A Blog Entry

It’s around 5:30am and I’m sitting on the carpet of our new, almost totally unfurnished apartment in Manassas. I’m writing this now because in a couple of hours or so, we’ll be heading over to Starbucks where I can get an overpriced cup of coffee and post using their WiFi, seeing how our Internet service (along with cable and phone) won’t be hooked up until next Friday.

When I get to Starbucks, I’ll be doing the Saturday Edition, so time is of the essence.

It’s been a rather nice, but challenging first six days down here in Virginia.

Last Sunday, my son Cory and I made the Massachusetts-to-Virginia commute (which took around nine hours) as we opted to avoid the toll roads. Paying eight dollars just to cross a bridge in New York City seemed a tad obscene, among other things. It was a hot, humid, and wet drive, and we were quite comforted that our jury-rigged Chrysler Grand Voyager (which lacks the creature comforts like air conditioning) actually survived the trip and got us here.

My first day at the Media Research Center on Monday was one of meeting my co-workers. Some of you may remember the old Outside The Wire days; probably the shortest talk radio host stint in broadcast history: 30 days. It was at that time where I established an informal relationship with the MRC and regularly interviewed some of their top writers nightly. So it was kinda cool that meeting them for the first time was actually a reunion of sorts.

I was also honored to know that some of the people there had been readers of B&R and had also seen some of our videos going back a few years.

As I’m waiting for the video editing software to be acquired and installed on my computer so I can actually do what they hired me for, it’s been a week of meetings, pitching show ideas, and the people there have been extremely receptive. Our upcoming productions (with that B&R “edge”) will be a lot of fun once we actually start making them.

The first four days were also living out of motels (which also meant the ever-uncomfortable bringing your kid to work). While I won’t give any names, all the rooms we staying in had their particular personalities, including that stench of mildew that probably comes with the tropical climate that can be Washington, D.C.

Our apartment hunt was equally challenging, trying to balance proximity to MRC and affordability, as I’m still paying half for an apartment in Massachusetts with Miss Kim. Also adding to the challenge was overcoming the damage to my credit, thanks to the Outside The Wire fiasco, which most of you know resulted in the loss of our home. It didn’t take long for the good folks at Experion to pile on.

While working, I tasked Cory to find us a place. As many of our preferred choices (close to work) were both pricey and a little funky, he expanded the search to the remote suburbs, where he found a brand new apartment complex in Manassas. We drove over 30 miles, filled out paperwork, left an employment letter, hefty deposit, fees, and a printout of a St. Augustine newspaper article on Rick Senninger’s arrest (complete with my angry quotes), and after a couple of days, were accepted and given the keys to our new pad. So that was a load off, knowing we actually had a place to live that was clean and in a safe, fairly quiet neighborhood.

I say fairly quiet because last night, we were a little paranoid Friday night.

It started off with my taking the Virginia Rail Express to work yesterday morning. I was rather proud of myself, getting more comfortable circumnavigating my surroundings, and at the end of the workday, getting on the train to come home. The only problem was that the trains leaving Alexandria alternate between those going to Fredericksburg and Manassas.

I didn’t know that and I thought I was hot shit, getting on an early train.

I began to wonder what I was thinking earlier on the way in as the route home was more water scenic than the trip that morning. As it turned out, the water we kept crossing was inlets over the Potomac and my screw-up was verified after the announcement of the upcoming last stop in Fredericksburg. The conductor was nice enough to give me a note so I could board the next train going back, Cory drove around 25 miles to Quantico and I met him there after an hour wait for a train running late.

Paranoia came easy after that, seeing how our minivan is still giving us her best. When we arrived back in Manassas, it smelled like she was burning up but there was no smoke coming from the engine. As we walked around, that burnt engine smell was everywhere.

It turns out there is a motor raceway less than a mile from our apartment, and we could faintly hear the revving of motors in the distance, but you can’t hear or smell it inside, so all is well.

So that’s my little blog entry account of our adjustment to Virginia. Miss Kim and I are slowing planning vacation trips to and from Massachusetts, and hopefully within the next year, when we’re sure things are job stable, she’ll hopefully come on down.

The upside is there’s a lot to do around here. Back in our small Massachusetts town, we were 12 miles from the closest Burger King and KFC, and 30 miles from the nearest mall. Here, Burger King and KFC/Taco Bell is less than a minute away, and the mall is around five minutes, across the street from the Starbucks where I’m posting this.

Also, I’m looking forward to taking the minivan to the shop for some tuning up, and another benefit of living in an urban area with choice: we found a Maaco that’s really close, so the minivan can get that long-awaited paint job.

My van is a ’94, which was one of the two years Chrysler decided to use water-based paint on their vehicles, you know, to save the environment.

You can spot those vehicles yards away, as a mere breeze or good rain can disperse valuable paint clips into the air, and/or down the windshield, thus contributing to the growing addition of that orange-brown, two-tone finish. I have contacted Chrysler in the past, inquiring if buyers of those cars had any recourse from their experiment gone horribly awry, and of course they made it our problem.

Again, another of my many thanks to environmentalists.

As a heads up, I’ll post the news editions today and tomorrow and get into normal mode Monday when I have Internet access at work. Aside from meetings, there’s not much else I can do until I can shoot and edit.

First Six Days Overall Grade: B