OK, it's morning so I have more energy and there's less going on...so, let's see if I can think of something to say.

Our drive up to Rochester on Monday went really well. The girls all behaved and were patient with the trip, and we made good time. We left Ashburn at 5:15 am, so the first couple of hours were nice and quiet. The trip went by really fast for Claire and I because we had adult company. This is definitely the way to do it! The minivan worked out great, too. Plenty of room for the carseats, kids, luggage, toys, blah, blah, blah.

We got to my mom's around 1:30 and the kids played in her backyard all day - that was the day with the kiddie pools. Kate loved splashing around, and of course Anna and Molly had a blast. Unfortunately Monday was the beginning of a massive heat and humidity wave here in upstate NY. We spent Mon, Tues, and Wed nights at my dad's and it was HOT. It was manageable, but uncomfortable. Oh well.

Tuesday my mom took us to a local amusement park, and Anna and Molly had a blast riding the kiddie rides. They were so cute! It was crazy hot out, so we were all exhausted after a couple of hours in the sun. Wednesday Claire stayed home to do work, so the rest of us headed out for the day. I got my hair cut by my mom's fabulous stylist (I love my cut!), we went to McDonald's for lunch, and then we went to a Rochester museum of play - all these cool rooms full of toys and games. Again, Anna and Molly had a blast. (For all of these things, Kate was just the patient observer). Yesterday, Thursday, we just had a relaxing day at home. No running around, everyone got the naps they needed, it was good. Today should be more of the same. This afternoon we'll head over to my dad's. My grandma is coming into town tonight, and tomorrow we'll head down to my dad's wife's mom's lake house. Sunday we'll head out. It's been a great visit, and it should be a fun couple of days coming up.

OK, that's better. Pictures will be taken today!

I have hardly been online this week! I've quickly checked my email once, and that's it. I haven't even read Tracey's Grand Canyon saga yet! I will tonight at some point...

We're having a great time in Rochester. The cousins are all so cute, and my parents have been loving having them around. Kate started crawling on her knees on Sunday, so this week has been fun, watching her improve her skills. She's just so cute!

I guess I don't have much to say. I will say that we're not taking enough pictures, but maybe we'll improve before we leave town. I did take some video the other day of the three girls in the kiddie pools. They had a blast! Anyway, I'll post some pics and more info later...

Today is Anna's birthday party (her bday is next Saturday), so I'm heading over to Claire's to help out with final preparations in a few minutes. The party is at a park, so there shouldn't be too much in terms of cleaning up to do afterward, but there's always the set up and take down aspects. I'm excited for Anna and excited that we get to be at her party. Kate and Jay will meet us at the park later on, and I can't wait to show off the baby. She'll have a cute little party dress on...

Jay watched Kate for most of yesterday which was fabulous for me. I did some random errands and sneaked in a little shopping for myself. Jay took Kate to the park, and it sounds like they had a lot of fun on the swings and talking to other fathers. So cute.

So, Claire, Anna, Molly, Kate, and I are all headed up to Rochester tomorrow to spend the week with my mom and dad. Everyone's excited - I can't wait for them to see Kate, and they can't wait to see her (it's been 3 months). Plus the three girls together are so cute, so it's going to be a fun week. We're all road tripping it together in the minivan! I guess the monstrosity is good for something (jk).  I've loaded up the stuff that Kate and I (mostly Kate) need, and Claire and I will finish loading up tonight (K and I are spending the night at Claire's). First thing in the morning, we'll be on the road - we're planning on 5:00. Kate normally gets up at 6, so I'm not sure how the waking her up/feeding her an hour early is going to go over. I doubt she'll fall asleep right away in the car, but maybe we'll get lucky. I'm sure she'll spend most of the 7 driving hours sleeping - or watching Anna and Molly. A and M will be in the last row with Kate in the middle row. I think we'll probably remove at least one seat from the middle row tonight, but we'll see once we get all the carseats in place.

OK, I'm off. I'll have my computer in Rochester, so yell at me if I don't post!

