I was awake at 4:00 this morning but didn’t get myself out of bed until around 5:30. Not a lot of fun stuff to do in a hotel room all by yourself. And to think that I probably have weeks of this left to go. Ugh.
I had to get moving and pack up the hotel room this morning. The plan is to deal with my apartment during the day today so that I don’t have to stay down here over the weekend dealing with it. But the rental office is only open during the middle of the day so there isn’t much chance for me to get there except for the weekends unless I take some time off from work. So I am hoping that I can run down there during my lunch break today.
Check out this video of a skateboarding dog.
I was out of the hotel at 8:00 and off to work. I am pretty consistently getting to work in about half an hour. Not bad for taking the long way around (I am worried that I will get lost.)
Today actually passed by relatively quickly. I had some business to do for the consulting firm this morning and that ate up a bit of my morning along with breaking it up significantly. Having anything to do makes me feel a lot better. After that I spent several hours working one on one with the guy who is “training me”. That got me into the afternoon.
At 12:45 I left the office to take my extended lunch and drove down to North Brunswick to attempt to deal with getting an apartment. I don’t know my way around the area at all yet so I took a really long, round about route to get there. It was 1:30 when I got to the apartment. Once I learn my way around the area I hear that it should take less than half an hour to get from work to the apartment. Hopefully that is true. The way I go is terrible.
I didn’t have any of the paperwork that they needed for the apartment. I have never rented an apartment that required a copy of my social security card before. Seems kind of fishy to me. Unfortunately I don’t even know where it is for sure. But I have a copy of it in my email that I can get faxed easily enough. I had to run out to a grocery store to get money orders as well but that didn’t take too long and I got the initial deposits made for the apartment. Hopefully that will be enough to get the ball rolling. If everything goes well I will be moving in on April 15th. I am really looking forward to getting out of the hotel. Nintey dollars a night is a bit rough.
On the way back to work I stopped off really quickly at Taco Bell and grabbed a quick bite to eat. I had some cold pizza for breakfast before leaving the hotel and had nothing yet for lunch so I was getting pretty hungry. It was just about 3:00 when I got back to the office. That sure broke up the day and made things go really quickly. I hate having to be out so much in my first week but I sure did appreciate the break and the opportunity to get important business taken care of.
I was able to leave the office at 5:30. I found out quickly how bad New Jersey traffic can get. Apparently Friday evening is the worst of it. It took forever to get west on US78. I was in stop and go traffic all of the way to Phillipsburg on the Pennsylvania border. That made the trip a lot longer. Once I crossed into Easton, Pennsylvania I managed to make good time all of the rest of the way home. The weather was pretty good for driving. I hit some moderate rain in the Elmira/Corning area but nothing too bad.
Dad brought Oreo over to Denny’s in Geneseo at 10:45 and Dominica came down straight from work to meet him there. I got there right about on schedule. Even with all of that traffic in New Jersey it still only took five and a quarter hours to go from the office parking lot to Geneseo. Not too shabby. We are pretty confident that taking US380 through Pennsylvania is the way to go as opposed to the Turnpike, US476. It is amazing how much time you lose going through three or four toll booths. They are a major travel disruption and cause the entire highway to be extra congested. Plus taking the smaller roads is less expensive. Saving five dollars and traveling faster is a nice way to go.
We had dinner at Denny’s but didn’t stay very late. I was exhausted and really needed to get home so that I could get some sleep. Oreo was so excited to see me he couldn’t contain himself. He ran all over the house freaking out. I am very glad to be home but very sad that I only get one full day before I have to return to the hotel life. Weekends really aren’t long enough when the commute on either end is so long. I will most likely have to return to New Jersey on Sunday evening at 7:00. 🙁