The Anniversary Post - Part One

It is hard to believe we have now been in Washington D.C. for a year. After we finished our M.A.s, we spent a month with friends and family in Utah and California. We arrived in Washington D.C. with a six week window in which to find jobs, an apartment, and a bed. My dad, in town for work, invited Heather and I to come and stay with him while he was there. Because my mom can't resist a party, she came along as well. We wanted to have at least one of our cars out here, so we drove out from Utah to Fargo, to pick up my Mom, and then from Fargo to D.C.; driving about 16 hours a day. You would be surprised how quickly you can get three-fourths of the way across the U.S.

Once we arrived at the extended stay hotel, familiar feelings of "What the hell were we thinking?" began to arise. Was this crazy idea going to work out? Could we really find something this quickly? Being an extended stay hotel, there was a fridge, stove, and microwave in the room. I will never forget the culinary ingenuity that having only two burners and a handful of utensils will give you. We cooked some surprisingly excellent meals and huddled around the tiny table in the room.

Most days would begin with Heather and I hunting for jobs for the first part of the day, at which point my mom would become totally sick of being in the hotel and we would head out to find something to do. Little did we know, Greenbelt (where we were staying) was about the most boring place in the area. Luckily, during my past stay in D.C. (for my internship), I had accumulated a list of fun places, all easily accessible by metro.

However, we never felt free of stress as the impending deadline of my parents leaving was hanging over our heads. A couple weeks, after having applied to an uncountable number of jobs, we began to get nibbles, most of which were below what we were looking for. We were holding out for careers positions that we would actually want to do for a while that paid well. There were lots of great and funny things between the searching out the best restaurants in Greenbelt (not a task I would wish to repeat...) and all of us being within about 10 feet of each other 90% of the time.