The next step in my journey was a Red eye flight to Newark. I pretty much slept the whole time. Not that I slept well but it did make the trip go fast. Another thing that made it go fast was the fact that we arrived in Newark an hour early? How does that work? If we can get there an hour early why didn’t we just schedule it that way? I guess that is one way to pad your ontime arrivals.
Trained down to PA and spent the weekend in Levittown. Saw most everybody in the few days I had there.
Having been gone from work for so long, I decided to head back into NY earlyish on Sunday and head into the office to get settled. We had a bunch of new servers to put in so I coaxed Pop into coming up and helping me put them in. I thought it would be a fun day but unfortunately, we were missing the disk arrays. We also ran into trouble getting the OS loaded. It turned out later, after Jordan fought with this for a long time, to be a bad external CD drive we were trying to use. Ahh well. It is too bad we didn’t get it up. It was probably good for me to remember how annoying some of these things can be and how long it can really take to do seemingly simple things.
The week went too quickly. Went out for golden Tee on Monday. I think I actually won a game. W00t!
Was way too beat to go out on Tuesday w/ the pool people. Passed out on the couch as I got home.
The Twins came up on Wednesday. We went down to china town and went to Joe’s Shanghai for some soup dumplings. This is one of my favorite NY restaurants and I try to get down to 9 pell street when I make it to NY. Jesse was “not hungry” (or maybe was sketch by the food), but Becky dug right in. It was a good meal and I always like introducing people to good new things. Afterwards, we headed down to ground zero. Supposedly they started on the construction but it still looks the like the same hole in the ground. I really wish they would stop the bickering and build something.
This was the day that Bush had his Iraq speech. I missed it but we saw part of the dems rebuttal when we stopped for a bathroom break. It seems the Dems, even though they took congress are still very much, “That isn’t a good plan”, without offering an alternative plan. Ugh, somebody needs to step up and offer some options. I am halfway through the Baker and co report on Iraq and that seems to be a pretty decent plan. It even seems like Bush is following a good portion of it. Problem is, as seems to be endemic in the administration, is I don’t see them being up front about what they are doing. I always get the feeling that I am treated like a 5 year old child that has to be protected from the real plans. Anyway…
Thursday was the Christmas party. Had a good time, danced a bit, ate a bit, drank a bit more. The bar was a bit weak on the good stuff. The Vodka was absolute and the beer Budweiser, for example. I decided to switch to wine and, as Matt put it, “Bad white is usually better than bad red, at least it’s chilled”. After the party, we continued back to our golden tee bar. As fun as that was, I have had better thought out plans. The next morning, I had the option of dragging myself in and hurting all day, or sleeping a bit late and hopefully being useful. I chose the later and it was the right choice, I actually managed to get a good bit done.
Friday evening, I headed back up to the catskills. We did a couple little tasks, like putting up the mailbox, etc. Mostly just hung out in the country.
Came back early on Sunday, packed and got ready to head back to fair ol’ England.
Problem was, London had a big fuck you waiting for me. I returned to a stack of mail and a ruined bed. It seems the roof had leaked on my bed while I was gone and the whole thing was mildewed. Sweet! Looking through the mail, I had a notice that my council tax was overdue (though I am still waiting for a revised bill), another that says it was overdue so I had a court date and another that said I missed my court date and was found in default judgment against. I do like how they want 10 working days between any contact w/ them and their action on it but they can send me a letter to show up in person less than 10 working days away. So between the ruined bed and $1500 dollars in unexpected bills, it wasn’t exactly a welcoming feeling.
I got most of it straightened out. My landlord replaced the bed and I am dealing w/ the city. Ahh well… I am only back for a couple of weeks. First weekend in Feb I head to the Alps for some skiing. Since lat is in country, I am going to head to Den Haag the next weekend as well. Maybe Berlin the next so expect some updates in Feb.
Happy new years to everybody and hope everybody is well. Drop me a line some time.
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