Travel

Trip To NJ Thursday

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Today is the normal day that I have scheduled myself to goto our NJ office to spend time with the majority of my team. Now that the office they are in has been renovated they are all back in the office instead of working remotely part of the time. It isn’t practicle to have them come to NYC anymore so I goto NJ. The trip is not the most fun I have had getting to work, but it is still better than the trip I had to take to goto Kingston when I was at Partsearch. That was a crazy day.

In order to make it to NJ I do need to get up 2 hours earlier than I normally would. And the commute is long. In the morning it is about an hour and a half depending on traffic. Going home it is over 2 hours door to door. I almost didn’t make it today. The 7 train stopped running due to a mechanical problem with a train, so it stopped at 5th ave station. I had to walk to Port Authority to catch my bus. That typically would be fine, it is only a few avenues but I was on a tight schedule and if I missed the bus I was aiming for it would mess the whole day up. The whole situation aggravated me since I missed catching an earlier 7 train by 2 seconds (literally the doors closed in my face) and that train would have gotten me to Time Square since it was in front of the one that I was on that got stuck at 5th ave. But I digress. I was able to make it to the bus with minutes to spare.

The rest of the trip was uneventful. The day however was full of excitement. We had an issue during the day that kinda messed up my meeting schedule, but issues and emergencies kinda trump typical scheduled stuff. With the excitement out of the way I had a semi normal afternoon before running out to catch the bus going home. The past few return trips from NJ have been bad since I have gotten dropped of on the street far away from Port Authority. It seems if you get a bus stuck on the line into the terminal it can take an hour to go from the 30’s on 10th to the terminal. Thankfully this bus got out of the tunnel via a different exit and it only took like 20 minutes to go 2 blocks (yeah this is why I don’t like bus’s) to the terminal. I was home in around 2 hours 10 minutes door to door. Not great, but not horrible. I stayed in after that because I was just tired. Thankfully tomorrow is a work from home day.

I will say that my issues with the iPhone as a phone aside, I would probably go crazy without it on the bus. I am able to listen to music, watch some podcast’s, read the news on the internet, or just watch my location slowly move on google maps. It helps pass the time!

Lazy Sunday

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The 7 train isn’t running this weekend. That meant I had an interesting time getting home late last night / early this morning. I had to take the Q to Queens-borough Plaza and wait for a shuttle bus to take me to my stop. What could be a short trip took over an hour with all the waiting. I didn’t get home till after 2:30AM and into bed until after 3.

I didn’t get up until after 12. I felt like crap. That is what happens when I mess up my sleeping patterns. I had breakfast and felt a bit better. Thankfully today is/was a lazy day. I am doing some laundry and hanging out. It is nice out, but I just want to relax so I haven’t been out today.

Since I have no food in the house apparently I am debating on what to order for dinner.

Tuesday at The Office

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Today was an at the office day. I had meetings back to back from 9:30 to 5PM. I did get about 45 minutes for lunch at 12, but it was a working lunch since I went out to grab food with my team. It was a good day. Even with lots of meetings, I got allot done.

After work I headed uptown I got a haircut. It was cold to walk around with less hair, but I always like getting one. After that I swung by Macy’s to look for a small wheeled piece of luggage. I already have a wheeled piece of luggage that fits in the airline over head bins. For overnight trips it is way too big. It is good for 4-7 day trips. For overnight trips I have been using one of two pieces of ancient Lucas Luggage bags. When I say ancient I mean it. Both the small duffle bag and the carry on bag I have from Lucas I got when I was in Hight School. I don’t want to carry then if I am walking to the subway or running for the train, etc so I am looking for a piece that I can carry and wheel and is around the same size as what I currently have. Unfortunately Macy’s didn’t have what I wanted. Either it was way too expensive, or the wrong color. How Swiss Army charges more than Tumi for a bag, I will never know. I am off to the internet to see if I can find the bag I liked in the color I want.

My Day With The MINI Cooper S

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If you know me, you know that I don’t have a car. The last car I had was my 1999 Mustang that I broke the lease on when I moved back to NYC from Baton Rouge. I miss that car, but I digress. Living in Manhattan really didn’t make it feasible for me to have a car. Now that I am back in Queens I haven’t really needed one, but in the event I did I signed up for a Zip Car membership. Apparently I haven’t needed a car since my annual membership fee had to renew before I actually used the service.

