September 23, 2006: Moving to Newark

Today is the big day. We are moving to Newark. It has been a long time since we were so excited about moving. Maybe never this much. The apartment in North Brunswick was so icky and the new place is so nice that the contrast might be the most extreme ever for us.

I was up a bit before Dominica this morning but because we had loaded the big two person stuff into the truck last night I was able to get busy loading the bins and other items into the truck and had a lot of the apartment done before she even got up. We were almost done loading before we would even have gotten the truck home had we picked it up this morning because the rental place only opened at nine in the morning. We were done loading by ten. We figure we might have been able to have gotten the truck home by a quarter to ten at the latest.

We left to head to Newark at a little before eleven. Dominica drove Oreo in the fully loaded PR5 ahead of me in the hopes of warning me to any traffic issues and hopefully to be able to coordinate where to put the truck once we arrived in Newark. Unfortunately she didn’t manage to stay much in front of me and was only three blocks or so in front of me as we drove through the city. I hate driving trucks and doing it in the city is really tough.

We got to the apartment and Dominica parked out front by the valets and I parked in the back by the service entrance. The port staff came out and two porters and the doorman worked like crazy helping us move. It took only fourty five minutes to move us from the truck to having everything into the apartment on the sixteenth floor! I can’t believe how easy that was and how helpful everyone was. Our first impression of really living here is that this is going to be awesome. It isn’t just a great apartment but the people involved are great too and everyone really seems to love working here and being a part of this place.

It was almost one in the afternoon when we got everything moved in and then we quickly took the truck out west to the Penske rental place in Newark to drop it off. We wanted to get that done as quickly as possible since there was no good place to put the truck at the new apartment. I got directions from an employee that I had blocked in and who was stuck waiting in his car for me to come out. He was really great and actually drove in front of me and waved me in the right direction so that I easily made it to the rental place. That was a huge help. I am not sure how I would have found it otherwise.

The people at the Penske drop off were really nice and polite. I was worried that Dominica was going to be lost because she left after me and the trip was very confusing and they even let me make a long distance call on their phone (because I didn’t have my cell on me because I hadn’t been planning on moving the truck when I did but the guy was blocked in). But Min arrived just minutes later. I was very proud that she was able to navigate the city on her own so well.

We went back to the apartment and the evening was spent getting the apartment together. Boy is there a lot to do. CableVision was schedule in the window of two until four. We made it back from dropping off the truck before they came out so we didn’t have to worry about missing them. That worked out perfectly.

We did unpacking and tried to get stuff together as much as possible while we were waiting for Cablevision. The tech came by around half past three and worked for about two hours and realized that the wiring in the building was so complex and he had so little information about the way that it was set up that he needed someone who had worked in the building before to come help him. So he left to get dinner while he waited for someone to come to help him. We got another hour to work on getting the apartment together.

Dominica went crazy doing laundry to get everything caught up. She is really happy to have a washer and dryer in the apartment now. We really missed that since having left Geneseo. Doing laundry in North Brunswick has been brutal.

We needed a few basic supplies so I ran out to the corner store to get some chips and soda, a shower curtain, etc. Dominica couldn’t believe that I was able to go out to the store and back in just five minutes. Living in downtown is so incredibly handy. I have only ever lived in the city proper in Flint and Pittsburgh. In Flint I lived in a slum so nothing was handy except the scary corner store. And in Pittsburgh we lived so far from the city center in a heavily residental area that the closest real things to us were a half hour walk away and even there there wasn’t all that much. So this convenience is really something for me and Dominica has never seen anything like it. Not only is it convenient but everything is really inexpensive too.

We discovered that the dryer was not working properly. We called the concierge and they had maintenance looking at it in minutes. They spent probably twenty minutes determining that the dryer was actually defective (they have three hundred new ones in the building, some will be bad) and they quickly swapped it out for a brand new one. At six o’clock on a Saturday evening we had a new dryer installed in our apartment. Now how is that for service? Let me tell you, we are ever so impressed with this place. Everyone has been giving one hundred and twenty percent to make this whole experience just awesome.

Cablevision came back and got us up and running around eight tonight. I was really impressed that they stuck with it and got us running this evening. We are very relieved to have Internet access again. I plugged in my laptop and checked email but didn’t bother to set up the real computers tonight. I need something to keep me busy tomorrow.

We ordered take out from a local pizza and sub shop. The food was quick and was pretty tasty. Dominica and I split a cheese sub and each got an order of French Fries with cheese on them. It was all very good.

We did a little more organizing and unpacking and then headed off to bed. Tomorrow we have to go back down to North Brunswick to wrap everything up, clean the place and turn in the keys.

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