Author: Doris

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!

Mom is going to retire this August, about one month away. Ready go fishing and do other things together … 🙂

Had a nice day at the pool – the apartment complex had the regular tot time today, but instead of the regular programming, we had a pool party! The kids had a great time playing in the shallow tot pool. Laurie, the apartment complex activites coordinator, had prepared snacks, crafts, lunch, everything. The moms talked about getting pregnant, potty training and sex, the regular mom stuff… Vince and Edda had a blast.

Once we got back from tot time, we headed down to NJ to IKEA where we picked out furniture for our apartment in SGP. I guess IKEA just opened a shop in SGP and our realtor said that we could pick our furniture out from the SGP IKEA catalog, so Jeremy looked through the catalog and we went to NJ to look at our furniture. My first reaction was that I had pretty much outgrown IKEA furniture, which I regard as first apartment post college furniture, and I just can’t image Vince and Edda jumping on any IKEA furniture and it lasting a microsecond. Some the IKEA stuff is really crappy – so basically we looked at the most expensive thing to get (which is still really cheap when you compare to Crate and Barrel or Room and Board). I think it will be durable enough. It’ll be great, Jeremy even put linens and dishes on the list, we’ll see how it goes.

IKEA is a great place for kids, they have free babysitting for 60 minutes, they have a place to eat, Edda loves the swedish meatballs, and thoughout the store, they have little play areas, like doll houses or ball rooms. It’s pretty fun.