#44 - Apartment living

Friday, February 17

Today I am thankful for furnished apartments at hotel rates.

I checked out of my hotel this morning.  Went to sleep early, got up at 4 and packed my room.  Somehow, my 3 roller boards and 1 backpack on the plane required 3 rollerboards, 3 backpacks, a full dirty clothes bag, and an armload of hung shirts and slacks.  Weird.

Work was awesome today.  I spent 8 out of 9 hours with my comanager, whom I like more and more each day.  He's such a good guy in every way.  I really like and admire him.

After work, I checked into my new hotel, the Hyatt House in Fishkill.  It's a nice place.  I have a 1 bedroom suite here, which is excellent.  The biggest change is not the 1 bedroom vs the hotel room.  It is the kitchenette. They call it a full kitchen, but it's not.  The stove has 2 burners that don't work well, there is no oven, and very little in the way of pots, pans, and cooking utensils.  But it has some, and so I can eat like a human being again.

After unpacking, I took a walk to Wal-Mart.  It's across the street and a parking lot.  I picked up some frozen chicken breasts, a noodles and cheese sauce in a box, butter, a little milk, oatmeal, sandwich bread: some staples on which I can base my meals for the next week.

Dinner ended up being Pasta Roni garlic and olive oil vermicelli, with a generous portion of grilled chicken, a couple blood oranges, sparkling grape juice, and whoppers for dessert.  I have enough leftovers to eat tomorrow night.  I have breakfasts and lunches and dinners mostly taken care of for the next week.  So I'll finally be caught up and living within my means.  That's very challenging when you have to eat out all the time.  Yuck.

So that's exciting.  Work continues to be fun and challenging, and all that good stuff.  The Knicks lost tonight, for the first time since I cared.  Jeremy Lin was kept quieter tonight, less able to pass the ball and make things happen.  Low assists for him tonight, but a good point total.  Assists probably need to go up.

And an explanation for yesterday: I had uploaded the pictures, and clicked "publish" and waited a few seconds, but not enough seconds, it seems.  So I saw it as unpublished in my log today.  Sorry, but not really my fault.  It's been a busy 24 hours.

Some kinda-random pics from my Saturday archive.  The first is of Lake Carmel (CAR-mull), which borders the hamlet of Carmel.  I've never seen a town called a ham before, but there are lots of hamlets here, which strikes me as another English oddity.  The second photo is of the hamlet.  The third photo is for my kids, to prove to them that the Dollar Tree is available here, as well.  Per our discussions, it really should be called the $1.08 tree due to sales tax, but it's not.  Off to bed with me now.  Tomorrow I'll head to the West of the Hudson and do some exploring.  I wanted to stay East, but I'm seeing fewer barriers to heading West now than I used to. Largely because my wife is in Oregon.  So I don't see her. ;->