Sheep Guarding Llama

43 Days to Baby Day! (33 Weeks and Six Days Pregnant)

15 Work Days Left for Dominica; House closing scheduled in 12 days.

Today’s emergency project was to find a moving company to move us from Newark to Peekskill.  We don’t have that much stuff but the effort of packing, the risk, the time and the cost of a truck all come together and make it generally not worth the effort.  We even considered the possibility of giving away everything that we own in Newark and just buying new in Peekskill as the cost of the movers should only be barely less than the value of all of the stuff.

We tried a few places in Peekskill that were recommended to us.  One of them never answered the phone and the other was only able to give us the names of a few places in New Jersey or Staten Island.  While Dominica was working on Peekskill I tried to find a few places down here in New Jersey and only found places that either never picked up the phone or went to voicemail.  It was until a bit later than using one of the recommended places we managed to get someone to answer.

We got a few rough estimates today for the move and we have an apartment inspection scheduled for Tuesday morning at seven in the morning to have a real, in apartment, estimate done so that we will have a final price for the move.  They know that we are attempting to schedule for sometime during the window of Monday through Wednesday of the last week of October.  So hopefully that will not be a problem.

Dominica did most of the packing for our trip last night.  We are pretty much ready to go.  Only so much is needed.  Other than the wedding tomorrow evening it is a pretty casual weekend.  I do have to work all day tomorrow and some on Saturday.

I did some dishes and cleaning today to get us ready for the trip.  Don’t want to leave dirty items around and then disappear for several days.  That always turns out badly.  I also did the last minute frantic Handbrake work in an attempt to get as much ready to get moved back to dad’s house as possible that will be going into long term storage.  It isn’t a lot but each item that does not have to get packed and shipped by the movers is that much less expensive and that much less likely to be lost or damaged.

For the first time in months I was able to have lunch with Susan today.  We met at noon at Food for Life.  FFL has a new menu now with only a fraction of the selection that they used to have.  Lots of the breakfast items that I used to love there are now gone including #15 “The Round”, the Breakfast Club and the Seven Mile High.  Very, very sad.  At least they did not discontinue the items until we were in the process of moving out of Newark.

Susan is doing well and loving her new job.  It only seems like a new job to me because it has been so long since we have seen her.  She has been there for quite some time now.  She has been in Newark for almost two years now.

Work was very busy today and I barely had a moment to myself.  I was going crazy with the phone just ringing and ringing.  At one point I had to turn off my work instant messenger because so many people were trying to reach me that I couldn’t respond to anyone anymore.

The market really took a beating today.  679 point drop on the Dow.  Absolutely crazy.    We are at the lowest point of the market in over five years, since 2002.  No end in sight.  For some reason, this particular market crash seems to be getting tons more media coverage than previous crashes.  I wonder how much of the market hysteria is being driven by the simple fact that too many people are overly aware of the situation.  Good investors know to hold tight while the masses who only pay any attention when things get crazy start to freak out and do the absolute wrong thing at the wrong time.

It is so awful that we are in the middle of buying a house right now.  The timing is so perfect to be investing and we don’t have a spare penny to our names 🙁  The only consolation is that our 401K plans are actively investing for us but that isn’t the same.  This is probably the best opportunity to really heavily invest that I will ever see in my lifetime (both because of the huge drop and because as I get older the investments are worth less because I have less time for them to do anything) and there is no way for me to take any advantage of it.  This house will end up costing us significantly in the long run, I’m sure, just because it tied up resources at such an important time.

Dominica got home from work and started getting everything packed up so that we could leave while I wrapped up at the office and finished SGL for the day.  Then she ordered the wedding present for Joe and Nicole and we were ready to go.

We were doing last minute packing at twenty till seven and I am posting for the evening and shutting down my workstation.  Time to get in the car and get driving.  It will probably be about seven thirty when we can actually get the car brought around and get ourselves into it.  I expect that we will roll into dad’s driveway around two thirty or so – which is awful as I have to be up to work at six thirty in the morning 🙁  I am going to be exceptionally exhausted tomorrow.  It is going to be a long day for me.

44 Days to Baby Day! (33 Weeks and Five Days Pregnant)

16 Work Days Left for Dominica; House closing in no more than 17 days.

Found out this morning that the attorney is having a problem getting the certificate of occupancy necessary for the bank to free up the funds for the house and we are almost for sure pushed off until the week of the 20th for the closing on the house.  This puts us into a risky position as the house funding disappears on October 24th and we have no way to continue past that point.

I was pretty tired when the alarm went off at five thirty this morning.  Ugh.  I got up and read a chapter in the “No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology 2007 Edition” and got ready for work.

We were running slightly ahead of our usual schedule this morning and I actually did not need to rush to get onto the NJTransit Dover line out to Summit.  Once I got to Summit, though, the real waiting began as the 8:05 shuttle that I usual take, which gets me to the office around 8:20, didn’t show up and we didn’t learn that it didn’t show up until the 8:25 shuttle arrived and everyone was wondering where the usual driver was.  So that cost me a bit of the morning.

The weather is nice and crisp today.  A nice autumn day.

Late this afternoon we got confirmation that the closing has been scheduled on the house on October 22nd.  Much later than we had been hoping (we were really anxious to be underway moving the weekend before that,) but there is nothing that can be done.  The upside to not closing until so late is that each day that we do not overlap the house with the apartment in Newark is another day of not paying double rent and mortgage and additionally it lowers the tax escrow by another day.  It isn’t horrible, just not ideal with Dominica being pregnant.  Had she not been pregnant we would probably have preferred this date.

