new place

So we didn't end up moving to Florida. We ended up not moving too far away from our last apartment in Virginia.

After my food poisoning episode push our schedule off course a little, we started to doubt the move to Florida. Too far, too much money and all without either one of us already having guaranteed jobs there to begin with. I had one second-interview scheduled but there was no guarantee of that going through in the end.

So we started debating 2 alternative choices; lay low by staying in our current apartment, buying back the lease, and getting TK's old job back, and me getting a job anywhere - or - still move somewhere where it's cheaper to live, but somewhere that's closer to us = less moving costs and time.

We chose to move. Takeshi, a year ago, ended up "staging" (chef term for work for a day(or more) without pay) at a restaurant called Volt in Frederick, MD. Afterwards they, at that time, extended a position to him if he wanted it. It just happened that, in the end he took a job at Restaurant Eve in Alexandria instead.

So a few days ago, we went to Frederick and he spoke to the chef/sous chef again. They gave him an unofficial 'yes' and told him to come back a day later for another 'stage' just to get the feel of the kitchen again yadda yadda. So hub was pretty well sure of his job. So that solidified it for us.

Time to pack all our crap up and go! With just the two of us. Argh. And one of us *ahem* doesn't have very good upper-arm strength. ^__^;;

But we did it. It was painful at times, since the hub ALWAYS packs the "books" boxes so full that it's about 80 pounds...Good thing for us that most of our furniture is from IKEA so it can be broken down. Since it was only two of us, we ended up packing for about 5 hours during the first day (the 29th), took a break for dinner, and then went BACK out to the truck and carried out lighter stuff until about midnight. The next day (30th) in the morning we packed the rest of the small things in the truck and our tiny car and just left. Drove up to Frederick, signed the lease 1 hour before the office closed and got our keys to our new apartment. We then started UNLOADING the truck and the car, and was carrying in the last piece, our couch, in the evening just as the sun was going down.

While we were sitting amongst our heaps of boxes, Takeshi told me that this process reminded him of a man in Japanese history called Toyotomi Hideyoshi. According to legend, he built a castle overnight. Yeah, our story seemed similar I suppose. We ended up packing and unpacking all of our belongings in about 2 days! We were moved into our new place pretty much overnight.

So here we are. Hub starts work on the 5th or 6th I believe, and before that gets here, we've been working on getting as many things set up; new car tags, internet, possibly cable, calling our old services to cancel them, etc.

I'm searching for job openings in the area. I don't plan to hold out for a design job up here, for the most part. This area's definitely not as bustling as the area we were in. I need to have a job somewhere, so it'll probably be some kind of part-time gig.

Here are some photos from about a couple weeks ago, before we moved. TK and I went to D.C. one day, and I took some photos on my rainy, cold last day of dog-walking. Have a good Monday everyone.