Ah, the weekend. Finally. I have been needing some normal “down time”. Not that I get a lot. But some is good enough. Today continues the cleaning binge that I have been on as I attempt to convince Dominica to do some cleaning between bouts of watching Dancing with the Stars. She is attempting to complete the entire season today as she finally got ABC’s television viewing application working on her Windows Vista desktop. Up until now she has been unable to watch ABC television shows because ABC was indicating that Newark, NJ was not a part of the United States. It might seem like the third world depending where you are in the city but that is a pretty harsh view to take of things. Using automatic location detection based on IP address or whatever ABC is using isn’t a very useful tool when you are using it to limit access to resources of this nature. It just alienates users who feel wrongfully punished for ABC’s technical glitches. Mixing up countries is pretty weird.
Speaking of Newark, Eleven80 has begun its holiday tradition of having free breakfast in the lobby on Saturday mornings for the year. So we are all set for Saturday morning breakfast now until after Christmas. Very handy. Also, here in the Eleven80 building, the new deli and mini-mart on Commerce opened this morning. We did not get a chance to go down and to check it out but the hours that we have been told that they will be open are pretty handy and I am sure that we will be going there sometime soon. The menu looks to be completely uninteresting and nothing more than a copy of two or three other deli-style restaurants within a stone’s throw of it but it will be open slightly earlier and open somewhat later than its competitors. A seemingly obvious but unpopular business choice here in downtown Newark, New Jersey.
I slept in until nine and then Oreo and I got up. He wanted to take advantage of the sun this morning and I wanted to get started on cleaning up the kitchen. Dominica slept in for another hour before getting up so that we could take Oreo on his morning walk and then go down to have breakfast from the lobby. We just ate it in the apartment though.
It is quite cold today. Almost freezing. We have the heat running in the apartment and Oreo has to be all bundled up in his knit jumper to go outside. Unfortunately the drunk crowds from the new Prudential Center are causing all of his walking areas around our apartment to have more and more shattered glass on them. It is becoming harder and harder to keep him away from it. Rock concerts and sporting events are not the types of attractions that tend to bring in the best types of crowds.
Last night we received, in the post, the adapters that we have been waiting for so that we can hook up our new Brita water filter. Up until now (that is, for the past year or more) we have been living off of bottled water here for drinking and cooking. That has been rather expensive and has caused us to constantly stock several gallons, as many as ten, of water. This is a problem for people who live in such a tiny apartment. We don’t have the space necessary to store as much water as we really need to keep on hand. It is also a problem because I don’t have a car so only Dominica is really able to go out and pick up water. It also means that, since we can’t stock enough, that she would often have to make emergency shopping trips with no other necessity but water. So our friend Ramona suggested that we switch to an “on tap” water filter. She had used one here and said that it worked fine. So Dominica bought one but it didn’t come with the faucet adapter that we needed so we had to wait for that to arrive. Now we have it and now we are working our way through the very last of the bottled water.
I managed to get just tons and tons of cleaning done today. I feel very good about the day from that perspective. The apartment shows significant improvement. There is still plenty more to be done but the basics are done. My really big accomplishment of the day was getting the kitchen completely organized and cleaned so that we are not storing anything at all on the counters anymore except for the obvious stuff like the toaster and the knife set.
Dominica and I were supposed to go into Brooklyn to see Ryan’s opera performance tonight but Oreo told us not to I had a lot of work to get done and Dominica was addicted to her television show online. Around ten thirty Kevin called to see if we wanted to go out for some drinks. I decided to go out but Dominica decided to stay in so Pam stayed in as well and just Kevin and I went out.
We tried going to the Key Club but, as far as I can tell, they are no longer in business. Three times in a row now I have gone there on three different days of the week and at least two of those times were quite early in the evening and it has been closed every time. I haven’t seen it open since John Nicklin was here several weeks ago. So Kevin and I walked up to the Kilkenny Ale House on Central Avenue and hung out there for the evening.
I got back home around two after the Kilkenny closed down for the night. Oreo and Dominica were still up. We went to bed but Oreo got me back up at four in the morning to walk him again even though Dominica had just walked him at one!