Got up at five thirty this morning and did a little reading.  I finished reading “Dynamic Software Development” by Timothy Wells.

Dominica dropped me at the train station and I was off to Warren.  I actually made the early train today and remembered to use the off-peak round-trip tickets, too.

This is my first time working out at Warren in almost a month, I think.  It has definitely been a while.  Just one thing or another has been cropping up making the trip rather impractical.

Today was a nice, slow day.  For lunch, a friend and I went to a Georgian restaurant on Route 22.  We’ve been trying to go to this restaurant for weeks and just have not been able to schedule it.  We turned out to be the only people looking to eat there during the entire lunch hour!  It was completely empty when we arrived and not one person came while we ate out entire meal except for one woman, just as we were paying, who was just looking to see a menu.

The food was quite good.  The menu was tiny.  The only main meal that they had from the menu was the chicken kabob and the only appetizer was the eggplant wraps.  I told them that I was a vegetarian so they made me an awesome mushroom and potato stew.  It was very good.  I also got the eggplant wraps as an appetizer, they were really excellent.

We also tried a bottle of Georgian cherry soda – which was really good.  If I had had a car there I would have bought several bottles from them.  I love Georgian soda.  It has far less carbonation as American sodas do and is sweetened with cane sugar not high fructose corn syrup.  The combination means that it has far fewer calories as it does not need as much sugar and that the sugar that it has is better for you.  It’s kind of like a blend between soda and kool-aid.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly.  Nothing exciting at work but there was some additional house excitement.  It seems that after last week asking us to move the closing date forward for them the sellers are now asking that we move it back as far as possible.  It’s not a big issue since they don’t want to move back past October 25th, which is when our paperwork from the bank will expire.  They know that we have that limitation and that delaying past there means that they have no buyers for their house and this is a pretty bad market to be losing buyers in.  Most likely if they did do that we would renegotiate to buy the house in several months at a lower cost but that would be rough.  We can’t be doing anything extra like that with the baby right around the corner.

So the original closing target date was October 15th.  The originally asked, last week that is, to target the 7th to which we agreed to try to accomodate and now they are shooting for the 24th which is the last possible day that the attorneys could schedule (the 25th is actually on the weekend.)  The 7th was going to be awful for us since we are away that weekend and the extra time would cost us money and not give us any benefits since we wouldn’t even be around to spend the weekend in the house or to move anything.  Going past the 17th, though, means that we lose the one weekend that we do have to do casual moving.  The 17th is our perfect date so we are hoping that that is what gets scheduled.  It means two days less escrow, both Dominica and I will have another paycheck before the closing and we still get two weekends in which to move.

We are just waiting for some closing date to get scheduled so that we can hire our movers.  That is our biggest point of stress at the moment – other than the stress of paying for this house – just trying to find movers and get that scheduled and to know that there really is a window in which the moving can be done.

If we get the extra weekend, the 18th and 19th, then we are planning to take the Mazda PR5 (which we are picking up when we go back home for Joe’s wedding next weekend) back and forth two or three times with loads of small items to take to the new house if at all possible.  We are guessing that with just a couple of good loads in the hatchback that we can move just about all of the small stuff from the apartment to the house.  Only the furniture and boxes of books would be left for the movers.  The books are just too heavy and too likely to hurt my back to bother moving.  It will only take about two boxes for all of them since so few are here in Newark with me that it is totally worth having the movers just take them with the furniture.  If we manage to get the Verizon FIOS hooked up before the movers come then we might even move the computers early and have that out of the way.  At least everything but the workstation that I use to work for Citi.  But even that I might be able to reduce to a laptop.

The only really tough piece to coordinate will be the plants and the daily use computer equipment.  None of it is hard to move just hard to get moved when it all needs to go right at the last second.  The plants might be staying in Newark until a week after the movers take the furniture away.

My trip home this evening went great.  I caught the Summit shuttle and did a little listening to IT Conversations on my iPod and then managed to just make it on to the express train to Broad Street without any problems.  They really need to move the shuttle schedule up by like one minute so that we never miss that train.  There are several people on the shuttle running for that train every day.

On the train ride home I manage to finish reading “Getting It Right: Business Requirement Analysis Tools and Techniques” by Kathleen Hass, Don Wessels and Kevin Brennan.  I am on quite the roll reading-wise this week.  Three books in three days completed.

Dominica decided that she was in the mood for salad and a sandwich from Eli’s tonight.  So I ordered in and we had food in around an hour.  I messed up the order, though, and had to run down to the deli downstairs to complete the order.  Oops.  I really hate placing orders by phone, especially when I have nothing written down in front of me and no one listens to make sure that I ordered everything.  I am very had at that.

We watched a little bit of Magnum P.I. and The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and both went to bed very early.  I am trying to make sure that I am not falling behind on sleep this week to give my back as much opportunity as possible to repair itself.  Today was better than yesterday so we continue to move in the right direction.  I am home all day tomorrow with no need to walk around outside except to walk Oreo so I am hopeful for a good day of progress.