Kate's antics in the crib continue. I put her to bed last night and the show began! She was making some noise for a few minutes, no big deal, and I peeked around the corner to see what was going on. She was sitting up, looking around. I figured, well, she'll lay down eventually. 5 min later I look again - she was still sitting up. So I go in there, because sometimes she just needs us to 'reset' her - lay her down with her pacifier and blanket. She's super excited to see me, and I pick her up for a moment. I'm looking around, and no pacifier. Where the heck did it go? Jay had mentioned the other day that she had flung it overboard, so I kneel down, and there it is, under the crib. What a twit. I lay her back down and walk away. For a while it's pretty quiet, and when I look in she's not sitting but she's not sleeping. Again, I figure, she'll fall asleep when she's ready. A few minutes later I hear this sound on the living room wall. I go in the room, and the kid is on her knees facing the wall with her hand up over the crib rail and she's scratching the wall. What a twit!!!

Seeing this I took her out of the crib and lowered the mattress to its lowest position - something I've been meaning to do. Once I put her back in she finally went to sleep. Ay.

I thought Claire might tell this story, but she hasn't so I'm going to. Kate and I spent all of Tuesday with her and the girls, and at one point in the afternoon I nursed Kate in the girls' bedroom. Molly was sleeping in Claire's room, and Claire and Anna were in the living room. I guess Claire explained breastfeeding to Anna, so Anna knew what was going on. The baby monitor was set up, and I guess they heard me talking to Kate. This is the conversation:

Anna: why is Aunt Megan talking? Claire: I think she's just talking to Kate. Anna: yeah, she's saying 'open up and eat!'

Oh, these girls are so funny!

I haven't really talked about our apartment at all. It's a 2BD/1 3/4 BA apartment on the 7th floor of a 17 floor tower. We're right on the corner of a busy intersection in the middle of a concrete jungle (although there is a nice park just a couple of blocks away). We're just over the river from downtown D.C., and the Pentagon is less than a mile away, right down the road - we can see the building from our balcony. Arlington Cemetery is right next to the Pentagon, and we drive by it everyday. If there wasn't a building in the way we'd have a great view of the Washington Monument. It's really neat to be surrounded by such symbolic and important landmarks, and I still ogle the Pentagon as I drive by (it is huge!). Our kitchen window overlooks the intersection, and I was chopping up some carrots for Kate when I started hearing tons of sirens. I look out the window, and I see fire trucks converging from all directions, racing down the street in the direction of the Pentagon. There were easily 15 trucks flying by our apartment over the course of 5 min. The Pentagon has its own police force, but I suppose they don't have a fire dept. Maybe they do, I'm just assuming that this massive response was going to the Pentagon, but maybe it was for some other location. After a few minutes of quiet, I started to hear sirens again. This time they were coming back toward my building. Did the trucks get dispatched somewhere else or did they just use their sirens to return to their firehouses? Looking down the road at the Pentagon I don't see any obvious signs of problems...It's very interesting to be in the capital of the most powerful country in the world, although I'm certain that if we had been living here on 9/11 I would have been absolutely terrified...

I went out last night with Claire and her friends and had a really good time. We had dinner at The Olive Garden and then got coffee at Starbucks. Everyone was really nice and they seem like a great group of friends. It was great to finally meet them because I've heard so much about them all! It was a fun evening, although it was another late one - I wasn't home until 11:15. Part of that was due to a problem on the roads. I must have been just a few minutes behind a big accident (3 cars, one flipped over on the side of the road), and we literally sat still for 20 min on 66. Blah! I turned off the car within 2 min or so once I saw that there was no inching forward going on, but I think some people sat there idling for all that time. People are idiots - polluting and wasting gas, all in anticipation that they'll have a split second jump on the movement that is clearly not impending?!? Just goofy imo. It was a nice night out, so it wasn't like A/C was necessary. Anyway, that delayed my getting home significantly.

Speaking of traffic - what the heck gives with DC traffic? My understanding is that the commute into the city in the morning is awful and then coming out of the city in the afternoon is a nightmare. Yesterday Kate and I went to Reston (partway between the apt and the restaurant) to meet Jay so that he could take over for the evening. The MS office is ~25 min from the apt without traffic, and that's heading out of the city, so I figured that with rush hour traffic (we left at 5) we'd need 45-60min. Nope, we were there in 28min! Sure, there were a lot of people on the roads, but we were moving just fine. Meanwhile, I can see that traffic going into the city is bad news. At the car swap I told Jay that, and suggested that he take his alternate route that he tried on his way to the office in the morning. I thought that route totally avoided highways, but I was wrong. It took him and Kate 1hr40min to get home!!! OMG! So, you DC people, what the heck??

