moved to san francisco . . . "