Anonymous Game Developers (AGDInteractive) have finally, after several years, released their remake of Sierra’s classic Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire.  AGDI has, in the past, created remakes of King’s Quest I and King’s Quest II.  However, these two titles have mysteriously vanished from their website along with any information or mention of them along with the links that used to allow you to download the games.  I no longer know how to get copies of these classics which is extremely sad.

Quest for Glory II can be downloaded, for free, from AGDI’s web site.  I downloaded a copy, since you never know when they are going to abandon their work and forget about it, but do not anticipate having an opportunity to play it for quite some time.  I really hope to have a chance to play it though.  AGDI’s version of the games are generally far superior to Sierra’s ancient originals.

Both KQ1 and KQ2 I played through several times from Sierra back in the day along with other Sierra titles like KQ3 and The Black Cauldron.  But I have never actually played any of the Quest for Glory series so having an opportunity to play one remade by AGDI should prove to be a real treat.  I am confused, though, that they chose to begin with the second title in the series and not to begin with the first.

I did some digging around on the AGDI website and in the forums someone asks what has happened to the original KQ1 and KQ2 downloads and the answer was that they have temporarily been suspended from downloading until an update of some sort can be made available.  If you have never played them, keep an eye open on the web site as the games are truly classics in the strictest sense.  In the mean time, join me in trying out Quest for Glory II.  I know that my old college roomate, Jamie Quaderer, will be excited.  He was playing Quest for Glory IV on his Intel 80486 based PC when we first started college in Flint, Michigan in 1994.

I was completely exhausted this morning and forgot to set my alarm.  Dominica woke me up and asked if I was going to Warren today.  I jumped out of bed and got ready with blinding speed.  I actually did alright this morning, as far as getting ready for work goes, and it probably worked out for the best that I got an extra fourty minutes of sleep.  It was necessary.

Nothing special to report about work today.  Very much “the usual”.  For lunch three of us went out to Baja Fresh on NJ22 near the office.  As we were leaving we discovered a new Georgian restaurant that had just opened next door.  We stopped in and checked out the menu.  The place looks really nice and I am very curious to try out the cuisine.  The plan is for us to go there for lunch next Wednesday.

I left work at five and just barely made it to the shuttle that takes me from the office to the Summit Train Station.  I actually had to run a little bit to catch the shuttle.  Then, when the shuttle got us to the train station, there were huge lines for the ticket machines as well as the human-manned window.  So I gave up and ran for the train which was on the platform.  I just made it!

It is nearly impossible for me to catch the express train to Broad Street Station but on rare occassions it actually works out.  The timing has to be perfect and there is no way for me to buy a ticket.  The really annoying bit is that there is no way for me to buy a round trip ticket in the morning so that this wouldn’t be a problem!  Argh.

The express gets me to Newark very quickly as there are no stops whatsoever between Summit and Newark.  The timing of the train was perfect so that I stepped off of the platform and saw Dominica pulling up in front of the train station.  I had to run to catch her as well, it was just that kind of day, but I did catch her and got a lift home to Eleven80.  It was a very convenient day from that respect.  Almost no walking at all.

On the ride home I completed reading John Man’s 2006 title “Attila“.  Before starting another book I will be catching myself up on podcasts from IT Conversations.

We ordered in some dinner quite early from Golden City and watched a little bit of the sixth season of Frasier.  Dominica has been watching Frasier without me so I have actually missed about half of the episodes thus far.

My PacSafe Metro 200 bag arrived today from Amazon even though Dominica had only ordered it yesterday.  I will not have any call to use it tomorrow but on Friday I will be stuffing everything into it that I need for a day in the city and trying it out.  I look forward to being able to bring everything with me that I might want or need while out in the city without having to pick and choose based on weight, plans and weather.  Because I will be able to carry my digicam into the city on a regular basis hopefully I will be producing many more pictures of life in the New York Metro area.

I am hoping that when I get a NetBook that that will fit into this bag as well although there is every chance that it will not.  This is not a particularly large bag and the books that I often carry only barely fit into it.  A NetBook is very small but it would have to be quite small to have any hope of fitting in.  It sure would be great if it did.  That would do wonders for my soon-to-be very long commute from Peekskill to Manhattan.

The Acer Aspire One, which I am interested in, is 9.8″ x 6.7″ which just might fit.  The book that I tried putting into the bag this evening, “Presentation Zen”, is 9.1″ tall and does fit well, but there is not very much room to spare.

While we are on the topic of Peekskill I should also mention that yesterday we received confirmation that the sellers had signed the paperwork for the house and that it was on its way back over to our lawyer so that the house buying process could continue.  By late this afternoon the paperwork had been received by our attorney’s office and was on its way to our bank in Rochester who should have received it before the end of the day.  So hopefully we will have more status information very soon.  The next major step is the bank’s assesment of the house.

After Dominica went to bed, I had some work that needed to be done this evening so I stayed up late working on that.  No rest for the weary, I guess.