I felt bad that they got stuck in such traffic, but luckily Kate slept for an hour of it. She was starving when they got back and the list of food he gave her was pretty funny. Then I guess she refused to go to bed, so she was up until 9:30. Ay! She got up this morning at 6:15 but was just hungry - after she nursed she was just staring off into space, so I put her back in the crib for almost an hour. Then she was up for an hour, and now she's back in bed. I'm planning for us to go to Claire's playgroup in Mclean this morning at 10, but we'll see what's going on with the munchkin. Lucky for us it's only 15min from our apt. I guess if she starts to lose it we'll just come home. Later on we need to hit Toys r Us for Anna's bday presents, so I need to figure out where the store is.

OK, I'm off to shower and get organized!

Sometimes you just need a simple day at home. No running around, no dodging traffic, just a day to get it together on the home front and chill out. Kate is loving it, apparently - she's been asleep for the last 2 1/2 hours. She was short a nap yesterday (only 2, normally 3 or 4), so I guess she's catching up. That's fine with me! I just made her a massive batch of sweet potatoes, I ate lunch, got some laundry going, etc. I imagine she'll be up in the next 30 min, but who knows; last Friday she slept for almost 4 hours during one of her naps. That was a marathon nap, for sure! Ah, I think I hear her stirring already...

So after the blanket yanking of last week, Jay caught her in the act of another funny stunt on Saturday night while I was out at the movies with Claire. She had been in bed for an hour or so, and then starting making little whiny noises. He went in to see what was going on...and then got the camera:

 He said he had such a time releasing her grip on the crib! Somehow she got out there and couldn't figure out how to let go. *lol* What a twit! My mom was commenting that it would be fun if we could get some video of her falling asleep with all of her antics. We may have to figure that out somehow. I know we will definitely be setting up her crib at the lowest mattress height when we move into the house. I think this one is at the middle position, and it's a little worrisome. She doesn't pull up to her feet yet, but she does kneel, and then her head is even with the rail. Maybe I'll see if I can figure out how to lower it.

Alright, it sounds like the munchkin is up. Today is our first attempt at having three meals of solids, so lunch is coming up!

We found a house! Yay! Saturday we went out with a realtor to check out some Falls Church listings. We found a house that we liked pretty well, a split level in a nice neighborhood. The current tenants were in the process of cleaning on their way out, and they had nothing but glowing comments about the house and the property manager. So we were happy to have had a successful few hours. Yesterday we saw 5 houses in Ashburn and decided to apply for one of them. It's really nice - waaaaayyy bigger than we need, but it will be fun to have lots of space. The house is just down the street from Claire, not quite walking distance but close nonetheless. It's a pretty new home, 4BD/4 1/2 BA! What in the world are we going to do with all of those bathrooms?!?!? Rope them off so that I don't have to clean them, that's what! Anyway, it's the kind of house I envision us buying next year, so it will be interesting to see what it's like to be there. There will be a little yardwork, but not much. Actually, probably the perfect amount - just enough for me to enjoy being out there but not so much that it sucks up all of our time.

So, I faxed in the application last night and dropped it in the mail this morning. They said it can take up to 5 business days to process, but I bet it'll be faster than that (I hope so, anyway). There shouldn't be any issue - they'll take cats, our credit is good, we have the income to qualify...hopefully we'll sign the lease by the end of the week. Unfortunately it's not available for move in until 8/1, so that means another 5 weeks or so in the apartment. UGH! I'm really wishing I had put more stuff into our temp housing boxes. If I had known that it was going to be an 8 week stint rather than a 4 week one, I definitely would have been less choosy. I could use some tupperware (I've borrowed some from Claire for now) and man, do I miss having a decent knife! I wish I had more books to read, and ugh! my knitting. Luckily Claire and I are taking the 3 kids up to Rochester to visit our parents next week, so that's one week out of the apartment anyway. The apartment itself is fine, but it's in the ugliest neighborhood. Oh well.

Now that the housing search is complete I feel like I'm a free woman! Next on the list: find a job! I also need to do things like find a pediatrician and look into daycare (I was holding off until I knew what town we'd be in), decide if we're going to change banks, bla bla bla. The job thing is definitely the priority. The thought of spending hours everyday on my computer looking, though...BLAH. The upside of the house hunt was that I got to leave the apt to follow up. I'm going to have to plan outings for Kate and I just to get out of that place. Ooh, there is all that shopping near us that I've been ignoring...