For John’s AC weekend I couldn’t find a ride that was feasible, so I rented one. I got a MINI Cooper S from Zip Car. I got it because I wanted something small and sporty. Let me tell you, that car is both. I wouldn’t sit in the back seat, but the front was comfy. The car handled fantastically. I say that after driving it in pouring rain and crazy wind from the residual Hurricane that happened to be passing through the day I decide to drive 3 hours. The trip down to AC really did suck, but the car handled great in the rain. I had to keep looking at the speedometer to realize how fast I was going in the heavy rain all the time because I would be flying and not even realize it. For me sometimes that is a good thing since I like a bit of speed, but not in heavy rain.

The ride home was even better since it was a bright sunny (dry) morning. The 30+ MPG was also a plus. If you are thinking I am a commercial for the MINI, you would be wrong. I was critiquing it so much because I have been thinking about having my own car again, and the MINI is a candidate. I was thinking about buying or leasing allot more when I actually had the car about 2 weeks ago. Since I started the new job I am reconsidering the need. I will have another chance to play with the MINI when I drive out to John’s wedding this Saturday. I am renting another one.

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My Blog Entry For Sunday 6-29-2008

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Yesterday and today were both uneventful. I wanted to relax this weekend since next weekend is the holiday and I don’t know if I will get a chance to rest then! I cleaned up my apartment. That took some time. I got some storage crates that I ordered online so I cleaned up a closet that was in dire need of a sorting. I need to get some more of the storage devices. I am thinking of some to use under my bed. I will see how much crap I have left to deal with before I buy more.

I am also getting rid of an old piece of luggage. This Samsonite luggage was very useful when I traveled. I lived out of it for months. Unfortunately with the extra fees for oversized luggage on airlines now a days I can’t see ever using this again. I haven’t used it in a while so off it goes anywhere but my apartment!

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Fathers Day

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This fathers day I was supposed to have dinner with my parents and they would spend time with my sister Sunday morning. Like many plans in my family that setup changed at the last minute so I found myself at a backyard party my sister threw at her house. Flickr photo stream is here. As much as I don’t like the two hours plus trip to get to my sisters, I usually have a good time. Sunday was beautiful day. It was the first time I was at the house and able to use the pool.

It was a great day all around. How can you really complain when you sit around and eat, lie around in the pool play with the kids in the pool? When I wasn’t in the pool I kept cool by siting at the patio table and Zachary kept coming over with a watering bucket and wet my feet. For some reason he loved doing it, and it kept him busy for like 90 minutes.

The only down side really of visiting is that the drive home is usually horrible with tons of traffic on a Sunday night. Compound that on top of the fact that I am not a huge fan of sleeping over when there are tons of other people over. There just isn’t enough places to sleep comfortably. I will say that I do get in ample reading on NJT on the train ride out. Going home the ride sucks, but I would rather riding in the car with my parents if there are there than taking a train home and dealing with the limited sunday night schedule.

I still need to figure out what to get my dad for fathers day, and his birthday for that matter. He is now help, since he has no idea what he wants.

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Family Travels

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My sister and niece are going on a two week trip to Hong Kong on Tuesday. One of her best friends moved there about two years ago with her family and my sister is going to visit. Her friends twin daughters are also friends of my niece, so she is excited to go visit. While they are away my nephew will spend a week with my mom, since Michael could only be home 1 week, since he had to work the next one. My mom is taking him to Florida for the week to play in the sand, and do what other 18 month olds do.

Recently Zachary has become attached to Elmo. He is the first kid in my family to finally like the red muppet. I am a fan of Elmo, so I have been trying to get all the little cousins in my family to like him, but none have been as attached to him as Zach seems to be. I am trying to find him an appropriately sized Elmo doll for him to take on his trip. The one I ordered seems to have gotten lost in shipping.

And the farthest I am going for my vacation next week is to Manhattan for a hair cut.

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Dam Cold

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Either I am getting sick again (2nd time in 2 months) or the humidity or something messed me up on my trip to Atlanta this weekend. I am now feeling how I get right before I get a cold. I also get this feeling when I am allergic to something in the air. My gut is saying it is a cold. I need to get to the Cold Ez, or that ZiCam that Michael got me into when I got sick at his place in December. Either way when I get home I am going to take something. I am on the plane now, and it is not very comfortable feeling this way in the air. I have a bad feeling that my ear’s are going to not react well when we land. I used to have horrible problems flying when i was a kid and a teenager. As an adult it has been allot better, but every so often I fly and have issues. Fingers crossed that this landing my ears are ok!