West Kingston

As many of you know, M's parent company is based in West Kingston, Rhode Island. His boss is there, and a great many of his teammates. And as many of you also know, he spends a lot of time going up there to work. You might almost say he's been doing a bit of extra-long distance commuting.

Well, his boss realized the inordinate amount of time and money he's been spending on flying up there and staying in hotels, dining out, etc., and has proposed a solution.

And, to sweeten the deal, he's offering M a 40% raise, stock options in the parent company, and coverage of all moving expenses.

We didn't want to say anything until we made our decision, but we can't put it off any longer. It looks like in the next couple weeks I'll be heading up to RI with M to look at some houses. He's done a bit of searching and we have a few good leads. My personal favorite is this one:

It's weird to give up the whole brick-house idea, as being from the Lou most of our houses are brick, but apparently in New England brick isn't readily accessible and therefore is prohibitively expensive. Still, that looks like a great house, don't you think?

I wanted to look in Newport, as it's only 30 minutes from West Kingston and is so beautiful, but cost of living is just way too high there, even with the bump in M's salary.

I've begun a general search for a new job, but nothing has turned up so far. A few leads back in the not-for-profit sector, which sounds good, but we'll see. I'm not sure I really want to go back there, having had so much fun in the for-profit world for the last few years.

Of course, with the increased salary we're also exploring the idea of me staying at home to raise Zoe, and maybe have another child. We won't have access to our family system up there, so it might make sense for me to be home at least until she's in school. I can always do some freelance photography to bring in some extra money.

So, that's our big news. We decided to post it out here so that there was no question of who got told first. When you read it, you read it. Those who check back frequently will be rewarded with the news first.

Oh yeah, by the way, happy April 1.