Today is Dominica’s 29th birthday! Happy Birthday Dominica!
Today started out very normally as any other day. Can you tell that we have been here long enough that we are hitting a routine now? I was pretty tired this morning as I have been for a while – just haven’t had an opportunity to get caught back up on my sleep I guess. So I slept in a little and didn’t start working until seven and then did so from home until there was a lull when I could run into the office.
Overall today was a fairly busy day but not too crazy. It kept me occupied most of the day. I ran some errands instead of getting lunch but I don’t normally eat lunch so it wasn’t a big deal.
For Dominica’s birthday dinner she wanted Thai delivered from the Thai restaurant in Warrenville so after I work I ran down there and picked that up and then headed for home. I ended up getting home quite a bit before Dominica and discovered that I had lost my house keys. Argh. I looked through the car but couldn’t find them. I have no idea where they can be. The only place that it very reasonable is on my desk at the office and I can’t check there until tomorrow. One more thing that I have to worry about now.
At the end of day today Dad emailed me to let me know that I got a “rescheduled court date” for a traffic ticket only it was rescheduled to this morning and the mail didn’t arrive until hours after the court date and minutes after the court’s phones lines were turned off. The big issue is that when I got the ticket I went online and checked the date of my court appearance and it was scheduled for one week from today. Now I get a notice that I missed on appearance, it was rescheduled for today and I missed that one too! So I went online and they went in and moved the date up a week so that I have nothing scheduled now. Newark gained a reputation for bad court scheduling several years ago and apparently they haven’t changed their ways. I called because their website said that their phone lines were still on until four thirty and I hung on the phone on hold for forty minutes but no one ever picked up. The last time I called it didn’t even go to hold – just rang and rang. What a scam. No wonder people don’t want to live in Newark – the city does everything that it can to drive people away.
Dominica got home and as she pulled up to the building a Newark police officer started harassing her because she was using the valet parking. The issue here is that 1180 Raymond’s valet parking is illegal as the area is not zoned for valet but for normal parking. So the only options that we have are leaving our cars in the middle of the street, on the cross walks, in an intersection or in a bus stop. As you can see, that doesn’t work. But the police need to deal with the building selling us (and changed a lot for) an illegal service. The city lets the building operate so the city makes their own bed and now they need to lie in it. The police are just harassing us because they don’t like us. This has been an ongoing issue since we first moved in. And there is no resolution in sight. Not even word that the building is going to try anything. It would appear that this is just considered an “acceptable situation” which it is not. And right now the building is only half full. Eventually the street will be continuously blocked by our cars going in and out of parking and this is a very busy street.
Dominica stopped by Target on her way home and grabbed some DVDs to watch for her birthday. She got Kinky Boots which was entertaining but nothing special. And she got The Fountain which is one of those movies that makes me give up on watching movies. The movie was boring, slow, depressing and just poor. It had no entertainment value. It was horribly written and horrible acted (although what did they have to work with?) It was horribly sad and made you feel like crap both because it had a sad ending and also because you just wasted all that time and got nothing for it. 🙁
Oreo spent the entire second movie sleeping on our laps. He is starting to become a lap dog now that we have had him for a while and now that we have the loveseat where the only way he can sit with us is to be on our laps.
By the end of the two movies it was time for bed.