Wow!
It’s been an amazing month. It seems that our luck has really turned around and things are really going in our favor. We deserve it as we have paid our dues in spades recently.
The month started strong, as Jourdan’s sixth grade chess team from Lake Castle Private School in Slidell won the citywide Chess Championships! It was a great showing as it was the second year in a row and validated the previous years’ championship. Congratulations Jourdan, great job!
Shortly thereafter, we met with our Realtor, Mona Prince, as it was nearing the end of the six-month contract we had signed with her to sell the house. Mona brought an extensive list of properties that were on the market and indicated that it wasn’t the house that was the problem, it was the market. Just within 5 miles of our house were something on the order of 400 houses for sale! So we agreed to resign up on a month to month sales contract and to lower the price of the house $20,000! This was a lot, but we had not had much traffic and were hopeful this would help.
Meghan was down for spring break the week of April 8th through the 15th. It was nice spending time with her and we got to have a nice night out as we all went to Galatoire’s restaurant for dinner followed up by seeing the Blue Man Group perform at the New Orleans Arena. Galatoire’s was absolutely sublime, but not inexpensive. Our dear friends, the Dyers, had given us a $100 gift certificate to Galatoire’s for Christmas and dinner for the four of us was more than twice that! I was underwhelmed by the Blue Man Group show. I had seen them many years ago in a small arena in Boston while there for a SolidWorks convention. The venue was simply too big to really get the impact of the players. Unfortunate, as I really enjoyed them the first time.
The corporate roll-up I had been working on finally came to fruition on the 12th. We met with the principles of all the interested companies and had an effective day of communication. The ultimate outcome of the meeting was unfortunately that the process was not to continue. The team interested in facilitating the roll up just simply did not provide enough concrete information to earn the confidence of the owners of the three companies. It was an interesting experience and I learned a lot.
On April 18th, Melanie, Jourdan and I traveled up to Washington D.C. where we had a couple of days scheduled with a Realtor to show us around. The first day gave us a severe case of sticker shock, as houses not nearly as nice as ours were going for $600k and up. Wowsers. A lot of the newer stuff was farther out of town than we wanted to be and suffered from cookie cutter syndrome. A bunch of rows of the same houses. We weren’t overly impressed by day’s end.
On Friday, the 20th, I went into the office where the owner of the consulting company made a formal offer which was in the range of 40% more than PCS was paying me. Doing the math indicated that with this increase, we could afford a house in the area, so that made the decision easier. I also got the opportunity to talk with a couple of engineers who work there, and they confirmed everything the owner told me. As I’m walking out of the office, Mike invites us for dinner that evening, to which I accept.
That afternoon we found the town of Reston which is a really cool older community and is really where we want to live, and it’s relatively affordable. Lots of trees and rolling hills and hiking trails and stuff. Really nice. Close into town, so the commute will be reasonable, although traffic in the area is unreal.
Anyway, we meet the owner and his wife for a really nice dinner at a French restaurant, after which we get to the car and Melanie’s phone has a message on it. It was our Realtor in Slidell informing us that we had an offer on the house that was only $5k less than what we were asking. Whohoo! I’m not superstitious, but having the offer of a job and the on the house on the same day must be a sign that this must be the direction to take. So we spend the rest of the weekend touring around DC. To ensure that not all went perfectly, Jourdan locked the keys in the rental car Sunday afternoon while we were driving around. After a couple of hours wait for Avis to come open the car we flew home on Sunday night. On Monday, I formally accepted the offer, and we worked out all the details on the house sale!.
So the next phase of our lives will be one of transition. We will be packing up the house and relocating to the suburban VA area, which should prove to be extremely interesting!
Stay tuned for the next chapter,
chris