"Don't squat with your spurs on"

So, this being the inaugural post of my very first blog, I thought I'd provide a quick rundown on the haps of the past 3 months since we moved to good ol' C.C. ..for any of yous guys out there that are interested.

We arrived in the Coastal Bend after a week-long (or so) trek from Guam to CA (to see family and pick up my belongings that the military opted not to move to Guam) to AZ (to see family and sight-see) to TX (to reside). Needless to say, we arrived exhausted and unfortunately, homeless. Luckily, we were warmly welcomed into a commune of sorts, staying with friends at various houses while we ourselves looked for a place to call our home.

This was not so easy. In the beginning, I was pro-renting and he was somewhat pro-buying. When we heard that renting a house was not a simple task here, I reluctantly started changing my mind. We did research, lots of research. We hit the ground running, visually checking out houses, looking up property taxes, staking out neighborhoods, etc. We mastered Excel (well, I became more familiar - he was already a master) as we condensed all we had learned into spreadsheet after spreadsheet. Mind you, this was all before we contacted a realtor.

We took a one-week respite to drive to FL for work-related training and once again, to sightsee and visit relatives/friends. We drove through the French Quarter (at night, which I hear is more impressive than during the day), discovered boudin, played in the Atlantic and oh yeah, hit a ginormous piece of metal on the freeway and had to have all of our tires replaced.

Upon our return to C.C., I was whisked away on a last-minute trip to CA. Apparently, evidence I developed at a crime scene two years ago when I still lived and worked in CA was crucial to the prosecution of the defendant in a life-term case. I had to testify (my first time!) and everybody said I did great, even the court reporter. I stretched a 2-day business trip into a week-long visit with friends and family, whereupon I celebrated my 27th birthday and Mother's Day with the people I love the most (minus the husband, who stayed in C.C. to start work).

Back in Corpus, we resumed the house hunt, only to be derailed by a job prospect of mine that would require a two-hour commute each way. I had interviewed for the position and scored higher than the other applicants, but logistically it was never going to work. Neither of us were really interested in relocating to someplace outside of C.C., not to mention that what I would have been making would have only covered gas and car repairs. I withdrew myself from consideration. It was a tough decision not because it was crime scene work and I would have been actively involved in forensics community again, but because it is very important to me to be employed and earning money and contributing. Once I passed it up, though, it was smooth sailing. By that time, we had decided to lease (even with the fates against us) and keep the option for buying open. We really had no problem finding a house in which we could tolerate living for at least a year, in a neighborhood we actually really liked.

So, after being in C.C. for approximately three months, we finally moved two weekends ago. Our belongings from Guam were delivered almost completely unharmed a week ago and we're 97% unpacked. There's work to be done, of course, but mostly small decorative projects.

In the meantime, he's hard at work and I'm hanging around the house, trying to push myself to study for the GRE and hunt down elusive forensics jobs that are located here in C.C. We've also become volunteer divers for the Texas State Aquarium, but I'll save that for another post...