I am working this coming Monday, Columbus Day, and will be saving my holiday until the closing so that I don’t have to take off work for it.  I might take two half-days to give us more time for the actual moving portion.  We will see.  The plan is that I am going to drop Dominica off at the clinic in Peekskill and then I will run to the closing in Katonah and then back to Peekskill to pick her up and to deliver a car-load of stuff to the new house that afternoon.  I suspect that we will be pretty anxious to get stuff into it and will likely make another run back to Newark and back to Peekskill yet that evening as we will be pretty excited to have the house.

We are swapping the BMW for the Mazda PR5 this weekend while we are at dad’s.  The timing is pretty much perfect.  We will have the spacious Mazda for all of the moving.  Each car load taken in the Mazda is roughly double the capacity of the BMW.

Tomorrow, I am working from home and then we are driving up to dad’s house as soon as Dominica gets home from work.  We will be at dad’s until Sunday afternoon.  I will be working for the office on Friday doing the early shift (starting at six thirty.)  Then as soon as I can get “out of work” we have to run to Rochester for Joe’s wedding.  On Saturday afternoon we are having a small, family baby shower-like event.

Today was rather uneventful at the office.  Nothing to “write home” about.  Just had lunch in the cafetteria which I do not do very often.  Lemon pepper breaded cod over vegetables and rice.

I caught the five o’clock shuttle back to Summit and had to run for the express train to Newark.  We hit heavy traffic on the way to the station so we were a little late and everyone was running.  I just made it as they were closing the doors.  Pheww.  It saves a lot of time catching the express train rather than waiting ten minutes or more for the non-express which takes about twice as long to reach Newark.  The express is extremely quick.

Dominica tried to pick me up as I was walking from Broad Street Station to Eleven80 but she ran into traffic and I made it to the building at about the same time that she did.  We couldn’t decide on dinner so we just ordered in from Nino’s.  We watched Magnum PI and ate our dinner.  For a change, Dominica decided that she wanted to spend some time reading tonight so we actually turned off the AppleTV and both sat around reading which was nice.  Oreo snuggled with me while I read almost pushing me out of the bed.

Tonight was also the cooking for Oreo night.  Dominica did the cooking as soon as we got home.  His stew has to boil for hours so it takes all evening.

Min went to bed around ten thirty.  I stayed up until after midnight as I needed to do the dishes, clean the kitchen, blend Oreo’s food, containerize the food and then clean the kitchen again once that was done.

45 Days to Baby Day! (33 Weeks and Four Days Pregnant)

17 Work Days Left for Dominica; House closing in 0 – 18 days.

Obviously we are not closing on the new house today, but we are into the “we can close any day now” time frame.  The current scheduling attempt is for October 17th, just ten days away, with our fallback days being the two days prior.  So our most likely closing window is in 8-10 days, but you never know.  We have to be ready to go at any moment.

Dominica went into work this morning thinking that she had a doctor’s appointment in Peekskill tomorrow.  Her boss reminded her that she had requested today off for the doctor’s appointment.  Oops.  Good thing he is on the ball.  So Dominica is leaving  around one thirty to drive up to Peekskill to see her doctor.  She should be back to New Jersey in plenty of time to get Oreo from daycare.  We hope.

Today is the 1.5 months mark until baby time!

The weather is good today for a walk to the office.  I’ve been listening to “Getting Stoned with Savages” a lot this week and will probably finish the book this evening.  Just taking Oreo for a walk will probably be enough to complete the book as long as the battery on my iPod does not give out.

For lunch today Ronak, Shreyash and I went to midtown to get dosas.  You can never have too much dosa.

I found out this afternoon that Monday is Columbus Day and a holiday for us.  London has to work on Monday, though, and Canada can’t cover for us because it is Canadian Thanksgiving.  So I volunteered to cover for the team on Monday (have to actually go into the office) but will then be able to take off whatever day ends up being the house closing day so that we can actually spend the day moving and stuff (fingers crossed.)

I was at the office pretty late this evening.  It was around eight when I finally left.  Shreyash and I went out for cheese subs on the walk to the PATH station.

It was around nine thirty when I got back to the apartment.  Dominica was watching Jericho to which she is addicted.  She ended up being hooked and didn’t get to bed until far too late.

She had a really rough day today.  First she forgot about her doctor’s appointment and so didn’t have the GPS with her and had to run to Peekskill without it which wasn’t too bad but did make it a bit more difficult getting around town.  I would have little idea of how to find the clinic without the GPS.

She had all kinds of problems once she reached the clinic.  The people there are really incompetent and it took her almost an hour and a half from the time that her appointment was scheduled until she finally got to see someone.  And to cover up the fact that she had been waiting for forever the staff put down on her paperwork that she had only been waiting for seventeen minutes.  So her midwife had to look into what was going on with that and why people were falsifying the records to cover up for ignoring patients.

Overall, though, she was very happy with her midwife and is hopeful that her contact with the clinic itself will be as minimal as possible.

Dominica has insomnia tonight and is unable to get to bed, which ended up keeping me up an hour or two longer than I wanted to be up since I have to be up at five thirty in the morning so that I can go out to Warren tomorrow.

The stock market really took a beating today – another five hundred point drop.  This is getting really rough.  Now people are visibly getting concerned.