When I gave Kate her dream feed last night I saw the other blankets on the floor...what a twit! I guess I should leave her blanket in the crib, huh?

This morning when I went to get her up, there she was, sitting up in the crib! Ay! It's not going to be long before she's standing...She's figured out how to push backwards in order to get from her tummy to sitting, so she's doing it all the time. Even in the crib.

From the time Kate was really little she's been sleeping with the blanket Claire made her (you've seen it, it's the pink striped one). Until recently, that is. In Virginia it's pretty warm, and even with the A/C on, she was really hot when she slept with it. So we put the striped blanket on the dresser next to the crib and gave her a lighter one to sleep with. She loves the pink blanket (when she was little(r) just rubbing it against her face would convince her to settle down and sleep), but it's not like she has to have it. Well, the other day I went in for her dream feed, and the pink blanket had been pulled into the crib. It had been on a pile, kind of messily off to the side. I folded it up neater and put it back on the dresser, underneath another blanket. Jay and I had a good laugh, and later we commented that I should have taken a picture of the blanket pulled in to the crib. Tonight I went in after she'd been in bed for a bit to see if she was asleep yet, and I witnessed the grabbing of the blanket. There she was, half sitting up, pulling with all of her might. Absolutely hysterical. I have no idea how she's getting to the blanket. Clearly she must be reaching through the crib rails, over the bumper and up to the dresser. Tonight I took a picture (after she'd fallen asleep).

Kate's food intake at her meals has skyrocketed. I don't know if her new-found mobility has increased her appetite or she just really likes food , but man oh man, her meals are big now. Last night for dinner she ate three sweet potato cubes with tofu, 1/3 cup of rice with bananas, and a small jar (2.5oz) of peas. She just had an enormous breakfast: a container of YoBaby peach yogurt (4 oz), 1/3 c. oatmeal with bananas, and 2 pear cubes with tofu. Holy cow! She's so cute when she eats; sometimes she's really serious about chowing down and then at times she'll take a break to play with her spoon. When she's ready, she chows down again. I hope I'm not overfeeding her, but it seems like she wants the food (peas weren't on the menu last night until all her food was gone and she still clearly wanted more), and she doesn't always completely finish everything up (this morning there was ~1 tsp of oatmeal left and a couple of spoonfuls of pears). Eventually she stops opening her mouth for more, and that's when I call it quits. That seems like the right tact to me...

I just read this column about 'green parenting' but the vast majority of the info applies to anyone - parents or not. It has some very prudent and simple suggestions for helping out the environment. I'm happy to say that we do a lot of what they suggest already, although there's always room for improvement!

What a day I had yesterday! We returned the rental car to the Avis in Herndon (~45 min from our apt), then I dropped Jay off at the Vienna Metro station so that he could go to work in D.C. It was ~11:20 by the time that was done (we had to wait for Kate to get up from a nap before we could leave for Avis). My plan for the day was to cruise around Fairfax and check out some listings then bring Kate to Ashburn to hang out with Claire while I checked out the Ashburn listings. I didn't realize how far apart some of the Fairfax places were, and there were 11 to look at, so Kate and I drove and drove and drove...At 2:30 I called Claire to tell her we were on our way over - that was 3 straight hours of house looking, and almost 5 hours in the car! Augh! Kate was getting pretty fed up, although she really did a great job. She took two naps, and around 12:30 we parked and I fed her some yogurt and changed her diaper. Other than that, we plowed through. We went to Claire's and I just took a break for a bit. Around 4:00 I headed out, leaving Kate behind. I drove around Ashburn and saw 6 places. There were 3 more on the list but I needed to get back to Claire's so that she could get her kids from daycare. Anyway, that's a lot of house hunting! I hung out with Claire's family for dinner and then Kate and I drove home ~7:00. It was a horrendous drive because we got caught in the middle of severe thunderstorms. You know that when a 55mph highway is moving at 30mph it's pretty bad. Kate was hanging in there (thankfully!) until the last 20 min. I guess she'd just had enough of the car for one day, and she just hollered and hollered...The rain had let up for a bit but then came back in earnest, so I pulled over for a few minutes. An upset Kate is better than a endangered Kate! The shoulders were full of people sitting still, and the people still moving were going <20mph. It was insane. Anyway, the normally 45min trip took 1hr10min, and Kate was SO mad at the end. When I got her out of the car I saw that she had been sitting on top of her maraca (it had been next to her, but she must have wiggled), so I think that was the main issue - Jay said one of her cheeks was really red when he changed her diaper. Anyway, we got home a little after 8. It was a long, long day.

