January 22, 2009: Back to Warren Today

I was really exhausted this morning when I pulled myself out of bed.  Alternating shifts are hard to handle.  I would prefer always being on one shift or another.  Work started today at six thirty in the morning.  The basement is very cold all day long but first thing in the morning it is positively freezing.

I worked for several hours and then, at ten thirty, I hopped into the Protege 5 and drove out to Warren, New Jersey to work from that office for the day.  This is my first time driving to Warren from Peekskill.  The trip took ninety minutes.  A pretty long commute to do by car.

I discovered when I arrived in Warren that it has been so long since I have last been out that way that my badge had been deactivated.  So I had to be signed in for a change.

I was at the office for about half an hour before the team went out for lunch.  I have not seen my team is almost three months which is crazy.  This is the longest that I have gone without seeing the people with whom I work.

For lunch we drove down to Houlihan’s which has awesome stuffed and fried mushrooms and fish tacos that I really like.  It is a common food destination for us.

Overall today was not too busy.  As I always do when in Warren, I spent a bit of the day just going around and catching up with everyone.

We had a pretty major re-organization at work today.  Re-orgs only affect me minimally since I am not an employee but a consultant.  It’s times like this that being a consultant is so much less stressful.  In reality, this particular re-org is probably good for my long term career in the financial industry because it gives me an opportunity to work with the equities business in addition to fixed income in which I have been working for the last three years.

I left Warren at five thirty and got to Peekskill around a quarter after seven or maybe a little later.  The trip back in rush hour was not nearly as the drive in.  On the way home I stopped at Stop and Shop to pick up ingredients for Oreo’s food for the week.

After I returned home we cooked Oreo’s food, ate dinner and watched some of the Mary Tyler Moore show’s third season.

Liesl was excited to see me when I got home but it was not too long before she was asleep.  Oreo was so excited that I had to play with him for several hours.  He really misses me when I am gone.

This evening we finally set up the Wii Fit balance board and tried using the Wii Fit.  We probably put an hour and a half into it between Dominica and I.  In addition to learning how to use it we each set up our profiles and did thirty minutes of exercising.  They do a good job of making the Wii Fit actually give you a work out.  We were both sweating by the time that we were done.  I am going to be soar tomorrow.

I am working the early shift again tomorrow and then working starting at seven in the morning on Saturday.  Later, on Saturday, Jenn and Angelo are coming up from Philadelphia to visit us.  They have not seen the new house or Liesl yet.  Angelo and I have not even had a chance to meet yet.

It was realy late by the time that Dominica and I finally got to bed.  It was probably one in the morning or possibly later.  Another night of practically no sleep for me.

January 21, 2009: Nothing Day

I was happily off of the early shift today.  I am back on tomorrow, off on Friday and then Saturday I am practically back on because I have to start work at seven in the morning.  Work was busy again today, as expected.  Lots to be done.

Extremely little news to report and I am not even going to pretend that there is.  With the changing schedule for me I am pretty tired and am not keeping up well with SGL.  Will try better tomorrow.

Today included: work, watched Hulu, do some Rails troubleshooting.  Bed.

Early shift tomorrow then driving out to Warren for the day.

January 20, 2009: Inauguration Day

The irony of the Dick Van Dyke show: A show about a group of writers writing a show for variety show actor who is, in fact, the real writer writing the show for the group of actors playing his own writers.

Six o’clock came way too early this morning.  I was pretty tired as I pulled myself out of bed.  Dominica and Liesl were already awake (but planning on returning to bed shortly) so at least I did not have to wake them from my alarm.  I got up and brushed my teeth, got dressed and drove Ramona down to the Peekskill Metro North station so that she could catch the morning commuter train into the city.

It was extremely cold this morning and the car was covered in ice so it took a little bit of work to get the windows cleared off enough to drive.  After dropping off Ramona I came back home and headed on down to the basement so that I could get to work.  I had run down and checked emails and made sure that I was signed on and everything before I left so that I could be on as quickly as possible.  It ended up being a really slow early morning and very few people actually needed me.  My favourite kind of early morning shift.

So today is the historic inauguration of Barrack Obama.  I believe that this is the first presidential inauguration that will be covered by SGL.  The inauguration of President Bush, eight years ago today, fell just a week or two before SGL started saving posts.  Prior to that point the blog was updated regularly but the old posts were deleted instead of archiving them (not very smart, I admit, but originally there wasn’t any plan for SGL to be a blog and it just sort of developed over six months or so of use.)  So while information about the last inauguration may have been posted it was lost a very long time ago.

The term “historic” is of course completely overused.  Obama is our first “black” president using the completely inappropriate and racist usage of black that we were taught we could never use when we were children – why the media is allowed to get away with it now I have no idea.  He is also our forty-fourth “white” president under the same logic.  So he is our first black and white president which is, at least, definitely a first.  Of more importance, he is the first president to be from a major urban area since Theodore Roosevelt which was quite a while ago.  Rural America has had a pretty dominate presence in the executive office during the twentieth century which seems strangely inappropriate as America has moved so predominately towards urbanization in the past century.

