move to Virginia

so, i haven’t had a chance to update at all…

but i’ve been in VA since May. LOVE IT!

I am extremely interested in Virginia for many reasons. I am in love with American history, the weather is a good mix, seems to have more jobs than other places, and cost of living is only a little higher than where I live now. I am looking at the Williamsburg/Newport News section of the state to try. Anybody have any suggestions or tips?

For better or worse, I’m done with this. We’ve all but rented out our house in Ohio (the lease has been signed by the tenants and I’ll be signing it next week), and we were starting to look for places of our own here, though we’ve hit a slight roadblock with that for now.

But, I’m in Virginia, and I’m not leaving anytime soon.

apartment? check.
uhaul rented? check.
packing? nope.
graduate? nope.

virginia?!! i’m half-way there….

i miss it

I guess you could still say that I’m officially a resident of two states. I’m living and working in Virginia, yet I still own my house in Ohio and hold an Ohio driver’s license. I even re-registered my cars in Ohio at the start of January.

Given the current economic climate, the house isn’t going to sell anytime soon, so we’re trying to rent it out. We’ve got a few strong prospects for renting, but I still fear my dad is going to screw it up for us. Once the house is rented, we should be able to start looking for a house/apartment to rent out here (since we clearly won’t be handling two mortgages at the same time).

But, we may just stick around with the in-laws for another few months, so that we can sock away some additional savings and pay a few other things down. We’re all actually getting along pretty well at the moment, too. So, we’ll see what happens next.

I was offered a better job, which I start tomorrow.

In the meantime, I’m actually going to be able to keep the first job on weekends for the next six weeks or so, unless it manages to completely kick my ass, like it did this past weekend.

Now, we just have to sell the stupid house in Ohio, which is now harder than ever with the financial news in the US getting worse by the day . . .

I’ve been offered a job, which, if I take it, I will be starting next Monday (9/22).

The key words here are “if I take it.” The job isn’t great, and I’ll be making less than what I did at my previous job. However, our cost of living thus far has been lower in Virginia vs. Ohio (though housing will ultimately be more expensive, everything else is lower), and money is money, and it will be good to be contributing to the household income again after a three-week “vacation.” And we won’t just be making ends meet anymore, either. We’ll have some disposable income again.

That being said, as I mentioned above, it’s not a great job. Since I still have some time before I would report to work, I’ll be stepping up my job search this coming week in the hopes that something even better comes along.

I guess I should technically mark this as complete, but I don’t feel it is quite yet.

This is actually a very long story, but I will try to condense it a bit: back towards the end of April my wife was given the opportunity to take a promotion at her current job. Unfortunately, the position would not be in Ohio, but in Virginia. However, since it was actually in her hometown, she wanted to go for it, and after a good amount of discussion, we decided that this was too good of an opportunity to pass up. My parents were supportive, her parents were supportive, and she was offered the job, and she took it.

Then came the logistical problems. She needed to start June 30, and we were both afraid of the disruption this would be on our son, so she came to Virginia by herself, while my son and I stayed in Ohio. After four weeks, the two of us went down to Virginia, and after one week my son stayed behind and I came back to Ohio for about another month to get the house ready to put on the market.

At about this time my parents, who had supported us from the beginning about this, suddenly decided that they no longer thought this was a good idea—that my wife had decided to make this move without taking me into consideration, that she was going to file for divorce once our son was in Virginia with us, and that we were going to go bankrupt in the process. This led to a LOT of arguments with my parents (my dad, mostly), and, although I’d mostly shielded my wife from all of this, the shitstorm finally got stirred up the weekend following her grandfather’s death, when my dad spent several hours harrassing her on the phone, harrassing her parents, harrassing me, and ultimately even letting the air out of my tires in an attempt to prevent my son and I from leaving for Virginia. Once that all subsided, about two weeks later, once I had made it to Virginia with my son, my dad called me an asshole and slammed the phone down on me.

So, needless to say, it’s been a rough few months.

My last day at my job in Ohio was last Friday. On Saturday, my wife and son came back to Ohio for the long weekend, and we got the house put on the market. After much pleading/begging from my mom, we went to my parents’ house for dinner Sunday night, where my dad got very tearful, and he and my wife seemed to reach somewhat of an understanding as he has decided to support us so that we can all be a family. On Monday, we all returned to Virginia, where I am in the midst of a massive job hunt (which seems to be going well so far), and I received word tonight that our house is being shown to several prospective buyers tomorrow.

So, while I am in Virginia, I’m not quite ready to mark this as “complete” just yet. I will once I’m employed again, the house is sold, and we’re out of my in-laws’ house, or maybe I’ll just mark it as complete once everything has settled down a little!

My boyfriend is in the navy and his ship is there. He’s underway for 7 months then I’m moving to Virginia Beach. Woot. The zoo sucks but it’s worth it to be with him. (: