I got up this morning and went down to the health club to get back into the swing of things after having a rough exercise weekend. Dominica and I cheated quite a bit on our diets and skipped exercising yesterday so we are quite behind. I was looking forward to getting back into it this morning and working off the extra weekend food but I was only in the gym for a little over five minutes before Dominica popped in to let me know that her car’s battery was dead again and that she needed to take my car and that I needed to deal with the dead battery. So much for my morning workout.
I was back in the apartment for about ten minutes before Dominica called to let me know that the valet manager had charged Min’s battery using her own car and that Min had managed to head off to work in the BMW. The battery was dead, as we had expected, because the car’s roof and not been closed completely when it was parked on Friday. This happens because Min has been letting the valets drive the car with the top down and just having them put it up with they are done but a couple of times now it has happened over a weekend that the roof is left only most of the way up and the car just sets off all kinds of lights and alarms to get them to close it but they leave it and the alarms drain the battery. So we can’t do that anymore. But at least it really wasn’t a hassle this morning any more than me missing my workout.
I am told that we are having another fire drill tomorrow – amazingly not on a day when either Oreo or I are intending to be in the apartment for once. But the big news is that this is supposed to be the final fire drill. After this one they will be sending out an official notice saying that the fire alarm testing is complete. So we will see what happens but it is a huge relief that we are moving into the next phase of the fire alarm situation.
Dominica discovered that we can order our office furniture online and that it has free shipping from Office Max! We are very excited about that. We need at least one more piece than we currently own so we will definitely be placing an order soon – hopefully today. We also discovered that the nice stuff that we buy from Bush is currently on sale for 20% off which is really cool as this stuff isn’t cheap! Free shipping on big furniture items is a really big deal and 20% off is huge. We think that we will probably buy a new office piece instead of shipping the big corner piece from dad’s house because it will cost more in gas and wear & tear on the car to bring up the existing piece than it would cost to buy a new piece and have it delivered for free (and guess which one is better for the economy and the environment and provides us with an extra piece of office furniture!) And that way I still have a nice full desk set up at dad’s – where I already have a full workstation in place with my older HP D325 desktop running Windows XP Pro. That is the small form factor machine that used to be Jeremy’s that I bought from him about a year ago to have as a spare Windows workstation. That ended up working out pretty well.
China has discovered that their head of the Food and Drug Safety department has been taking bribes to allow dangerous foods and drugs to enter the Chinese and foreign marketplaces. Apparently his crimes were pretty significant resulting or being related to tens of thousands of Chinese deaths, hundreds of thousands if not millions of animals deaths and strained trade relations between China and many trading partners primarily in North and Central America. China has found the former head of their equivalent of the FDA to be guilty and that his crimes are so serious that he has been sentenced to death. It is very good to see China taking this situation as seriously as they are as this is a very critical situation globally. It is encouraging to see China being willing to be so definitive about the situation. Oreo is glad to see justice being delivered after his own life hung so precariously in the balance.
Today passed by pretty quickly. Before I even knew it it was after four in the afternoon. Not a lot of work going on but enough to keep me working. Tonight Dominica and I get to put together the desk that we just brought down from Pavilion which is going to make such a difference in our little apartment. I am going to be able to actually use my computer effectively again. It has been painful working on a tiny glass and metal desk that wobbles and doesn’t work at all with my optical mouse (LEDs don’t reflect well off of glass.) Next time that we return to Pavilion we will be bringing one or two of our small desks back for dad to sell or give away. The one is already spoken for by Jeremy. Maybe Sara will want the other now that she has her own apartment and needs stuff to fill it with.
The end of the day slowed down significantly so I decided to head for Newark a little before five thirty.
Weight Lost So Far: 11lbs