Tuesday

Something that has been on our minds lately is: where we are gong to live in six months? Sunshine's employer manages to find housing for most of its employees abroad, but when the same employees are shipped back to the US for valuable and mandatory between-posts training, we are typically left to look after ourselves. So thousands of Sunshine's coworkers find themselves intermittently consulting the want ads looking for strategically timed and placed DC housing, priced within the parameters of the per diem. Since long before I had the chance to ask this myself, employees have posed the question "why doesn't the department just have housing in DC, too?" People usually ask that when they are suffering the pain of trying to find a sublet while a hemisphere away. This situation does not afford any: tapping the walls, testing the water pressure, checking out the view, or sniffing the neighborhood. Imagine that. Sunshine and I are facing the fact that we will have to rent a place for eleven month without the slightest idea what the place is really like, or what kind of area lies around it. Luckily, I learned today that Sunshine's forward-thinking employers have come up with a plan: why don't they just have housing in DC, too? They are going to try to keep local temporary-stay apartments, glorified hotel rooms, fully furnished for us when we are posted there. I wish I'd thought of that. Naturally, this program is in its trial, so we might not get on the waiting list (in which case we will line up for some dive from Craig’s List). But it is also possible, given the length of our stay and when we will be arriving, that we will be able to live in one of these places. [Cavin]