Month: July 2005

So Jeremy and I have been together 10 years this month and to celebrate, we went to NYC overnight without the kiddos! Bob and Katherine kindly agreed to watch Vince and Edda for 24 hours and we headed into the city to have some fun.

Vince did great and loved the sleepover, Edda had a cold and was pretty fussy the whole time. Bob and Katherine didn’t get much sleep last night….

Since we don’t really know how to have fun in the traditional NYC way, we had Emily as our tour guide. Is it weird that my sisten-in-law was with us on our date? No way, it made the night a lot of fun.

So our train was late, so we got to the city at 4pm and took a cab to the Metropolitan Museum. All weekend, we only took cabs, what a luxury! Spent a few hours in the museum and then headed across Central Park to Bob and Katherine’s apartment. In Central Park, I looked for a geocache and to my delight, there were other people looking as well, it was my first time meeting other geocachers. We found the geocache and I signed the log and we headed to the apartment…

Then we called Emy and agreed to meet her after work in the meatpacking district. Our evening was to be within 2 blocks of her hotel. We first had drinks and appetizers at Highline, a Thai place. This was really funny because the place looks like it came right out of Sex and the City. We sat on beds in the middle of the restaurant and had some drinks.

Then we headed to a Cuban place for dinner… Waited about 1.5 hours before we were seated, but it was just fun with Jeremy and Emy. We watched our table given away by the owner to friends of his and the hostess was really apologetic, so we kept waiting. Had more drinks… Getting a little more tipsy… There was a band and people were dancing. I got a kiss on the head by a patron I smiled at and the waiter was cute! It was so loud and everyone was dressed up for a night on the town in sparkly tank tops.

We headed back to the apartment to crash and then back home this morning to pick up the kids.

OK, this is a better shot, so many gay men sitting on beds. The waitress in the shiny purple outfit and the tables with the bright pink fabric.

Emy and Jeremy in the meatpacking district in NYC. How hilarious is this? We are sitting on queen sized beds in the middle of the restaurant. Emy is enjoying a passion-fruit martini, Jeremy has a beer and I am drinking a mojito.

The week is over and we are closer than ever to moving to SGP.

Vince’s daycare agreed to extend his care until 4 pm next week on MWF which will give us more time to sort our stuff and have him happily entertained on Wed when the packers are here to do their work. We’ve been talking about buying a lunch box for him and what he wants to bring for lunch. Also, he’s going to have nap time at school as well. He actually want to go to Target right now to get his lunch box.

I spoke with Christine Smith today for a long time and arranged for an outing on Tuesday with the kids. Seems that things are going well with her, Jonathan just got back from three weeks in Germany. Now that her youngest, Dakota is in the first grade, she’s thinking about going to the Culinary Institute of America for cooking school, which is very exciting.

Vince has been learning to count. Usually, the order is one, two, three, four, five, six, fourteen, sixteen, fourteen, sixteen, eleventeen. Today he finally told me that eleventeen is not a number.

My monthly poker tournament is going on tonight. It’ll be at 10 person ring, and I’ve been reading up on my pot odds and strategy. We’ll see how I do. We’re all putting in 10 bucks into the pot. I’m excited.

I am going back to DC to pick up the car tags and Vincent’s pictures. Also, mow the lawn, wash the Master’s bedroom bed spreads and check out the ants problem. Get the house ready for our friends with their relatives to stay in about 10 days starting next Tuesday. Hope the lump in one of their relative’s lungs is benign.

Also will help to pressure-wash the deck of our friend at Softwind Drive. In the meantime, I will ask him some questions about the structural analysis. He is a civil engineer and has more advanced knowledge on this than me. He is really good, with a lot of experience. These days, I have asked him numerous times over the phones and in his house on this subject.

Will be back to Pittsburg tomorrow’s afternoon and look forward to seeing Mom next weekend.

Things are moving along…. We got our contract signed, the apartment lease is cancelled, our NYTimes subscription is cancelled, lots of things are happening.

I went to the post office today to mail some things (one thing for mom, it might take a few weeks to get there, I mailed it media mail) and I was really worried about mailing a rather large package to France. I had bought a nice bowl for Cindy and Patrice and the box turned out too large to take with us on the plane, so I had decided to mail it. I was worried that I might pay more to ship it than it cost to purchase it, but it was only $20 to mail. That was nice.

We had a wonderful afternoon, Ormere invited us over to their house for lunch (nuggets and corn, yum!) and she, her two boys Sammy and Michael and another mom, Tara and her son Ethan went to the Cold Spring park together. Its a really nice park, totally fenced in and lots of toys to play with. Vince and Edda had a nice time, although we had to leave before Ormere and Tara because Vince was really tired and couldn’t negotiate the playground politics.

We picked up Jeremy from work and finally Vince fell asleep at 5 pm which is why he’s up at 10 pm. Ran a bunch of errands, library to donate books, Babies R Us to return a crappy baby product and then to the Fed Ex office to pick up our immigration papers.

Moved yet again. Looks like our senior dev person wanted the other cube after all. sigh. i’m sorta pissed, but it’s cool to keep the peace. but i’m definitely in the bummier cube

So, I wanted to stay out of the house today since it’s a huge mess and I didn’t want to clean it. Also, we are pretty much running out of food and I don’t want to buy anymore, so there is nothing to eat in the house except mangos, cherries and rice. So Vince, Edda and I spent the day at Mc Donalds, Walmart, Barnes and Noble. It was a great day, cloudy, not too hot.

I exchanged emails today with Jame Derossitt, a friend of mine from UTAustin days. He’s doing well, living with his wife Katie and their 3 doggies in Memphis.

The kids were in a good mood throughout the day, only really grumping out at dinnertime when Jeremy was home to help navigate the bad mood. Dinner was pretty lame since we were having spaghetti without the proper spaghetti sauce, now we are down to canned tomatoes and spices, it really didn’t taste like a sauce and Vince was not convinced.

We’ve also found a good home for our gas grill. Our gas grill has been dragged around with us on so many moves and we don’t really use it, so I put it up on freecycle.com and 15 people emailed me back wanting our grill. I’m giving it to a person who works in a group home and the state funding got slashed this year and so no grills were approved for purchase. They are getting our grill! Go hamburgers!

Just moved cubes today. It’s now about 30 feet closer to the bathroom and the stairs. Wheee! I managed to somehow get the inside corner cube. I thought Alpana, the senior programmer, would take this cube, but she ended up taking the smaller one for some reason or another. Not that I’m complaining! laff. but anyways, I need to work more since my boss now has to walk by my office to get anywhere… doh!