The Journey Begins

Tonight is my last night in WV

In the morning I am leaving for Cincinnati, OH for the weekend. Sunday I will leave Cincinnati and head North to Cleveland where I will spend the night and head over to Albany on Monday.

The car is packed full with all the stuff that I can possibly get in there. Well I better get some sleep so I can hit the road early in the morning.

-c

Moving....

Sigh...

I have too much crap!

In the process of packing things for the move to Albany. My original plan was to move everything at once...I guess the saying of the best laid plans of mice and men do oft go astray...is true. The back up plan now is to load what necessities I can in the car and comeback for the big stuff.

The good thing is most of the things I own are still packed from when I moved from Morgantown back home in 2004. I think I am just going to wait until I get that stuff up to Albany then sort through it and pitch stuff as needed.

Its the stuff that I have acquired over the past 2 years that I have to pack up (mainly books and such) and get ready.

I wish I could just beam the crap up to Albany and not have to worry about packing it up, loading and unloading it off a truck and then figuring out where to put it once its out of the box.

I need to become a minimalist
-c

Home...Sweet...Home

As promised...

So as you know I was in Albany last week searching for somewhere to live. Well after looking at many dumps and few nice places I was a able to find the perfect place to live.

My place is a duplex in Ravena (approx. 15 minutes from work). My side of the house
is about 1600 square feet and it has a full basement. The first floor has a kitchen with laundry room, dining room, den with bay window, living room and sun room. Upstairs features one large bedroom with a huge closet, one medium size bedroom with 2 huge closets and one small bedroom with 2 normal sized closets and a bathroom. The kicker is that the landlord put a clause in the lease that would let me have a greyhound (hopefully this will happen eventually...).


On to the pictures....

The Front of the House

The Back Porch and Driveway

The Living Room, Dining Room and the "Sun Room"
(WARNING: Previous tenant was in the process of moving out)

The Kitchen

The Bedrooms (2 of 3)

**this one will be my study**

Overall a very nice apartment and in a quiet neighborhood.

Adios Facial Hair

Well I start work in less than 2 weeks...

I guess it is time to start looking "professional"

For the first time since February I am clean shaven.

Went from this ...
to...
Yeah so not a major improvement, still need a haircut.
Will probably let it grow back in eventually but I want to look decent for my new drivers license and work ID badge.
Anyway tomorrow I will post pictures of my apartment.

-c

Happy Independence Day!

Happy 4th of July!

All I can say is what an extended weekend.

Thursday after leaving Albany I headed over to visit my brother and his wife in Conn. and then hit the road early Friday morning back to WV. I spent from 7:30 am to 10:45 on (and off) the road.

7:30 am: Leave Conn.
4:30 pm: Arrive in Morgantown
5:30 pm: Leave Morgantown and head to Buckhannon
7:00 pm: Leave Buckhannon heading towards home
9:00 pm: Stop in Clendenin and visit grandparents
10:00 pm: Leave grandparents head towards home
10:15 pm: Arrive at the house
10:35 pm: Leave house head to granddad's
10:45pm: Arrive at granddad's

While I was home I found out that the trip to the Island was still happening and that my younger brother had already taken the boat up and was at the Island. By the time I got to my granddad's I was beat. I was so tired I had trouble falling asleep and ended up sleeping until 11:30 am Saturday morning. After getting up I headed to the Island where my brother and his friends where roasting a pig (mmm....pig!) for everyone to eat. After eating I went sking...Man can I tell I am out of shape not only with the extra poundage I have put on let alone the fact that my upper body strength is almost nonexistant , throw in all the trash in the river from the rain and it was pretty rough going on river. The rest if the day was spent swimming, eating and teaching people how to ski.Spent the night at the Island and layed around, swam, ate more pig, and took one more run on the skis. We decided to take the boat out Sunday becasue we were all beat and tired from all the fun we had. Sunday night I crashed and slept very well and long.

Monday I did somethings around the house and then came back up to Morgantown to get the rest of my stuff and to attend my Homegroup Pig Roast this evening and say goodbyes to my friends here in Morgantown before I leave for Albany.

So to recap the weekend:
Drove all day Friday
Boating and Sking Saturday and Sunday
2 Pig Roasts = eating pig 4 days in a row
Leaving Morgantown

Hope everyones weekend was as exciting!

-c

Albany: Day 2

My Tuesday in Albany:
After getting up and eating a hearty hotel breakfast (doughnuts , waffles, and OJ) I got ready to head out and begin the full day I had planned. First on the agenda was to go get fingerprinted for the background check the department requires. I just want to say Albany is big and confusing. So I had to go to Schnecidety to get said prints taken well made a wrong turn and in the process of said turn I some how got a flat tire. So I had to wait an hour for the AAA guy to come then I spent 30 minutes at the Goodyear shop getting a new tire...yeah it was that bad.

