My mom and I drove Violet's car across the country from Virginia to Oregon. It was a lot cheaper than the 1k-1.2k a mover wanted. It took us about 2.5 days. It was nearly 3k miles.

I don't have a lot of time to look, but with the use of hotpads.com, craigslist, and the local paper, along with several of the property management website's, I've had a few dozen listings. Of those, I drove by about a dozen of them, and of those, I did a walk through of about 6 of them. Tomorrow I'll start filling out applications as I wait for Violet to see the choices and provide feedback. Bottom line is for the house we need (3+bedroom, 1.5+ bath, fenced backpack, pets allowed, <= 1300), we won't be saving a lot of money compared to our current $1,300 rent, which sucks because I'll be taking a 20k-ish salary cut. This is due to many factors, the main one being that Eugene, OR has a much lower "cost of living" than Fairfax, VA. Supposedly. Most house that meet our spec are 1,000 - 1,300. I saw some pretty great houses too but they were well over 1,300, unfortunately.

The last few days we've driven over 200 miles and consumed 3/4 tank of gas. Now that house looking is done, its time to fill out some apps and discuss options with Violet.

I'm very happy that Carl's Jr. is here, and for lunch Friday I had their yummy Sante Fe chicken Sandwich. Its awesome.

I'm extremely grateful to our friends T & H for housing me and for pet sitting Gwen and our two cats for a few weeks. I'm also grateful to my step-dad's brother and his wife for housing my mom and helping with the search. I cannot express how helpful their help has been.

Mom and I fly back Tuesday. Then I'll have a few days to pack before ABF arrives with a trailer. I load it and then they haul it and then I unload. Much cheaper than an actual professional mover. I'm gonna need help loading though, but I haven't had a chance to resolve that issue yet
:(