Over the past few months as Jim has continued his job search, there have been two strong possibilities that would have involved a very long commute. One job was in Longmont, 60 miles each way, and the other in Westminster, about 45 miles each way. Both jobs were temporary contracts with the possibility of permanent hires. So there was no way that we’d move for such a short term, but we’d never continue the situation of living such a distance from Jim’s job. We’ve always taken into account the length of the commute when we’ve bought houses–admittedly only two so far, but still! So when we first moved to the Washington DC area we said that Jim’s commute was not going to be his second job. We knew that we could get a much bigger and somewhat cheaper house by buying something “outside the Beltway,” but we just didn’t want that. So we bought a small ranch house that in theory was 15 minutes from Jim’s job at the Old Executive Office Building, right next door to the White House. He did end up leaving that project and taking something just over the border into Maryland, so if we had bought something way outside of town in Virginia we would have had to move.