October 26, 2008: The Packing Continues

26 Days to Baby Day! (36 Weeks and Two Days Pregnant)

5 Work Days Left for Dominica.

Dominica and I got up around eight thirty this morning.  I did some cleaning while she starting off with some packing.  Today is our big packing day to get things ready for the new house.  It is our last full day in the house together before the movers come.  I am working from home tomorrow which gives us a little bit of buffer to get things panic-packed before the last minute, but it would be much better to get things packed today.  Dominica also baked brownies first thing this morning.  We have to use up as much food in the house as possible before the move.

Ramona came over from Flushing, in Queens, a little after nine thirty.  She brought bagels with lox and cream cheese from Manhattan.  One of the things that is weird, I think, to people not really familiar with the New York Metro area is that Manhattan really is in the middle of everything and going between any two locations around the metro area almost always involves stopping through Manhattan.

Most large cities do not use their downtown area for the outskirts people to travel from one place to another but because of the multi-island nature of New York it is relatively necessary.  Adjacent areas don’t always do this (Brooklyn and Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, Staten Island and New Jersey, New Jersey and Rockland, Rockland and Westchester, Westchester and Connecticut, etc.), but sometimes they still do and any two areas not directly adjacent will almost certainly travel through Manhattan to get from one to the other.

Ramona helped Dominica in the kitchen to do quite a lot of packing.  The kitchen is the biggest obstacle at this point which is depressing considering how little cooking we managed to do in the two years that we have lived in Newark and the six months in North Brunswick before this.  There is just so much stuff to pack in the kitchen.  Box after box of stuff.  Much of it completely unused since we moved to New Jersey.  We even discovered a blender hiding in the back of a cupboard that we had no idea was in New Jersey with us.  We thought that it was packed away at dad’s house somewhere.

Ramona headed out around two and Dominica and I continued to pack until four when we loaded the Mazda and set out for Peekskill.  We made a really good load this time with the television and two of my big monitors from my home office.  Those were all items that we were concerned about leaving until the movers were here and now they are just done and out of the way so we don’t need to worry about them any further.

We ran into heavy traffic near to the Tap so we rerouted to the west and took the Thruway north and then wandered through Rockland County near Ramapo and Pomoma which was interesting as we got to see some nearby communities of which we have heard but never seen.  It ended up taking at least an extra half of an hour it not more to get to the new house.

Katie was meeting us at the new house but got stuck in traffic at Woodbury Commons too and was running much later than expected.  It was dark by the time that any of us got to the house.  Once Katie arrived we gave her the tour of the unfurnished house as it is.  She brought us house warming presents from Williams-Sonoma.  She got Dominica a pink cook’s apron because Dominica loves pink.  She also got us a very cool set of cupcake pans that, when you separate the cupcakes and put them together forms a big butterfly cake but can then be pulled apart as seperate cupcakes.  Very cool for kids (or adults.)  It is a little like a precut cake that just turns into cupcakes like magic.

For dinner the three of us went exploring.  Dominica and I had thought that we had seen a nice looking diner out on Crompond Road towards Yorktown Heights so we just drove out that way and did some exploring.  We came upon the New City Diner on Crompond and gave it a try.

The New City Diner has an amazingly massive menu.  It took us a really long time just to make it through the menu let alone decide on anything to eat.  It was crazy.  Dominica and I are going to have a lot of fun going there and getting tons of unusual food.  It is awesome that we are going to have so much variety so near to the house.  The diner is very close, just a few minutes away, so it will be very handy.  This will be one of our regular destinations, I am sure.

We did not hang out long after dinner.  It is a Sunday night and we all have to work tomorrow and our drive home (“home” meaning back to Newark) is not exactly short.  It takes at least an hour without any traffic.  Oreo has to go to the vet tomorrow as well for a checkup making Dominica’s day a bit longer than usual.

I am working from home tomorrow.  Monday is the only chance that I have to work from home all week.  Tuesday I am off.  I will be on Wall Street the rest of the week.

We got home at ten thirty.  I had to do some work for the office but not too much.  I thought that there was going to be quite a bit but a resource that I need from the office is not available this weekend so there was nothing more that I could do.

I gave Oreo his steroidal bath (a regular bath with steroidal topical shampoo anti-itch treatment.)  That takes about twenty minutes.

I also had to do some in-class discussions for my class at RIT.  This week everyone left everything until the very last minute so the only way to participate in any discussions was to do it late tonight.  That is very annoying since I took the time to do all of my class work on Thursday and even did next week’s assignment on Friday so I’ve been waiting for days for everyone else to get involved and no one starts this weeks work until the eleveth hour while I am busy trying to move.    The online classes only work when the class is motivated and most people don’t wait until the last day to start getting involved for the week.  Only one more discussion week left and the final.  No more regular homework for me at least.  Almost done, although the final is a lot of work yet.

Since I was up and working on everything else I took the time to update SGL.  Posts to SGL will be pretty lean this week, I think, as I will be stuck without much of a computer for a lot of the week.  I will do my best.  I am heading to bed tonight at a quarter until one in the morning.