April 9, 2006: Working in Rochester

Today is the only day that Dominica and I get together. And it isn’t even a full day. This schedule really sucks. We barely get to see each other at all.

Eric called first thing this morning to let us know that he plans for the day had fallen through and that he would be available to help out with the T-Mobile project that we are working on today. Dominica and I had decided that doing more locations today made more sense than me doing one yesterday and then doing one today. Dominica would appreciate having me there for more stores and I would appreciate not having to do one all by myself since that is a very lonely job and lonely is something I have plenty of these days.

Min and I were up and moving pretty early. Dominica went to Walmart and got some clipboards and supplies that we needed for the day. She also stopped at Burger King and picked us all up some breakfast. Eric came over to the house around 10:30.

It was almost 11:30 when we got up to Marketplace to get started on our first location. The work ended up going about as planned. It was definitely handy having three of us there. We got done plenty early and were able to move right on to the second store up at Greece-Ridge Mall. We were really happy to be able to get those two stores taken care of today. Sundays are very slow days and we were able to move right along. The second store went much faster as we now knew what we were doing. The work is straightforward and pretty simple.

We ended up running early enough that we were able to stop at Abbot’s in the mall and get some frozen custard before heading out to go to the Eastview Mall location. Three locations in our first day! This is going well. We arrived at Eastview and discovered that that store is being moved in a week. So we called and found out that we take that store off of our list. Maybe we will be coming back to it once the new store is in place.

Dominica has been really upset that I don’t have enough pairs of pants (I think that I have plenty.) And so she took the opportunity to go to the S&K in the mall and do some trouser shopping for me. We ended up buying three new pairs of trousers. Two of those have to be hemmed and cuffed and Dominica is going to have to stop back at the mall sometime later in the week to pick them up for me.

We got back to Geneseo and Amanda and Julia came over and met Dominica, Eric and I at the Omega Grill. I have to get at least ONE meal a week at the Omega or I will waste away (or something like that.) We couldn’t hang out long because Dominica and I have a lot to do yet tonight. We decided that I really needed to not wait until morning to drive down to New Jersey so I am going to leave tonight. I really wanted to spend another night at home but I really do not want to have to get up at 3:00 in the morning just to rush to get to work by 9:00.

So Dominica and I came back to the house and got me packed up and ready to go. It ended up being after 8:30 before I actually got to leave. That is really late and I am going to be really tired tomorrow but I am feeling much better about the project that we have been working on. This past week I have been worried that there was going to be so much work to do and that we would not have a chance to get it done. It really helped that Eric was able to work with us today. And he is doing one more location this week which helps a lot. Andy called while we were at dinner and decided that he was going to help Dominica tomorrow when she does the Buffalo locations. That means that she has a decent shot at completely all of the Buffalo locations tomorrow. She will be very happy about that.

The drive was long and boring and my tummy was hurting for about half of the drive. I remembered to have my Samsung MP3 player full of podcasts. I wasn’t in a tech seminar mood so I spent most of the drive listening to back episodes of “The Daily Breakfast with Father Roderick”. That is a really great podcast. You should all check it out.

It was close to 3:00 in the morning by the time I rolled into South Bound Brook, New Jersey. I was totally exhausted and really looking forward to getting some sleep. I have managed to get the same hotel room for all three weeks that I have been here. I am pretty sure that there has been no one in the room over the weekends. It is kind of neat having a private room. At this point I would be really confused if I was to be put into a different room. I would keep forgetting and go back to the room that I have been in.

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