October 8, 2008: Reading, Cooking and a Closing Date

44 Days to Baby Day! (33 Weeks and Five Days Pregnant)

16 Work Days Left for Dominica; House closing in no more than 17 days.

Found out this morning that the attorney is having a problem getting the certificate of occupancy necessary for the bank to free up the funds for the house and we are almost for sure pushed off until the week of the 20th for the closing on the house.  This puts us into a risky position as the house funding disappears on October 24th and we have no way to continue past that point.

I was pretty tired when the alarm went off at five thirty this morning.  Ugh.  I got up and read a chapter in the “No Fluff, Just Stuff Anthology 2007 Edition” and got ready for work.

We were running slightly ahead of our usual schedule this morning and I actually did not need to rush to get onto the NJTransit Dover line out to Summit.  Once I got to Summit, though, the real waiting began as the 8:05 shuttle that I usual take, which gets me to the office around 8:20, didn’t show up and we didn’t learn that it didn’t show up until the 8:25 shuttle arrived and everyone was wondering where the usual driver was.  So that cost me a bit of the morning.

The weather is nice and crisp today.  A nice autumn day.

Late this afternoon we got confirmation that the closing has been scheduled on the house on October 22nd.  Much later than we had been hoping (we were really anxious to be underway moving the weekend before that,) but there is nothing that can be done.  The upside to not closing until so late is that each day that we do not overlap the house with the apartment in Newark is another day of not paying double rent and mortgage and additionally it lowers the tax escrow by another day.  It isn’t horrible, just not ideal with Dominica being pregnant.  Had she not been pregnant we would probably have preferred this date.

I am working this coming Monday, Columbus Day, and will be saving my holiday until the closing so that I don’t have to take off work for it.  I might take two half-days to give us more time for the actual moving portion.  We will see.  The plan is that I am going to drop Dominica off at the clinic in Peekskill and then I will run to the closing in Katonah and then back to Peekskill to pick her up and to deliver a car-load of stuff to the new house that afternoon.  I suspect that we will be pretty anxious to get stuff into it and will likely make another run back to Newark and back to Peekskill yet that evening as we will be pretty excited to have the house.

We are swapping the BMW for the Mazda PR5 this weekend while we are at dad’s.  The timing is pretty much perfect.  We will have the spacious Mazda for all of the moving.  Each car load taken in the Mazda is roughly double the capacity of the BMW.

Tomorrow, I am working from home and then we are driving up to dad’s house as soon as Dominica gets home from work.  We will be at dad’s until Sunday afternoon.  I will be working for the office on Friday doing the early shift (starting at six thirty.)  Then as soon as I can get “out of work” we have to run to Rochester for Joe’s wedding.  On Saturday afternoon we are having a small, family baby shower-like event.

Today was rather uneventful at the office.  Nothing to “write home” about.  Just had lunch in the cafetteria which I do not do very often.  Lemon pepper breaded cod over vegetables and rice.

I caught the five o’clock shuttle back to Summit and had to run for the express train to Newark.  We hit heavy traffic on the way to the station so we were a little late and everyone was running.  I just made it as they were closing the doors.  Pheww.  It saves a lot of time catching the express train rather than waiting ten minutes or more for the non-express which takes about twice as long to reach Newark.  The express is extremely quick.

Dominica tried to pick me up as I was walking from Broad Street Station to Eleven80 but she ran into traffic and I made it to the building at about the same time that she did.  We couldn’t decide on dinner so we just ordered in from Nino’s.  We watched Magnum PI and ate our dinner.  For a change, Dominica decided that she wanted to spend some time reading tonight so we actually turned off the AppleTV and both sat around reading which was nice.  Oreo snuggled with me while I read almost pushing me out of the bed.

Tonight was also the cooking for Oreo night.  Dominica did the cooking as soon as we got home.  His stew has to boil for hours so it takes all evening.

Min went to bed around ten thirty.  I stayed up until after midnight as I needed to do the dishes, clean the kitchen, blend Oreo’s food, containerize the food and then clean the kitchen again once that was done.

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