Moving News

How it already got to be this time again, I have no idea.  Our tour in Homer has just flown by.  We dove right in and got involved in the community, and it's going to be really hard to leave it behind.  But since staying is not a choice, we have been (im)patiently awaiting the dreaded call from the detailer for the past two months.

The call came the Tuesday before we left for San Diego.  The job wasn't even one from our list, but the location was.  Since I have spent hours and hours over the past few months familiarizing myself with housing and schooling options in each of the areas on our list, it wasn't difficult to hit the ground running with organizing our move to...Washington, D.C.!  The commute times from pretty much any area with semi-affordable housing and decent schools were just terrible, especially coming from a place where our top speed is 45mph and the road is one lane in each direction.  The job was in Coast Guard Headquarters, which is moving this summer to a new location known to be not in the safest of areas.

Notice that all of that is in past tense?  That's because two days later, we got a very surprising call.  We were offered a choice: keep the D.C. job as a guy in an office, or take a newly-created job as the guy running an office.  On the opposite coast.  In a location nowhere on our list. And for only 2 years instead of 4.  Oh, and we had a day to decide.  We are so fortunate to have lots of great friends who have lived all over the country.  Within fifteen minutes, I was able to call four different people to try and find out everything I needed to know.  I also made some great connections online with people who had been stationed in both locations.  After getting over the initial shock (and sadness that we may not be as close to family as we originally thought), the decision was pretty clear.  The new job itself was a huge step up, and the area was much more our style.  And all of my folders of bookmarks in Safari were instantly irrelevant.


So...we are moving to Alameda, California!
Quite appropriately, we came across this street sign while in San Diego the day that we got official orders:

That's across the bay from San Francisco.  Four hours from Lake Tahoe (yay, skiing!) and Yosemite National Park (yay, nature!).  We already have a tentative ferry date booked and are scouring the web for rental homes.  I learned today that the rental market is so tight there that we need to write a pet resume.  Yes, as in a resume for our dog.  He needs to sell himself to potential landlords, because he will be our biggest hurdle in finding a home to rent.  I have always told him he needs to get a job...guess I was right.  So, if you or anyone you know has a home for rent this summer in Alameda, I've got just the friendly, outgoing, non-barking, floor-cleaning, house-trained for nearly 10 years, 80-pound lapdog tenant for you.