So, after that detail, let's discuss the housing situation. I think we're going to move to Ashburn. This is an option that we had really never considered as feasible because of its distance from D.C., but we're starting to reconsider the importance of that issue.

• If I get a job downtown, there's no question that my commute from Ashburn would be horrendous. But we're not buying a place right now, and if that ends up being the situation, we can move next year (when we're planning to buy).
• Kate and I have seen Claire 3 times this week already, and I'm loving it. Once I have a job it's going to be harder to see her and the kids frequently - especially if we live 30-45min away. And for now I'd like to see Claire as much as I can, and it would be so much more pleasant if we lived close by. The drive back to our apt is getting really, really old.
• If I end up working closer to the city, it'll be harder to get to Kate during the day if an issue arises. But if Kate is in daycare in Ashburn, I can call Claire, and Jay has flexibility to get back home too.
• From Ashburn Jay's commute (a known factor) is only 20min, and his hours are flexible enough (since he's working with people on the west coast) to allow him to wait for traffic to die down.
• Ashburn is a really new suburb, a fact that has its pros and cons. Since it is far from the city the housing prices are much lower. For the same rent we can get a really, really nice house out there or a small, 60 year old house closer in.

So, I think that the argument for Ashburn is getting stronger and stronger. I found a gorgeous house (truly, gorgeous) that's about a mile from Claire...I don't know if we can do much better than that! I'm waiting to hear back from some people, and I guess I'll be making yet another trip to Ashburn soon to see some of these places.

Finding housing has become a chore of totally unhappy proportions. We have not been able to find anything in the right location that we're willing to rent, and now we're starting to wonder if we should move farther out toward Claire. The only concern - and it might be a big one - is that I don't know if I'll be commuting into DC for my as-yet-nonexistent-job...*sigh* It's all getting to be complicated and annoying. It's just frustrating because we're willing to spend good money on a place that is big enough and in decent condition. It seems like we should be able to find something! I actually went and looked at apartment townhomes today because, although we don't really have interest in apartments, they do have some advantages over renting a house. But those didn't turn out very well either. We'll see what happens - for now we'll keep looking, I guess.

We have some rental assistance set up for Saturday. A woman named Judith will be giving us a bit of a tour and a realtor will be with us to help us find some houses. We're hopeful that he'll have access to listings that we haven't found, and maybe we'll have more success with his help. It's getting a little stressful knowing that we have temp housing through 7/15 and we still don't have anything lined up. *trying not to think about it*

On a positive note, Kate has been so freaking cute lately! Between her scooting around and babbling...she's so funny. This is such a cute age! She was having a total ball today during lunch. I don't know what got into her, but she was so giggly and just all around goofy. Such a funny girl. Oh, and speaking of food, she definitely doesn't have a dairy allergy. She had a lot of cottage cheese for the last week without issues. (BTW, she hasn't been given the opportunity to feed herself cottage cheese again after the huge mess that you see in the photo album!) So, today we reintroduced yogurt - which she still loves - and we'll see if she gets that horrible diaper rash again. Obviously we're really hoping that she doesn't! *crossing fingers* She's quite the good eater (surprised? didn't think so!), and we're about to go to 3 meals a day which means my body is really going to be thrown out of whack. I haven't done it yet because I'm dreading it so...

Anyway, wish us luck on finding somewhere to live!! We're happy to be here, but it sure would be nice to have a place of our own...

Kate is definitely mobile now. Her range isn't very far, and she's not particularly graceful, but if she wants to cross the room she will. She's doing the yank-with-her-arms method of crawling with just a little help from her legs. Every so often she'll end up on her hands and knees, and then she can make major progress by lunging forward. She absolutely loves her tube of diaper ointment, and she'll do just about anything to get it, no matter how far away it is. I know, we shouldn't let her have it, but oh well. It's always closed, and she tends to chew on the end that doesn't open anyway. I was saying to Jay last night that I should construct a substitute toy that would have the same effect without actually containing any ointment. I don't have any ideas so far, though.

