This entire week has been really, really hot and today it is much hotter than it has been. Dominica and I were hoping to have started our mortgage process today to get things lined up as quickly as possible so that we could make an offer on the townhouse in which we are most interested, but our loan origination person is out of the office today and we can’t do anything until Monday.
Oreo went to daycare today. It is a good thing. Who knows how crazy he would be if he didn’t get to go in and burn off some of his extra energy. He has been couped up far too much this week. He needs some time playing with his doggy friends.
My walk into the Wall Street office today was really awful. Walking through Newark wasn’t bad at all. Hot, but it was fine. I did decide to play it safe and to walk through the Gateway Center, though, which is air conditioned so most of my walk was “inside”. Normally I just walk outside along Raymond Boulevard.
Once I was into Manhattan the real heat hit. In Manhattan everything is warmer because of all the people, buildings, vehicles, etc. plus there is seldom any air flow. The difference in effective temperatures from Newark to Manhattan is staggering. I was quite uncomfortable by the time I got down to the end of Wall Street. I did grab an ice cream cone from Mr. Softee to cool me off a little.
If you are a Starbucks Coffee Fanatic (for the record, I am definitely not) then you have probably been waiting on pins and needles to know if your Starbucks is one of the six hundred that are being closed this summer as Starbucks shuts down five percent of its operations. Well, I found the list and now you know: The Starbucks Doomed 600. If you are from my hometown, and too lazy to look through the list yourself, Geneseo Starbucks is on the doomed list as are many in Upstate New York – where people have never even begun associated good coffee with the Starbucks brand like they do downstate. The Starbucks in Geneseo opened right as Dominica and I moved there in 2003 and we said to ourselves that that was a crazy location that couldn’t possibly make money. I went in there once and there was no one there. Just a few weeks ago we said “It can’t possibly still be open, can it? The place is always empty.” We were right. Now it is closing. So now Geneseo will have yet another vacant building. Although the old “Del Taco” building, now Starbucks, has been an empty building for such a large percentage of its life span that it just seems natural to have that spot be an empty – strangely architected building.
Starbucks in Geneseo was really hurt by the fact that it is on the “wrong” side of the road. It is in a spot that has so long been ignored that you don’t even realize that there is a business there now that there is one. Then, just after they went in, Tim Horton’s (with better coffee and more food options) came in in a far more visible location, had a brand new building and was open twenty-four by seven. So Starbucks just completely lost any mindshare that it might have had. In Upstate NY, people just don’t “think” about Starbucks. It doesn’t occur to most people that it is even a coffee option. Heck, I lived within an easy walk of it for several years and I bet I never went there even once. Now that I live in Newark I am literally next door to a Starbucks and have only been there two or three times at most. Being an upstater, it just isn’t something that you do. Back in Rochester, Eric and I used to make coffee runs to Bruegers, right next door to the Starbucks, and never once even though about going to Starbucks instead.
Now that I have mentioned it… I am seriously missing living right next to the all night Tim Hortons. Argh.
For those who don’t speak fluent Spanish, “Del Taco” is Spanish for “of the taco”. Clearly it was intended to be “Mexican food for middle-America where multiculturalism is a foreign concept.” Ha ha.
While doing a search for something unrelated, I came across a great image of Fall Brook Waterfall in Geneseo on Flickr. I’ve been to the waterfall a time or two but it has been a really long time. Never saw it when the foliage was so lush.
By four thirty the humidity had dropped enough that even though it was even warmer than this morning it was actually quite nice outside. At least it was pretty nice just sitting outside. Hard walking, like I have to do to get to the World Trade Center to catch the train, is still way too hot.
My day was not overly busy but this lulled me into a false sense of “going home security.” I thought that I was going to be done really close to five. All of my work was scheduled to complete right at five. I was fooled. The call for the release at four forty-five ended up lasting until almost six thirty! Argh.
Dominica is feeling very under the weather. She has a headcold or something similar that is affecting her sinuses. It might just be allergies. So her plan is to get home and to get to bed right away in the hopes of getting enough sleep to start getting better. So I am tasked with getting dinner on my way home which will be from Metro Cafe if I make it in time and from McDonalds if I don’t.
I am exhausted and don’t have the energy to write more tonight and don’t want to leave y’all (to practice my Texan) without an update so I am posting before leaving the office. I will probably just watch some Third Rock from the Sun with Dominica and Oreo and get to bed early. I have some unscheduled work to do tomorrow morning whenever I wake up and then, in the early afternoon, we are driving to Frankfort for Garrett’s batism on Sunday.