It’s been a while since I posted anything particularly content worthy in this space. There’s a reason for that. A reason that I’d been wanting to talk about for a while now, though for reasons that will become clear sooner rather than later, it just wasn’t in the cards.

See, today, I started a new job…kinda.

Well, it really is a new job, with a new location, new responsibilities, new circumstances, new benefits, new headaches, and truly, a whole bunch of newness that needs dealt with. However, it’s not entirely unfamiliar, as it’s with the same organization, with the same bosses, and honestly, a lot of the same responsibilities. Plus, I’ve been doing large chunks of it for a couple of months now anyway.

A couple of months ago, my team lead on the project I work on left rather suddenly for other opportunities. For reasons I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand, the task of picking up the slack fell to me. I found myself kicked upstairs rather unceremoniously, suddenly being asked to bless various project documents and plans without a heck of a lot of warning. It was a strange experience. That’s about the time things got quiet around here – I was just really busy and distracted by events.

And, long story short, the guy whose job I was doing got competed, I applied, and I got the offer. Without a formal interview. I guess the previous couple of months was the interview.

Now the real fun begins. The good thing is that the job is a pretty big promotion – one can always use more money – and should be interesting work. The less good thing, at least initially, is that the job is at my organization’s headquarters, which is in Northern Virginia. Hotels and per diem are no longer a feature, so my commute is currently two hours one way.

Plans are, however, afoot. I’m going to suck up this commute (or perhaps look into vanpools or something) for the next couple of months, all the while working to get this house into sellable condition and ridding ourselves of fifteen years’ worth of clutter, and have a for-sale sign up outside around the time school lets out.

Hopefully, the house will sell with a minimum of difficulty, and we’ll have ourselves well-settled into a new place (which we really need anyway) a bit farther north. Exactly how far north in the end will depend on a complex alchemy of factors like housing prices, school quality, and how long a daily drive I can stand. There’s a sweet spot between here and there where I can get a nice house for reasonable money, near a school that’ll serve my kids well, and will not require me spending four hours per day behind the wheel – in the next couple of months, we’ll find it.

So, that’s what’s been going on and why there’s been little but random quotations and silly videos for the last little while. I figured people might want to know.