grrrr

here's a little news bulletin that did not make our day.... back when i started at max planck, though they originally gave me just a year here, i heard from a few sources that it's pretty easy to get another year tacked on. and the possibility of that second year has come to seem more and more appealing: moving last summer was pretty hellish, so it's not exactly something we want to do again right away; p is still in the early stages of building up relationships with doctors here, and she actually likes some of them, and it would obviously suck to just throw that away in half a year's time; it takes some of the pressure off me job-wise, since who knows if the post-doc hunt is going to go any better this time around; and, despite the evident challenges, living in germany is pretty cool and getting cooler all the time! but but but... well, i naturally started asking around max planck about how this extra year thing would work, and i finally ended up talking to someone in the know yesterday, and the story is that they essentially never give people a second year. quite the disappointment.