Movin' on up!

But not to the east side. To the northwest side. Of DC.

That's right! The job interview I went on two weeks ago went really well, apparently, because they offered me the job!

It has been quite a whirlwind for the past two or three weeks. I applied for the job on Wednesday, May 6. They called me on Friday, May 8. I interviewed on Tuesday, May 12, and they offered me the job on Thursday, May 14.

It's been crazy ever since. My start date is Monday, June 8, so I had a little more than three weeks to find a place to live, move there and start work. I was smart enough to pick up a few apartment books when I was in DC for my interview, and I went through them to look for places.

No luck really. Anne and I drove up to DC the Saturday after I took the job to look at apartments in the suburbs, and we came away severely disappointed in what we found. Mostly, we were unhappy with how much I was going to have to pay to get not that much space pretty far away from the city.

So I started searching Craigslist for a situation where I could rent a room in a house or apartment with a few roommates to lessen the cost. I found a room in a great row house a block and a half from a metro station (the DC subway, in case you didn't know). And the best part is it's pretty much going to cost just as much as living in Raleigh.

I'll do that for six months, and then Anne will finish school and be ready to come up. Now we'll have six months to find a suitable place we can afford instead of THREE WEEKS.

So there you go! In a little under two weeks, I will officially be a program manager at a DC public relations firm, working downtown just a few blocks from the White House! Pretty awesome. I'm really excited.

I went back and read my old Livejournal I had when I worked in Clinton. I was talking about how unfulfilling it was to know I'd never make that much money working in newspapers. That's when I decided to go to grad school and see what I could do with myself.

Well, I won't disclose exact figures, but suffice it to say, it's more than a 100-percent raise over what I was making at the Chronicle. Yup, this is exactly what I had in mind when I went back to grad school. Don't get me wrong; I loved almost every second of that job. But fun don't pay the bills.

Yeah, so I'll be moving next week -- hopefully on Wednesday to give myself some time to get settled, get to know the new roommates and figure my way around a little bit before starting work in two weeks. Pretty crazy how fast it all happened.

If you're in the Raleigh area, hit me up and say goodbye before I'm gone next week!