Got up this morning and we got me packed up and mostly ready to leave. Just before nine we all drove out to Dave’s Diner for breakfast. The girls were super picky, as always, and really didn’t eat anything. That is such a problem. Luciana normally will eat a little and Liesl often nothing. Today, though, it was chocolate chip pancakes and apparently Luciana is like me and can’t stand the taste or texture of chocolate in breads of that nature. So she would not eat either. That did not work out well. For the rest of us breakfast was very good.
After breakfast it was back to the house and at ten thirty I was on the road back home. The plan is that Dominica and the girls will come down on Thursday so that I can see them then.
The drive was pretty good. I actually did not hit any traffic until the lower Hudson Valley. Even there it was only so bad. Probably lost no more than half an hour sitting in effectively stopped traffic. I bailed at the Interstate 84 exit and drove out east to the Taconic Parkway and took that into Yorktown Heights to make things easy. On the way into Westchester there was an electronic sign up stating that the Hudson River Line was closed due to the horrible Metro North train derailment that happened this morning. That was my old commuting line and still my current route into Manhattan. It derailed and was on the news while we were at breakfast this morning. A few people died and many were injured. It was really fortunate that it was an almost empty train on a Sunday morning. Had it been tomorrow it would have been horrific.
I got to the house early afternoon and had the day to relax. And that was my plan today. No work, just take some time to take advantage of being at the house alone. I got Assassin’s Creed, which I had waited for a year to get in the Steam Black Friday Weed Sale, installed on the computer in the basement and put in a few hours of playing that today. In just this one day I managed to make it farther along in that game than I had managed to get when I had played it on the PS3 several years ago since it was one of, if not the first, game that I owned on the PS3.
And thus begins my week alone in New York. I have five days until I see the family again to spend in this completely empty house. After the three weeks alone in Connecticut this being alone motif is wearing itself pretty thin.
On the drive down I finished reading “A Concise History of the Middle East” which I started, I think, while in Connecticut during my stay alone. And I started reading Francis Mayes’ “A Year in the World.” After this I believe that I will have read all of her non-fiction writing except for her recent memoir which I am not sure is even out yet. But it will be some time before I finish reading this one.