I didn’t even wake up when the alarm rung this morning.  I was completely exhausted.  Dominica had gone to bed several hours before me last night and wasn’t feeling too bad this morning although she was quite tired too.  She woke me up and we got ready as quickly as we could.  The goal was to be out the door and on the road before six in the morning.

We did pretty well and were in the car around five forty.  We noticed that the front passenger tire was soft so we drove straight to the Exxon-Mobil station on the Peekskill roundabout just north of town at the foot of the mountain by Annsville Creek.  I put air into the tires (while wearing my suit) while Dominica ran inside to Dunkin Donuts and picked up egg and cheese croissants for breakfast that we could eat while we drove.

This morning is actually our first time ever making a trip, other than commuting, from our new home in Peekskill.  The drive that we are taking today, heading west on US 17 through New York’s Southern Tier is one that we are probably going to get to know quite well in the years ahead.

The drive went pretty well. We hit rain that we had to drive through almost the entire way but it was not too heavy.  We realized, once we were far too far away from the house, that we had accidentally left one of the sliding glass doors open so the house was open to the elements while we were gone.  The thermistat was set very low so the heater was unlikely to kick on but we did not want it raining into the nursery while we were away for two whole days.

We arrived in Waverly, New York at just before nine in the morning.   The trip took us just a smidgen over three hours with a breakfast stop and one bathroom stop along the way in the rain.  Not too shabby.

A little known fact about Waverly is that it is the largest producer of cheese for pizzas in the eastern United States.

We managed to arrive early enough that we were able to visit and say hello to everyone at the Birney’s home before we were all to drive into Elmira for the funeral itself.  The funeral mass was at ten at St. Casimir’s on Demarest Parkway in Elmira.  This is actually the first time that I have attended a funeral mass.

After the funeral itself there was a reception held at another church not very far away.  I’m not sure of the name of the other church.  The church ladies there made a very nice meal and we had a really nice time visiting with family.  There were a lot of people that I have not seen in a very long time and quite a few whom I have never met before.  The last really large and all-inclusive family gathering from Dominica’s mother’s side of the family was about eight years ago, just before Dominica and I started dating.  So I was in the somewhat strange position of having been around for seven years but having a lot of people not know who I was or to only know me through long distance correspondance and not in person.

After the reception the entire family moved from Elmira back to Waverly to spend the day at the Birney’s.  Dominica and I decided that we should run to Sayre, Pennsylvania where our hotel is so that we could check in, drop off our stuff and change into casual clothing since we had been all dressed up all morning since leaving Peekskill.

We have a room at the Sayre Best Western Grand Victorian Inn for the weekend.  We were very excited to learn that they accepted pets.  Large ones too which is very nice even though Oreo is just little.  He can go anywhere but people with large pets often have issues traveling with them.  I always appreciate hotels that accept them.  There was only a ten dollar daily charge for Oreo.  Although honestly if people knew how cute and sweet he was we would get a discount for bringing him with us.

The hotel was very nice – not what we were expecting to find in Sayre at all.  I suspect that it is used extensively by Guthrie Health and Medical Center which is very close by.  The hotel used to be called The Guthrie  The room was large and they managed to get us a king room even though they had been unavailable when we had first called.  The bed was nice and the bathroom was one of the nicest that we have seen in a long time.  Oreo loved the room.  He gets all excited when he gets to go to a hotel and he run around and jumps on the bed and rolls around.  He is so funny.

We changed and unpacked and headed back to the Birnie’s for the afternoon.  The crowd there was pretty serious, roughly seventy three people, I believe that I heard someone say.  Luckily the house is very large with several large gathering rooms all connected by circular walkway plus a really big enclosed patio area so seventy-three people was not an impossibility.  It was pretty cold outside, though, so the children were inside a significant portion of the evening and they take up proportionately a lot more space that the more sedintary adults.

We had a really good time getting to visit with everyone.  There are so many people that we get to see so infrequently and there were quite a few that I was just meeting for the first time.  For most everyone this was their first time seeing Dominica pregnant as well and, as you can tell from the baby countdown, she is very, very pregnant.  We were very concerned about the drive this weekend being so close to the due date but we figured out that if her water broke we could hop in the car and head straight for Peekskill and most likely would be there in plenty of time.

We hung out with the family until a bit after nine when the “party” was dwindling and we were completely unable to stay awake any longer.  It has been both a very long and very stressful week and we are both very short on sleep.  It is quite amazing that we made it as long as we did.

