Thursday. Today is my seventh day of my new job. My thirteenth day in New Jersey, in total, since starting the interviewing process.
I had planned on being in nice and early this morning but that didn’t work out. I slept in more than I had wanted to because I was up too late last night. I wasn’t late to work or anything. Still far earlier than I was expected to be in. But I had wanted to be in about an hour before I actually was.
This morning I made my first serious attempt at taking the back roads to work from my hotel in South Bound Brook. Taking the back roads really helps to get you familiarized with the area. It was actually quite easy. I just drove north from the hotel into South Bound Brook and that took me right into Bonud Brook. From there I just needed to know to take Mountain Ave. and I just had to follow that all of the way until I knew where I was. It saved me a few minutes over taking the highway but not very much. I was hoping for a much more significant reduction in commute time.
I was running a little later than I had wanted so I skipped breakfast this morning. I skipped dinner last night. So by the time lunch was rolling around I was getting a little peckish. I actually had a busy morning and that made me happy.
For lunch I went down to the Thai House not too far from work, down in Warren, with a friend from the office. He has been saying that the food down there is really awesome and we decided yesterday that we were going to go down there for lunch today.
Lunch was really good and not too expensive. It is nice to get to know the area. As a vegetarian I need some variety or food gets to be pretty boring. It is nice working at a place that has food nearby and a bit of variety, it looks like.
Today went by pretty quickly. Now that I am starting to have more to do everyday at work time really seems to fly by. I forget how quickly the day can pass when you are busy. When I was working from home time really flew but that was to be expected. Oreo does a lot to make the day go by quickly. I miss playing with him throughout the day. We both really enjoyed that.
I stayed at work until after 6:00 tonight. This is the latest that I have worked yet. I am finally getting enough work to keep me busy. Yay!
I took the back roads back to the hotel. That went pretty smoothly. I am not sure that it is much faster or easier than the highway but, for the most part, the drive is more enjoyable. It is fairly scenic and it gives me a chance to see what the housing options are along the route. There aren’t very many housing options, though. Everything is far too expensive for us. We are really hoping for a low cost condo. Something small and reasonable that won’t break the bank.
I ordered a pizza as soon as I got into the hotel. I can’t believe how much Dominos I have been eating these past two weeks. I really need to switch my diet. At least their thin crust pizza is not all that unhealthy. It is the cheesy bread that really gets you.
I watched some television, worked on the laptop and ate my pizza. My brain was very out of commission tonight and I wasn’t able to be very productive. I eventually had to just give up on doing anything much and just relaxed. I did manage to place an order for a new computer monitor for Dominica to have in the living room. Now that I am never home she never uses the theatre because she doesn’t really like being in the basement alone – even with Oreo it isn’t enough. So she watches things in the living room all of the time. In reality we were using the Mac Mini in the living room for movies and television on DVD quite a bit when I was home so it is a pretty good investment either way. We have been using the old 17″ Mag Innovision LCD that I got Min for Christmas several years back – we each bought one for each other that matched that year. They were the first generation of LCDs that were affordable – $400! Imagine that. But I am really glad that we got them. They made using our computers a million times more enjoyable over the past several years. What a good investment. So the new one that I ordered is a 19″ Samsung refurbed unit. It is the largest monitor that will fit into the armoir in the living room so it takes up no additional space in the house but gives us quite a bit bigger of an image. The 17″ as a television is really small. The new monitor uses a DVI connector so we get to take advantage of the Mac’s digital output. It also has about twice the contrast ratio (800:1, if I remember correctly compared to 350 or 400:1 on the old ones) and that will make watching it a million times easier as well. So we are pretty excited about that. Not that I will have any chance to watch anything on it for a long time.
I did have to spend a bit of time on the phone dealing with a small project that Min and I have going on this weekend. This is one of those lingering “pre-New Jersey” projects that has yet to be completely wrapped up. It is going to cause this next week to be insanely busy for Min and I. I have to do a phone conference on Saturday morning and then will probably be working on Saturday morning as well. Then Min and I will probably work together on Sunday morning. Then she is going to be working a LOT on Monday and Tuesday. She will be doing the bulk of the project on her own. This is her first real tech gig. It is pretty basic and the timing is absolutely horrible and it is totally not worth either of us doing at all except that it is kind of a favour on my end and she really needs to get anything to put onto her resume so she can’t pass up any opportunities at this point. This project will be a major point in her favour for looking at work down here in New Jersey in the coming months. Every little bit really helps when you are at the beginning of your career.
I talked to Andy and Min again tonight before going to bed. I was really exhausted by the time I finally got to bed. It was around 11:00. I decided that I needed to rest and that I wouldn’t even set an alarm for tomorrow.