So, with Kate's new skill at moving the funniest things have been happening in her crib. We put her down and she ends up all over the place - facing the opposite direction, at the other end of the crib, wedged into a corner...it's hysterical. It's such a regular thing now that about 10 min after we put her down we go in to check on her to make sure she's not in some crazy or dangerous position. She's not a huge fan of waking up wedged into the corner, for example, so we'll move her back into the middle of the crib. She's also sleeping mostly on her stomach now, which I think is adorable. It is challenging, however, to pick her up from that position when I want to give her the dream feed (yes, we're still doing that). Anyway, Jay and I have a number of good laughs everyday at her crib antics. She's such a cute little squirt!

Jay is working from home today so that I could do a little house hunting. I got back about an hour ago after a very successful trip. (An aside - can I just reiterate how much I love craig's list??) It even worked out that Kate slept nearly the entire time I was gone, so Jay was actually able to do work. A good plan, all the way around.

Anyway, I think Falls Church is the place for us. It's within the bounds of the Metro system, a little closer to Claire, and absolutely adorable. It's quaint and comfortable with lots of mature trees and well tended houses. There's a cute little downtown strip and a great bike/running path that runs right through it. I found three houses within a couple of miles of each other that would all be great for us. We'll see one of them tonight, hopefully one of them tomorrow night, and I'm waiting to hear back from the third person. We're also going to see a house in Alexandria tonight, but I'm doubtful that I'll like it better there than in Falls Church. It turns out that Arlington (except for the area right near Falls Church) is pretty dumpy - tons and tons of yucky apartments. Not our cup of tea. Anyway, I was thrilled to find some cute houses because it happens too often that the neighborhood is cute but the worst house on the block is the rental.

It was fun to drive around the area a bit to get some semblance of a clue about where we live! I had forgotten how difficult it is to move to a place you don't know at all. Last night I was feeling totally overwhelmed with the house search. I had scoured craig's list and sent myself all of the ads that looked promising, but I still felt like I had no way of tackling the large pile. This morning I went down to our business center and printed them all out - sometimes you just need paper in front of you! I came back upstairs and sat down with the map to plan a course of attack. It's all feeling much better now. Even if none of these houses work out, at least I feel like I know where to look now. Ooh, I just loved that area. Coming back to our yucky apartment building in the middle of a business district felt awful - I can't wait to get out of here. (On that note, the Camry is being dropped off on Friday - hopefully the Sienna won't be far behind.)

Tomorrow Kate and I are going to spend the day with Claire and the kids. Jay is going to work in the Reston office to get a sense of it - he wasn't impressed with the D.C. office and thinks maybe the idea of squatting in Reston a couple of days a week just might work out. So many things to figure out...but maybe the housing question is on its way to being answered!

We're starting to feel like we belong here. We got back after a pretty uneventful drive on Sunday. We hit some pretty bad rain and some slow traffic, so it took almost 7 hours to get home, but oh well. Kate was a sleeping champ - she took a 4 hour nap for the end of the trip! That was great because we didn't have to stop at all. She was up late the night before at Pat's party, so I guess the kiddo was tired.

Claire stopped by Sunday night, and it was fun to just hang out. Yesterday Jay worked from home, I ran a couple of errands, and then we all went over to Claire's. The girls are so cute! Anna was excited to see us, so that was fun. Molly was a little scared of us at first, but I think by the time she left she was ok. Kate and I are going to spend the day there on Thursday. I love that we can just hang out so easily! It takes about 45 min to get to Claire's place from our apartment (on the toll road; 60min on a non-toll route), so that's not great but it's not horrible either. It would be nice if it could be closer to 30 min. When we're looking for places to live I think I'm going to try to get to the other side of Arlington to cut off some of that trip.

Arlington is SO not what I expected. I think that I had a kind of cute, hip suburb in my head. It's way more urban than that - it really almost feels like being in downtown Seattle at times. Seattle is a small city, but still I'm surprised at Arlington's feel. On the way back from Claire's last night we drove around a bunch and found just about every store a girl could possibly want. I have this urge to go shopping now but I just don't have much reason to yet...soon, though...Anyway, I need to get on the housing ball. We're looking to rent a house until the spring, and for now we're going to try to stick with Arlington. Jay's office is on the far side of D.C., so his commute even from this really close town is pretty substantial. I guess one way to shorten it would be to live in Maryland, but that's even farther from Claire. I need to look around...

OK, I'm not feeling very verbose but wanted to write something. Bye!