As expected, as always happens with the election of a Democrat, the US stock market took a major hit and actually dropped below the 8,000 mark.  The stock market always reacts negatively on the day of a Democratic inauguration but generally performs better during the tenure than with a Republican.  It’s a paradoxical market reaction and completely predictable.

America’s third car maker (if you can call them American as they have been German for quite some time now), Chrysler, had a major stake sold to Italian car maker Fiat today with long term plans for complete takeover.  Fiat is not well known to American consumers but they are a major player in the global automotive scene and have some really interesting cars over the years including some really nice convertables available in America in the late 1970s.  My friend Steve has one.

Today was very busy at the office.  I was hoping to take tomorrow to go into Warren but I had a server turned over to me today that is high priority so I am taking care of that tomorrow instead.  I am going to go in to Warren on Thursday instead.

After work, I took care of Liesl and Oreo for a little while while Dominica went grocery shopping to stock up for the week.  I was hoping to play some Oblivion but there was no opportunity so I just watched an episode of Knight Rider (the new one.)  Liesl seems to like that show.  It helps her to relax.

January 19, 2009: Ramona Comes to Peekskill

This morning I had to get up and work.  Even when Monday is a holiday it is still the day that I have to submit my hours for the past week both to the office where I work as well as to my consulting firm.  If I fail to do it today then it is possible that my paycheck will be missing the hours for this week and I won’t be paid for another two weeks.  I don’t get docked or anything but going an extra two weeks without pay is best avoided.

Once I was logged into the office there turned out to be several things that needed my attention.  One of the disadvantages of supporting global areas, as in outside of the United States, is that not everyone is aware of our holidays and so most of the people that I support are generally surprised to learn that today is a holiday (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) so it is important to be online part of the day to let people know that they either need to make alternate accomodations fo rthe day or to just wait until tomorrow and some stuff, being important, gets handled today on the holiday anyway.

After a couple hours of work I was able to join Dominica in some serious house cleaning.  The house really needs several bouts of serious house cleaning and it only seems to happen when someone is coming to visit.  We are very last minute cleaners.  We did manage to do a lot of cleaning before I had to drive down to the train station to pick up Ramona.  We made a large dent in the “putting away” of stuff and general cleaning.  The kitchen is in the best shape since we first moved in in October.

Overall the cleaning went well and we managed to get most of everything in the main living areas packed up and put away.  Quite an accomplishment if you had seen how much stuff we had scattered around the house.

Ramona arrived at Peekskill at 1:48 via the Metro North from Grand Central Terminal.  I picked her up and we all hung out for an hour or two.  This was her first time meeting Liesl or seeing our new house.

For dinner we went down to the Beach Shopping Center and ate at Pastel’s.  After dinner Dominica and Ramona went to CVS to pick up some baby supplies while Liesl and I stopped by GameStop to trade in a used video game that has been kicking around the house: True Crime L.A.  We had bought the game a year or two ago for the PS2 simply because it was the only HD game that we could find for the system and wanted to test out the capabilities.  Dominica had picked it up for me for just $4.99 used.  It wasn’t the type of game that I enjoy and it was purely to test the technical capabilities of the PS2.  We tried it.  Saw what it could do and neither of us had any interest in playing the game at all.  So I was happy to get $1.83 for my trade in.  Better than having it go into storage someday for no reason.

We went back to the house and just hung out for the evening talking.  We haven’t seen Ramona in months.  Ramona had originally needed to get into the city very early tomorrow morning but her early appointment was cancelled so she decided to crash at our place.

We all stayed up way too late.  It was around one thirty when we finally turned in for the night and Ramona and I need to be up at six tomorrow morning so that I can drive her to the train station so that she can get to work in the city by eight.  I am working starting at six thirty tomorrow morning.  So it is going to be a short night.

January 18, 2009: Nothing Day

After the long day of work yesterday today was a very much needed day of rest and relaxation.  I did not get the long, solid night of sleep for which I had been hoping because I was paged out at five in the morning but at least I was able to go back to bed after a little while and then proceeded to sleep in rather late.

Today Dominica and I really just did nothing, and it was great.  We relaxed, watched some shows on Hulu and just hung out.  I spent the day with the only computer that I was using being the laptop in the living room that we have sitting on the ottoman.  I didn’t do any real work all day.  I did do a little for the office but not a large amount.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and I am “off” from work.  I will need to log in in the morning for a little while to put in my hours and to make sure that everything is okay but I won’t be working for most of the day.  Ramona is coming to visit in the afternoon.

Tuesday and Thursday of this week I am working the early shift at the office so I will be up very early which is going to be quite the shock to my system after having moved onto “Liesl Time” which means staying up late and getting up late.  Wednesday is my most likely day to drive out to Warren.  We will see how the weather is that morning.

Tuesday is inauguration day.