We signed the lease for our new apartment! We will move back to the Courthouse neighborhood in Arlington, Virgina, just across the river from Washington, DC. It's the same area where we lived before going to North Carolina, and in fact we are just across the street from our previous apartment building, Courthouse Plaza.

We knew we wanted to rent a place in Courthouse or perhaps Clarendon, and we had selected several apartment buildings to visit, but we ultimately found the Wilson by just walking around the metro in Court House. They showed us two apartments, and we already liked the first one, but the second one was even better and has a great view.

It took a few days to get all the paperwork worked out, but we will move into the new apartment in a few weeks.

Yesterday we went looking for a new apartment. The current place we stay in nice, but it is only temporary, so we were on the road yesterday.

In the morning we drove around with a real-estate broker who showed us various condominiums for rent. We looked in DC and Arlington. The rest of the day we walked around through Arlington, mainly at the Courthouse and Clarendon metro stops on the Orange line. We're close to making a decision, we'll probably decide today.

I went to CVS just now to pick up some cereal for tomorrow morning.

Our apartment complex is on the crossing of M and 24th Street, and is appropriately called "2400M Apartments".

Yesterday afternoon we went for a walk in Newport, a neighborhood overlooking New York City. We had lunch and enjoyed the view. We saw the Freedom Tower, or '1 World Trade Center', which will be the tallest building in the United States when it is complete.

We left Secaucus at 6.00 pm or so, and arrived home a few hours later. A well-spent weekend.

I had a great first week at my new job. There is a lot to learn -- many systems, many acronyms, but I feel it's getting there. The people I have met are all very friendly and helpful; it seems like a great place to work. And by the way, I have a job opening for an engineer.

I took the metro to work, except on Thursday when it was raining a lot. Still have to figure out what I'll do going forward. The metro is nice, but by car is still faster and parking is cheap.