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Its a little before midnight. I'm still a little wound from the trip, and I wanted to get some thoughts down before I slept.

I'm glad that I went. I didn't want to go (I know, thats awfully damned odd given that I'd sent them a resume, and spoke with them several times before going out), but I did, and I went through the two interviews. It may not seem that it takes all that much moral courage to do that, but it does for me, as I don't have much self-confidence. I've spoken of that before.

I don't think they will offer me a job, because in the first interview, they were looking for specific strengths that I would bring if I came -- an indepth knowledge of a subsystem, or of a product. I don't have that. I do have the ability to put pieces together, and to understand how they fit together at a high level -- I called it being a generalist -- but I could see that they were looking for something stronger. The second interview was quite pleasant, and the questions were, by and large, softballs. Overall, I'd say I got a 6 out of 10 -- nice, but not overwhelming.

If they offer me a job, though, I'll take it, because money is the driving force in doing this. I know that sounds like I'm greedy, and tightfisted, but thats not the case. I would just like to have more of a buffer for the many, many years that we'd be retired (for me, that means about twenty five years, and for my wife, about the same, mostly overlapping), or, if sooner than that, to sustain us should she lose her job. We're not up against it, not to we expect to be. Its just the classic financial paranoia -- if you use up your money, you find out when you're way too old to do much about it. I desperately want to be as sure as I can be that that doesn't happen to us.

I found that travel, per se, doesn't bother me, and being away from my family, though I don't like it, isn't that big a deal. Oh, I get annoyed when things don't go smoothly -- the TSA folks at Saint Louis airport seemed to be a chaotic, surly bunch, and I had to clamp my mouth shut (why, for example, do they insist on seeing an ID before they let you in line, and then, once in line, ask to see it again?) -- and much fast food or restaurant food is execrable (my tastes are quite simple, really, but when the damn hotel doesn't even have an English muffin, and they bring toast of some kind of whole grain with a frozen slab of butter -- well, I get a mite testy) -- but the travel itself isn't a problem. What I hate, I find, is the thought that I am somehow adding to my wifes burdens. Its not that she can't handle it. Its that I hate that she has to. I feel like I'm letting her down. She says I'm not; I believe her -- intellectually. Not emotionally, though.

Saint Louis itself -- well, the downtown is quite pretty (hey, btw, why doesn't Pizza Hut or Dominos or any nationally known chain deliver down there?), but the exurbs look dilapidated, a lot. I get the impression that urban renewal has been tried multiple times there, without success. But the Arch is quite nice, particularly at dawn, even if the Park Service guys seem a bit on the paranoid side (one asked to examine my bag going in, and then they immediately scanned it on an xray device. Why both?) and the clerks in the store are weird (eight dollar credit purchase, and they asked to see id? Why?)

One girl on the flight back was going to Germany for six weeks as an exchange student. I envy that. Then I find she's three years older than my daughter, and I think: What if this were my daughter, going all the way to Germany, by herself, at sixteen?That gives me the shivers.

People got on the plane at Detroit carrying McDonalds and pizzas. Damn, I wish I'd done that. Something about having only fifteen minutes between planes... Guess I should be pleased that they actually got my bag transferred between flights.

Okay, time for sleep, I think.