We got back to the hotel and were right off to sleep.  We will be heading back to Peekskill sometime tomorrow afternoon.

3 Work Days Left for Dominica.

Today was one of the busiest, craziest days in a long time.  So much to tell, I am going to put the headlines for the day here for those without time to keep up.  Today: Dominica’s grandfather passed away, Dominica and I moved from Newark to Peekskill, Dominica got a Playstation 3 and Wii Fit for her belated birthday and my dad and my aunt Sharon came to Peekskill to visit.

Last night, Dominica and I stayed up packing until well after two thirty in the morning.  It was probably around three when we finally got to bed.  Way too late.  Neither of us really slept at all either as we knew that we were not going to really get any sleep and there was just so much to do today.

We were awoken by the building’s fire alarm.  We should have guessed that this would happen.  The universe was not about to let us make it out of Newark without another fire alarm.  So instead of sleeping in until the last minute we were very much awake at six fifty five in the morning with almost no sleep.  This is going to make for a very long day indeed.

Since the fire alarm got woken us up we decided that it just made sense to get up and to get moving since there was just so much to do today.  A crazy amount of stuff.

The movers arrived just before ten which worked out perfectly for us as it gave us almost three hours to work on the apartment and to get all of the last minute stuff packed and ready.  Had they arrived right at eight it might have been pretty rough.

Before the movers arrived I walked over to Airlie Cafe and picked up breakfast.  The owner of Airlie bought breakfast for us as today is the last day that they know for sure that we are going to be in town.  Airlie is one of the few things in Newark that we are going to miss.

I also took the chance while the Mazda was out (Dominica forgot to cancel it for this morning) to load it up with as much stuff as we were sure was going to travel in it.  My office desktops and the bin of our last minute office equipment like my office router and final monitor went into the car so that they would be out of the way of the movers and ready for us to drive them up to Peekskill.

The movers arrived at ten in the morning and got straight to work.  They moved our boxes and furniture all out to their truck in just two hours.  Very impressive considering that they needed to go down sixteen stories by way of the elevator to get between the apartment and the truck.

The biggest problem of the morning arose when the smoke detectors (separate from the fire alarms) started going off on our floor.  They weren’t going off as if there was smoke but the way that they always do in Eleven80 – just beeping every 20 – 30 seconds for no reason.  Two alarms in our apartment and at least three out in the hall were going off.  Each individual beep sent Oreo into a panic.  The poor thing.  We were forced to spend over an hour with him locked in the bathroom with the shower running to cover the sound.  He was completely terrified and shaking horribly.  It was very sad.

At noon we hopped into the Mazda and headed north for Peekskill.  It is a cold and rainy day today.  Not ideal for moving but better than if it was too warm.

We got to the new house and unloaded the Mazda.  We had about an hour to relax before the movers arrived to unload the truck.  The unloading started off pretty smoothly with the basement office getting moved in early.

It was around three thirty, while the unloading had just begun, that dad and aunt Sharon arrived at the house.  They had left Leicester, New York at nine thirty this morning.  So the trip took them almost exactly six hours, but they had spent much of the time driving at no more than thirty miles per hour as they came through southern western New York in heavy snows, especially near Binghamton.  So dad estimates that in good weather the trip will take between five and five and a half hours.  Google Maps puts the trip at just under five and a half.

Just minutes after dad and aunt Sharon arrived at the house, Dominica’s phone rang with her mother calling to tell her that her maternal grandfather, Papa, had passed away last night.  He was at home, apparently watching the World Series, when he just went peacefully.  Dominica was, of course, a mess and unable to continue helping with the unloading of the truck so most of everything was just brought into the living room as I wasn’t sure where a lot of it should go.

Originally Dominica had an appointment with her midwife and clinic at four fifteen this afternoon – less than an hour from when she found out about her grandfather.  So she had to call and cancel the appointment.  That is a bit of a problem because we already had to push off the appointment from last week and she is so far along that not seeing her midwife for any amount of time can be problematic.  It is especially necessary for her to get an appointment as this is the appointment where they make decisions about her job and when she is or is not able to keep working.  Planning and scheduling needs to be done and Dominica is getting stressed not knowing what is going to happen and when.  She was unable to schedule another appointment as the schedule this week is really unknown and she is really upset today and really just can’t make that decision yet.  So that is up in the air right now.

