October 23, 2008: Stuck in Newark for a Few Days

29 Days to Baby Day! (35 Weeks and Six Days Pregnant)

6 Work Days Left for Dominica.

It is another early day for us.  I was up and logged in to the office at six thirty.  At least I get to get a jump on the day because I have a ton of homework that really needs to be done today as some of it is due tomorrow and tomorrow is my busy day.

Dominica took the PR5 to Wayne Mazda this morning for some light work.  She was blocked in and couldn’t leave Newark for twenty minutes because of an ongoing dispute between the Eleven80 valet service and the local businesses.  (Just one more week… just one more week…)  They didn’t have a shuttle driver for her this morning at the shop so she got a courtesy CX7 to drive around for the day.

More car surprises this morning.  Turns out that the belt noise was coming from the alternator which was never fully installed the last time that the car was in a shop.  The bolts were never tightened down and the thing was moving around.  The shop said that we were really lucky that the thing didn’t just snap off sometime while we were driving!  So we had that fixed which cost a fortune since they had to disassemble everything to get to it.  We also had the sway bar and brushing taken care of which needed to be dealt with for quite some time.  So today turned into some extra surprise expenses (although nothing is really all that surprising anymore after how the last two months have been.)

Oreo is very itchy again today after having been exposed to grass yesterday.  This is not a good sign.  He is still on the steroids.  This new house is going to be really rough for him.

We have decided, at least initially, that the living room is going to get a television/monitor.  Our plan is to hang it above the fireplace so that it takes up no space and is positioned diagonally into the living room and easily visible from the dining room.  The mantel is a perfect place for the AppleTV which will be used to power the monitor.

We have decided that the Nintendo Wii will be going into the living room as well as its primary purpose is as a gaming system for friends and family when they are visiting and there is no better place for people to hang out and use such a “physical” gaming system.  I think that that means that we will be putting the PlayStation 2 there as well although that has not yet been determined and might be determined simply from the availability, or lack thereof, of component video inputs into whatever monitor eventually goes there.  Our current 32″ 720p unit will be there immediately so that people have something to use until we buy something larger and newer that will go there.

In the long term, we are planning to have three televisions around the house – one in our bedroom, one in the living room and then, of course, the den downstairs which will be the main entertainment area and where, we hope, we will have the XBOX 360 and, at some point, a BluRay Player.

I did some packing today.  Not a lot but it is progress.  Every little bit helps.  There is so much to do before Tuesday.  It is very stressful.  I can’t wait until the move is over and we can move into the new house.  I need a break from this type of stuff.  Dominica really needs to get into the house as well as her nesting instinct is kicking in and she has nowhere to nest.

Dominica came home and we walked over to Subway to grab a simple dinner.  Then we finished watching the first season of How I Met Your Mother which is by far one of the best sitcoms that I have seen in a long time.  Neil Patrick Harris is awesome.  What great casting.

Dominica went to bed around ten but I had to stay up and do homework for RIT.  I took care of my normal, weekly homework tonight that is due on Sunday.  I have extra work that is due tomorrow that I am going to focus on tomorrow.  I realize that that sounds out of order but getting the easier and more straight-forward normal homework out of the way today will let my brain be free and clear to really focus on the one task that I need to do tomorrow.

I keep forgetting to mention that Dominica is hooked on watching Wine Library Television.  She discovered it through the AppleTV’s podcast guide.  I’ve known about it for some time because of the billboards up on Route 78 that I used to see when commuting to Warren.  That alone should tell you how long they have been around.  The show gets around 80,000 viewers per day.  She has been watching it for a few weeks now and is really loving it.  She had no idea that the show is local to us here in Newark and that the Wine Library itself is located in Springfield, New Jersey which is a suburb of Newark.  It really is a great show for people looking to learn about wine.  A good example of the power of podcasting.  As far as I know it is now the most popular English language show on wine.

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