A few of you have asked me when I'll start blogging again, and my response has been, "As soon as I have something to blog about." And now, I do!
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For several months - okay, over a year - I've been checking in weekly (and sometimes daily) with the Air Force Personnel Center and USAJobs to see if there might be anything enticing out there. I had come to have very defined goals: small-medium size city, no harried, road rage-inducing traffic, temperate climate, beautiful scenery (preferably mountains and water), and lower cost of living than DC (that's the easy one). My brother Steve considered posting a map of the world with a pin for the location of each job I applied for. These included Texas, West Virginia, New Mexico, Ohio, Colorado, Hawaii, Tennessee, the UK, Japan, Germany, and the Azores. I know, only one of these meets all the criteria, but my primary goal was to leave AFDW, which I saw as imminently doomed to obsolescence.
* I was offered a position at Cannon AFB, in eastern New Mexico, in the middle of nothing and nowhere. It was tempting, in spite of its isolated location and lower grade, because the base had been pulled out of Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) death to take on a new mission. This meant I would have had the rare opportunity to build a new base. I told my boss that I had accepted it. Then all the drawbacks were pointed out to me, so I changed my response to a decline.
* In the first week of December, my dear friend and colleague, Jo Rupert, told me that she had seen an announcement for Supervisory Asset Management Flight Chief at Lajes Field. This is on Terceira Island, in the Azores, which is an autonomous region of Portugal in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, 2,400 miles from the east coast of North America and 930 miles west of Lisbon. Its 148 square miles has a population of only 56,000, a temperate climate, low cost of living, and very few roads. You see where I'm going with this, right? The position was to close the next day, so I updated my resume and self-nominated for the position post-haste. Meanwhile, I continued casting my job search net to see what I might pull in.
* On Friday, 7 January, I stayed at work later than I had planned, so I was there for the arrival of the e-mail that said, "Congratulations! You have been tentatively selected for the permanent position of GS-0301-13, Supervisory Asset Manager located in 65th Civil Engineer Squadron at Lajes Field Portugal."
* I stared at the e-mail and said, "Oh. My. Gosh." for about ten minutes. Visions of sugar plums couldn't top this. This is a dream job location that meets all my criteria, and then some. And I realized that it took the selecting officials only ONE MONTH from position closing to the notification e-mail, in spite of Christmas-New Year's holidays and the wheels of the Air Force personnel system, "which grind exceeding slow." This has got to be an all-time record for speed hiring. The deadline for accepting or declining was 11 January. I already knew I'd say not only "Yes," but "Hell, yes!" However, in the interest of giving this big decision due consideration, I kept it to myself over the weekend - and told only ten of my closest friends that I'd be moving to the Azores.
* Bright and early this morning, I sent a "Reply All" e-mail saying that I enthusiastically accept the offer. After my experience with the Cannon position, I decided to say nothing to anyone in the office until I receive the formal offer letter. Naturally, though, I told Jo, since I wouldn't have known about the opening without her. It was hard to keep from telling everyone today.
* So this will be my Moving-to-the-Azores blog, in which I chronicle the process of uprooting myself from Northern Virginia for two to five years; ending my very successful house-mate relationship with my brother, Steve; figuring out whether he'll stay in the house or move to an apartment; deciding what to take with me to my new life; shipping my car; arriving on the island; finding a house; the job itself (oh, yeah, that's why I'm going); and much, much more. Maybe I'll even talk about the job - what a concept!
* I welcome this new chapter in my life - 2011 will be a fascinating year!
