43 Days to Baby Day! (33 Weeks and Six Days Pregnant)
15 Work Days Left for Dominica; House closing scheduled in 12 days.
Today’s emergency project was to find a moving company to move us from Newark to Peekskill. We don’t have that much stuff but the effort of packing, the risk, the time and the cost of a truck all come together and make it generally not worth the effort. We even considered the possibility of giving away everything that we own in Newark and just buying new in Peekskill as the cost of the movers should only be barely less than the value of all of the stuff.
We tried a few places in Peekskill that were recommended to us. One of them never answered the phone and the other was only able to give us the names of a few places in New Jersey or Staten Island. While Dominica was working on Peekskill I tried to find a few places down here in New Jersey and only found places that either never picked up the phone or went to voicemail. It was until a bit later than using one of the recommended places we managed to get someone to answer.
We got a few rough estimates today for the move and we have an apartment inspection scheduled for Tuesday morning at seven in the morning to have a real, in apartment, estimate done so that we will have a final price for the move. They know that we are attempting to schedule for sometime during the window of Monday through Wednesday of the last week of October. So hopefully that will not be a problem.
Dominica did most of the packing for our trip last night. We are pretty much ready to go. Only so much is needed. Other than the wedding tomorrow evening it is a pretty casual weekend. I do have to work all day tomorrow and some on Saturday.
I did some dishes and cleaning today to get us ready for the trip. Don’t want to leave dirty items around and then disappear for several days. That always turns out badly. I also did the last minute frantic Handbrake work in an attempt to get as much ready to get moved back to dad’s house as possible that will be going into long term storage. It isn’t a lot but each item that does not have to get packed and shipped by the movers is that much less expensive and that much less likely to be lost or damaged.
For the first time in months I was able to have lunch with Susan today. We met at noon at Food for Life. FFL has a new menu now with only a fraction of the selection that they used to have. Lots of the breakfast items that I used to love there are now gone including #15 “The Round”, the Breakfast Club and the Seven Mile High. Very, very sad. At least they did not discontinue the items until we were in the process of moving out of Newark.
Susan is doing well and loving her new job. It only seems like a new job to me because it has been so long since we have seen her. She has been there for quite some time now. She has been in Newark for almost two years now.
Work was very busy today and I barely had a moment to myself. I was going crazy with the phone just ringing and ringing. At one point I had to turn off my work instant messenger because so many people were trying to reach me that I couldn’t respond to anyone anymore.
The market really took a beating today. 679 point drop on the Dow. Absolutely crazy. We are at the lowest point of the market in over five years, since 2002. No end in sight. For some reason, this particular market crash seems to be getting tons more media coverage than previous crashes. I wonder how much of the market hysteria is being driven by the simple fact that too many people are overly aware of the situation. Good investors know to hold tight while the masses who only pay any attention when things get crazy start to freak out and do the absolute wrong thing at the wrong time.
It is so awful that we are in the middle of buying a house right now. The timing is so perfect to be investing and we don’t have a spare penny to our names 🙁 The only consolation is that our 401K plans are actively investing for us but that isn’t the same. This is probably the best opportunity to really heavily invest that I will ever see in my lifetime (both because of the huge drop and because as I get older the investments are worth less because I have less time for them to do anything) and there is no way for me to take any advantage of it. This house will end up costing us significantly in the long run, I’m sure, just because it tied up resources at such an important time.
Dominica got home from work and started getting everything packed up so that we could leave while I wrapped up at the office and finished SGL for the day. Then she ordered the wedding present for Joe and Nicole and we were ready to go.
We were doing last minute packing at twenty till seven and I am posting for the evening and shutting down my workstation. Time to get in the car and get driving. It will probably be about seven thirty when we can actually get the car brought around and get ourselves into it. I expect that we will roll into dad’s driveway around two thirty or so – which is awful as I have to be up to work at six thirty in the morning 🙁 I am going to be exceptionally exhausted tomorrow. It is going to be a long day for me.