Movin' On Up

I get the keys to a new apartment in 4 days. Yes, I decided to move, and found an apartment quickly. Almost all the units on Post are deployed. A lot of the families went 'home' while one parent was to be gone for a year. The apartment complexes are scrambling to fill empty apartments. Which makes the rent increase here even more of a puzzle. At any rate, a really, really nice apartment complex is giving $200/mo discounts for 8 months (which coincides with the returning soldiers, funny that), so I am moving into a huge, 2 bedroom 2 bath with a gas log fireplace apartment. Between what things are included in that rent that aren't here, and the difference in utilities between a middle floor apartment and a poorly insulated trailer, the cost difference is small. Why the larger apartment. Well... because I can? I'll have room to pull everything out and sort and reorganize and get rid of and make decisions on what I want to do. And a deadline to do it in. I won't be able to afford the apartment when the rent goes back up.

A fact of this rental life is that moving house (a UK term I like that sums up the ordeal nicely) while renting happens much more easily than when owning. I live 10 months here, 8 months there, move again. Not a big deal, and a smaller deal as I keep less and less stuff. Packing has started, but most of my stuff was never unpacked. It lives in the large 45 gal wheeled plastic storage containers meant to pack away Christmas decorations and trees and such. I have 5 out here with me, and 4 are still packed. I'll pull the one empty one out of my small storage building in my current yard, and the loose backpacking equipment will go there. That will mostly pack up one of the 2 small bedrooms. I may go see if WalMart has more of them now that it's that time of year again. Probably not on sale now like they were in January of last year. 2 more of them and all of my loose stuff would be nicely contained. Ah, well, I may need to go find some boxes.

I passed my Security+ test. I am now fully legal in my job. A lot of stress is off from that now. There is uncertainty about the larger contractor jobs at the hangar. Their contract is iffy right now. Our contract comes up for renewal next year. I'm thinking that 8 months from now I'll know a bit more about my longer term plans and options. Having the Security+ can only help when I go out to find another job. Getting my finances settled down a bit and then hopefully selling the house in that same time frame will set me up to be making some decisions about where I want to be. In the mean time, I just need to keep simplifying my life, getting more solid professionally and on paper, and also enjoy my time in this apartment and in the Pacific North West.