Some positive developments

Patricia and I have had some good news recently. After being laid off last April, Patricia started work three weeks ago at a new job, and it is in education again - she is teaching four-year olds in the Head Start program in Texarkana.

She was a middle school teacher up until last year, but quit because of the horrible working conditions at the local school district. Most of last year she worked as an office manager. Now she is back in a school, and she's enjoys the job very much. It's a bit of a commute, but worth it.

I've been commuting since the start of last year 46 miles each way to my current newspaper job, but that will be coming to an end. After some searching, and a few missteps, we closed on a house yesterday in the city where I work, Clarksville. So my commute will be ending while now Patricia has the commute.

It took some creativity to get the new house. It was a foreclosure and we had to bid in an auction - but we won, and got it at a great price. It has over 2300 square feet, four bedrooms and three baths. It was built in 1931.

Because of the auction date we didn't qualify for a conventional mortgage - we haven't been able to sell our current home, and we didn't 't have the income level to carry two mortgages at the time, which was before Patricia got her current job.

But a local bank gave us mortgage instead, and so everything worked out.

We are in the process of getting the utilities turned on and having inspections done (being purchased via an auction, it was an "as is" sale, although we were able to inspect the house ourselves beforehand.)