To Market to Market

So the Mrs. and I have an extra house in Charlotte that we're finally putting on the market. Over the last couple of months we've spent a lot of time interviewing realtors, painters, landscapers and handymen in order to get the house in decent shape and up for sale. It should be listed sometime this week.

It's bittersweet. We both love the home and our neighbors there. The house is smack in the middle of a Mayberry-ish neighborhood. Everyone knows everyone. People sit outside and talk to each other (or even better, bring beers over to drink on the porch). Halloween is absolutely sick there with most of the city bringing their kids to our neighborhood to do the trick-or-treating (if you don't have 10lbs of candy each Halloween, you will run out - the first year we were there we were out of candy in literally an hour). A great neighborhood with great people.

In fact, the only reason we still have the house, three years after we moved to Atlanta, was in the hope that we would have an opportunity to move back. Sadly, we came to a decision at the end of last year that it would be best to go ahead and sell the house. The economy is not coming back as soon as we had hoped (and from my perspective, doesn't actually seem to be coming back much at all), and our areas of legal specialization are hard to find in Charlotte now that the crash of the last couple of years has effectively destroyed the structured finance industry.

So rather than keeping the house and dealing with renters (which has been hit or miss), not to mention dealing with the burden of carrying the extra mortgage, we're going to sell the house. We'll probably take a decent loss since the last two years in Charlotte has seen mass layoffs at the two major employers in town, Bank of America and Wachovia (now owned by Wells Fargo). There are tons and tons of houses on the market, plus far too many foreclosures from people laid off that have just walked from their homes, which doesn't look good for a fast sale or breaking even close to even. But, frankly, that's okay. Sometimes it's better to take the hit in order to focus on the future.

Funny Interlude

As a former denizen of LA, I think this is hilarious.

Musical Interlude

Something Wicked This Way Comes?

Talking heads on the telly are all abuzz about how the public sector is making more than the private sector based on this recent USA Today article. Without even taking into account health and pension benefits, the article states that, on average, federal workers make about 10% a year more than private workers (comparing jobs that appear in both public and private sectors).

From my perspective, where joining the Foreign Service would mean a massive cut in family income (around 70%), I have a hard time crediting this article. But maybe that's because I'm looking to join the Foreign Service for reasons other than remuneration. I imagine most mid-career candidates for the FS agree that what motivates them is certainly not the money. And reading the comments to the article is a bit depressing with the anti-government screeds that seem to imply government employees aren't worth getting paid at all, and the pro-government commenters implying that their salaries should exist outside of normal economic parameters.

I keep thinking of my father, a career Air Force officer who went to work every day at 5am and came home every day after 6pm. He worked tirelessly, and when he retired he joined NASA to continue working for the government and the projects he believed in. And he really didn't get paid well. Shamefully, my first job straight out of law school paid me more than he made after 30 years in government employ. And he had tons of colleagues that went to the private sector and made millions (several who tried to recruit him and which he turned down). I like to think that most government employees have the same level of commitment as my father did. But sometimes I feel like there are two public sectors. There is the public sector filled with dedicated, patriotic and hard-working people. And then there is the DMV.

Anyhow, with this article and all the goings on in Congress, the current issues with the economy and the budget, I wonder if there might end up being paycuts in government, or worse, hiring freezes.

Not before my A-100, please!

Interviewed!

So last Tuesday I made my way to mid-town Atlanta to visit the regional offices of the DSS for my formal security interview. It took under an hour, and according to my investigator, I brought more paperwork than most (must be the old attorney genes). The interview went something like this:

Investigator: "So I see you have [INSERT EMBARRASSING PAST INDISCRETION HERE], do you have any documentation to indicate that [INSERT EMBARRASSING PAST INDISCRETION HERE] has been resolved?"

Me: BAM! Slapping a phone book worth of docs on the table, "You'll see I have my paperwork in order."

Investigator: "I see...okay, all done here."

And that was pretty much it. Lot's of repetitive questions, the correct answers of which are:

I don't recommend bringing the duck and rhino to the interview, though. And yes, I do have 2 kids under the age of 4 at home. How did you know?

Musical Interlude

I had my security interview earlier this week and I'll post a bit more about it later, as I am spending a lot of time this week arranging meetings with my investigator and various employers and co-workers. In the interim, this tune has been in my head a lot lately.

Is It Just Me

or does this video of "The Day My Job Mattered Most" seem like kind of a let down?

The real question I have is whether that's a State Department-issued bow tie.