I was really tired this morning. It was all that I could do to convince myself to get out of bed and to go to work. I knew that I had a really busy day ahead of me and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
I had a lot of work to do at work today. I was supposed to get started on a major project at 9:00 but it ended up getting held off until 10:00. That made the day even more of a crunch. I worked hard all day trying to get things taken care of in the hopes that Dominica, Oreo and I would be able to leave for Ohio tonight instead of early tomorrow morning.
It rained all day here. It has been raining a lot recently. Today was some major thunderstorms. It stopped raining hard right around four or five o’clock which was quite a relief as I did not want to do any serious driving in heavy rain. I love it when it rains while I am at work or at home but not while I am traveling.
I managed to get everything wrapped up at work before 4:30 and was out the door just before 5:00. I got down to North Brunswick and helped Min get ready to go. I had loaded some of the computers into her car this morning before I left the apartment so that she would not have to worry about them. I needed to have the computers in the car so that I could transfer them to dad when we see him in Ohio. Min got the rest of the car loaded while I was at work and got Oreo all set to travel. This is his first trip with his full car seat and harness to protect him.
It was just after 6:00 when we managed to pull out of North Brunswick to head towards Ohio. We decided to attempt the southern route which means driving south on Route 1 and through northern Philadelphia and then west through Harrisburg and Pittsburgh on the Pennsylvania Turnpike – US 76.
Oreo’s harness worked out really well and he seemed to be quite comfortable and content almost the entire way. He seems to like the new car seat and harness because they allow him to be a lot closer to us and to get a much better view of stuff outside of the car than before. And we like it because it makes him a lot safer.
We stopped at a rest stop in Pennsylvania and picked up an EZ-Pass for Dominica’s car. We have been meaning to get one for a long time and figured that this was as good a time as any to try it out. Living in Geneseo we really never needed to have one since the only toll road was the New York Thruway and we almost never used that. But now in New Jersey we end up on toll roads all of the time and go through tons of change so the EZ-Pass seemed like a good idea. We tried to use it today but Pennsyvania does their EZ-Passes differently than New York and New Jersey do and we didn’t feel comfortable testing it because they don’t have mixed EZ-Pass/Cash lanes so if our pass didn’t work we would be stuck. So we paid cash. Strike one against the EZ-Pass. First time we try to use it there is no safe way to know whether or not it would work.
In Ohio we also took the turnpike but Ohio doesn’t take EZ-Pass. They are cash only. So now we have managed to drive all of the way from New Jersey to Ohio without the EZ-Pass working. It is beginning to feel like less and less of a bargain.
We arrived in Alliance, Ohio at 2:00 in the morning and were really exhausted. We stayed at the Comfort Inn on State Street that is directly attached to the Carnation Mall. It is a nice hotel and they take pets for an extra $10 which is really awesome. We will be using this hotel a lot. It is very close to my family in Ohio and Alliance is a really small town so staying there is really convenient.
It was around 3:00 when we finally got to bed. I am really getting tired of weekends that involve endless driving and no relaxing!