September 26, 2006: Food for Life

Something new to us here in Newark is bean pies. They are a popular food around here and are quite good.

Oreo did really well today. He had a really tough day being alone

Last night when I got home Dominica and Oreo came down and met me at the front door and we went out to Military Park and went for a walk. From the north side of Military Park there is an awesome view of the downtown skyscrapers including 1180. I hope to get a picture taken from down there sometime soon. I have been pretty busy and haven’t been able to get pictures of the place yet.

After our walk we decided to go out for dinner so we headed right next door to the east and ate at Food for Life. It is really easy for us to get to, it is only seconds away. Dominica had found this place by going downstairs and looking through the menus that they have in a book for us. How handy that is. Unfortunately they are only open from ten in the morning until eight at night which is a pretty tight schedule for us to get there. We can’t use them for breakfast and if we get dinner there we have to get there pretty early. We were late enough that we were not able to sit down and eat but had to get our food to go. But that was fine since we are just down one door. Everyone there was really polite and nice and very professional. The restaurant is really cool. Neat decor and all of the paintings that they have in there are done by local middle and high school students. That is a cool idea.

We got back to the apartment and ate out dinner. Boy were we in for a surprise. The food from Food for Life was absolutely amazing. They are a vegetarian friendly restaurant so the menu available to us is pretty large. They have a tone of fish (so technically targetted towards veg-aquarians like us which is awesome) and they have a little chicken but not much. One of their specialties is “nautical bacon” which is a fish based smoken bacon style food that is so incredibly delicious. Both Dominica and I got their BLTs which are made with smoked salmon and a special mayo sauce. Those must have been the best sandwiches of that style that I have ever had. We were totally blown away by the quality of the food. We are going to be eating at Food for Life a lot in the future. We are really hoping that with 1180 becoming populated that it will shift the market in the area away from everything being really targetted towards the business crowd and maybe places like Food for Life will start opening earlier to support the breakfast crowd and staying open at least half an hour later so that they can get the dinner crowd.

Our evening was pretty short. We had our walk and got our dinner and came home and ate. At that point the evening was almost over. I was hoping to have been able to have gotten more of the living room put away tonight but that didn’t end up happening. Mostly we just decided to go to bed and read for a little bit. I played with Oreo a little but mostly he just wanted to spend time with us after his long, lonely day. He is really looking forward to being able to go to Doggie Paradise again.

The valet issues seemed to be resolved this morning and we were able to get our cars right on time. Dominica is going into work an hour early all week because one of her coworkers had a baby and needs some time at home with his wife and new child. So she is working five hours of overtime this week. So she left very early this morning – about the same time that she would have to have left if we were still living in North Brunswick. Not awful and a whole week of overtime will be helpful with the move and everything happening recently.

I was up early and had enough time to take Oreo on a nice half hour walk through Military Park. He had a great time running all over the place and smelling everything and peeing on as much stuff as he could. He is stuck at home so much on his own that it is important to walk him as much as possible.

My car was waiting for me at half past eight. When it works that is the most convenient thing ever.

ABC News again makes the list of media greats with the news that the human heart produces urine! Nothing like quality reporting and investigation. And even a novice editor should have caught that mistake. Can you believe how many teachers trust disreputable sources in print over reputable sources on the web because they believe that paper is inherently more trustworthy than any other medium?

By the end of the day I was ready to head for home. Having the new apartment makes going home so much more fun. I have never been so happy with a residence before – not even the house that I own (still own) even though it was a great house.

Dominica has a lot of homework to do tonight for her Introduction to Object Oriented Programming using Java class that she is taking. So she is thinking about stopping off on the way home to pick up a new office chair since hers is uncomfortable (it wasn’t great to begin with but she locked the bottom and pushed hard against it and the metal support for the back is bent and twisted now so it is really bad – mine which is identical is still fine) and without a good chair it is really difficult for her to read and she has a lot of ready to do. We don’t have much furniture in the house so the office chair is a major bit of our seating.

She went to Staples and found a Lane chair that she really liked. That is good, maybe she will be able to be more productive now. Since coming down to New Jersey she has had to lay in the bed to read and she falls right to sleep when she does that.

Our plan is to get dinner from Food for Life again. I would lean towards doing a bit more culinary exploration before heading back to the same place again but the food was so amazing that I can’t really say no. I must have more nautical bacon! So the plan is that I will go and pick up our order and bring it back to the apartment and Dominica will work on her homework and spend time with the boy. He will be very lonely after two days alone in the apartment.

Tomorrow morning I am going to be at home a little later than usual (Oreo will be happy) because some of the guys that I work with from Long Island are coming in to Newark to car pool with me so I might still be in Newark as late as ten thirty or so.

I was planning on working from home on Thursday but that isn’t working out this week. Instead I am working from home on Friday again, like last week, which is okay. I prefer to break up the week but having a three day weekend (more or less) is pretty cool too. I have to be in the office on Thursday so I can’t take that day off.

Okay, I am posting and heading for home.

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