The move wrapped up by five.  We were really happy with the movers from Suddath in Wayne, New Jersey and United Van Lines.  The whole move went very easily and smoothly.  That was so painless!

For dinner we all went over to the New City Diner on Crompond Road.  It was the quickest, easiest place to go – one of the very few restaurants that Dominica and I know how to get to.  After dinner we went down to the Beach Shopping Center so that Dominica could run into the dollar store there to pick up some shower supplies.  While we were at the plaza I ran into GameStop to check out what they had since I am on the hunt for Dominica’s very late birthday present.

We were in luck that GameStop had what we needed so I bought Dominica a Sony PlayStation 3, the PS3 BluRay Remote Control (so that the unit works more like a BluRay Player than a video game console) as well as Wii Fit for the Nintendo Wii which she really wants and almost no one has in stock.  I’ve been concerned about being able to get the Wii Fit for Christmas and now we already have it!

Dominica was very surprised to suddenly have a PS3.  She seems to have been secretly wanting one for reasons beyond its ability to play BluRay movies.  In fact, she seems to not even be that concerned about being able to watch BluRays and is more focused on being able to get some games for it even though neither of us really knows any games that we really would want for it.  I was going to get Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion – Game of the Year Edition but they did not have any a the store so I will need to get that online tomorrow.

She was very excited to be able to get a Wii Fit as she has been wanting one but they have been sold out everywhere and seem to be pretty much impossible to find.  Even Amazon doesn’t have any.  I had thought about getting it for her for Christmas but I am assuming that she will want to use it some after the baby comes in a few weeks and it will be pretty much impossible to hide from her between now and Christmas.  So I just gave it to her tonight.

We went back to the house and dad and aunt Sharon set about working on the nursery.  There is a lot of painting and wall work that needs to be done this week – especially in the nursery.  There was a wallpaper border in the nursery that was the first thing to come down.  Aunt Sharon actually managed to get the border all down this evening!

Dominica worked on unpacking.  There is a ton of unpacking to do and it will take us a few weeks before we even begin to get through any amount of it, but at least today we have a nice start.  A lot of stuff just needs to be nicely boxed, protected and moved into the attic.

Dominica had called into the office this morning to talk to them about her back.  Her back was really hurting last night while we were packing and she was sure that after a whole day of packing today that she would need tomorrow to recover or else she might be in far worse shape.  So she called her manager first thing this morning and asked what the office situation was like tomorrow.  He said that they were fine so it would be no problem if she took a sick day.  So she is off and we are able to stay in Peekskill tonight!  Now we get to be the first (or among the first at least) people to stay in our new home (since we bought it.)

I spoke to Maids on Call today and scheduled them to come out on Thursday afternoon to Newark to clean the apartment.  That is a real relief.  They will be doing the final cleaning so that we can get out of the apartment on Friday morning.  That is one less thing that we need to worry about before we are done with this very long week.

Tomorrow morning I will be experimenting with taking Metro North from Peekskill to Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan and then the 4 & 5 Subway line from Grand Central to Wall Street.  This will be my first time ever riding the Metro North train or using Grand Central Terminal.  So who knows how that will go.  I’m nervous that this is going to be really complex and time consuming which will be awful as the quality of life in our new home is really dependent upon the quality of the commute into the city.

Andy called tonight to let me know that email and instant messaging is down.  I had no idea since I am in the new house without any Internet access (we get hooked up with Optimum Online tomorrow morning if all goes well.)  Talk about awful timing.  Apparently it has been down all afternoon and I was just now finding out.  Craptastic.  (Or, as Katie would say, craptacular.)

I spent an hour or two, while everyone else was working on the house, working with Andy by phone or attemting to use SSH from my BlackBerry to fix the server.  We had no luck doing any repairs tonight but were able to determine that it was not our fault but that the data center had, either intentionally or through gross incompetence, power cycled my entire rack of servers!  Almost all of the servers had been about to flip a full year of uptime this weekend too.  So it was pretty obvious that they had all just restarted a few hours earlier.  Email and IM simply didn’t turn back on.

Andy called the data center several times but couldn’t get anyone on the phone or to get anyone to respond to voicemail.  This indicates that they probably allowed the entire data center to lose power and everyone under the sun is calling them to yell at them and to get things fixed.  What a long day.

The really exciting thing today is that we got to sleep in our new home.  The movers set up our bedroom so we have our bed and everything so we can sleep pretty comfortably.  We tried to get to bed early but didn’t succeed so well.  We went to bed around ten thirty or so.