We're Moving.

To North Carolina.

So...here's the story...

As you all know (or should know by now if you've been reading me for any length of time) I founded and serve as Program Director of a Missing Persons Organization.

About 6 or 8 months after I founded the org, I got a call from a woman who had been in the industry for 25 years and wanted to open her own branch of our org. She was certainly qualified, she was sweet as pie, and we hit it off pretty much right off the bat. Her name is Jackie.

Jackie started the North Carolina Branch of the org in 2003. Within the first six months she made national headlines with two major cases that she worked. One of the missing persons that she represented was her godson whom was abducted from the home that he lived in with his Aunt and Uncle.

Anywho, Jackie has continued to make leaps and bounds throughout the industry, and is getting swamped with work. To top it off, she's at retirement age and would like to be able to do just that: retire.

Jas and I really have nothing here holding us back. We have talked about this at great lengths. Michigan is not the place you want to be if you have spent any respectable amount of time at a job only to get laid off with the rest of the pack (like Jas did last year). We are, I believe, if not the highest, amongst the highest in unemployment statistics in the country. Jobs are not out there. GM has laid off most of it's employees. Same thing with all the other shops. Jas worked for Spartan Motors for 3 years only to be tossed to the side with 50 other employees on the same day. He went from making great money to having to find a job, and then eating some big fat crow and taking a job for right around 8 bucks less than what he was making at Spartan.

To top it all off, upon doing some research on North Carolina...the cost of living is quite a bit less than what it is here. We pay 700/month for rent. This house isn't great. Hell, I wouldn't even call it nice. It's a house. An old house, with a dipshit for a landlord. It's an old victorian home that's split into two homes (commonly referred to as a Duplex). For the 700/month we pay here, we could live in a brand spankin new 4 bedroom, 2 bath, fully fenced in back yard, no snow, lots of sunshine, beautiful home in North Carolina.

Jobs...I looked at the newspaper in the city where we're headed to? Yeah, 9 pages of ads, with 50 ads on each page. And they're not bullshit jobs either. They are real jobs, with real paychecks that come attached to them should you get the said job.

I'm getting excited. And, if it sucks...we can always come home.

I've never lived out of state before. But, we're going to a town where we know people, where my org is already successful, where we already have a staff of 350 volunteers that are regular and reliable...

What more could we ask for?

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