So after that I finally made it to the fingerprints place and got that taken care of I went to my office and met the people that I will be working with in less then a month. My work area is a 8' x 10' area...by the WINDOW....which is awesome. So after meeting everyone my quest for the Holy Grai....I mean apartment began . Looked at 3 places, one of which is a 3 bedroom bottom part of a house with a basement that has an actual "bar" down there. After looking at apartments I grabbed dinner at a local eatery and watched the Red Sox/Mets game on the tube then it was back to the hotel for the evening.

oh yeah...also got a city map from one of the ladies at the office ...very helpful...very


-c

Back to Albany

For those of you who thought you had the wrong blog, don't panic I just changed the name (more on this at the end).

With less than a month before I move to Albany I still do not have an apartment. I thought I had one but after being told it was not in the best part of town I decided to pass on the place. So I decided to make a trip up to Albany so I could look at places in person and figure out where I want to live. Being that it is an 8 hours trip I knew I needed to leave early Monday morning so I could get up to Albany and make the most out of the trip. So being an almost spur of the moment trip I had little time to plan. So my plan was to get into Albany early afternoon and look at one or two apartments Monday evening. So that meant leaving Morgantown at 7am would put me in Albany roughly around 3ish. So after packing and making sure I had everything I needed I went to bed at 12:15, but didn't fall asleep until about 2am:
12:15 - crawl in bed and turn out light
12:25 - get up and use the bathroom
12:40 - think I should pack a flannel shirt
12:45 - get up and pack flannel shirt
1:00 - get up use the bathroom again
1:14 - The idiot dowstairs is snoring and I hear it in stereo
1:26 - hmm going to have to get coffee in the morning
1:35 - must...sleep...arghh!
1:40 - bathroom
1:50 - wonder if I can find something to knock myself out
2:00 - zzzz...

For some reason I never sleep well before I go on trips.

So I get on the road at 7 and making great time listening to DaVinci Code Revealed then moved on to Statler and Waldorf's movies.com podcasts. So as I said was making good time until I hit the PA/NJ boarder. I had to sit in traffic for 1.5 hours, no AC, and it was sporadically raining which was not really fun or comfortable. Once in NJ I got into NJ I was back to making good time until 20 miles outside of Albany when it just started pouring the rain and had to switch between defrost and tepid blowing air...not to mention I hit a traffic jam on the NY Thrueway. By the time I finally found the hotel I was miserable and smelling ripe.

Needless to say I did not make my apartment visit so I went out located where my office will be and explored the area before heading back to the hotel to order pizza and plan my day.

The renaming of the blog:
Decided to rename it after it was brought to my attention it was named after a movie with Angelia Jolie...never my intention...honestly.

-c

Under Construction

As you can see I have made some changes to the Blog. First I changed the templete to a lighter color and updated and added links to the blogs that I visit on a regular basis...so check them out if you have a chance. I am considering changing the name of the blog also so if you have any suggestions leave them in the comment section.

Until the next post I am outta here...

-c

Ipod Envy

Thursday evening my Ipod (Generattion 4 20 gb) went on the fritz. I couldn't even get it to charge when plugged into the computer so I could try and resync it. So Friday I took it to Best Buy because I knew that when I bought the thing I got the service plan was good for 2 years I just could not remember which plan I got. So I took it to the store and the guy could not even get the thing to do a hard drive scan on itself. Then he tried to look up the service plan but since I did not have the card I used when I purchased the Ipod they could not look it up in the computer. So 3 hours later, a phone call to my bank, and another trip to Best Buy I finally find out that I got the replacement plan. Since they do not make the 20 gb Ipod anymore I got upgraded to a 30 gb video Ipod...and the kicker...the promotion they were running was a $30 gift card with the purchase of a 30 or 60 gb Ipod...so I also got the $30 gift card...



So all in all I came out ahead...

Time to go check on MY PRECIOUS...

Father's Day: In Memoriam

Father’s Day is only a few days away. For the past 8 years (this will be 9) this day is one that I really do not look forward to all that much. The reason being that in October of 1997 my dad was killed and to this day we still do not know all the details or what truly happened that night.

But for this post I don’t want to dwell on the negatives but to try and remember some of the good times that I had during the 19 years that I knew him.

During the summer of 1984, my brother and I were in the backyard playing on the swing set and I was hanging on the bar and I dropped off and landed on my arm. Well that evening after cleaning up dad took me to the hospital to get my arm checked out to see if anything was wrong with it. Dad and I ended up spending most of the night in the hospital. I remember that dad got a chocolate bar and was giving me small bites until the nurse came by and told him that I could not have any…and as soon as the nurse left he gave me the rest of it. It was late at night when we left the hospital after the doctor x-rayed and set my arm in a cast. Before we headed home dad took me to the donut shop and let me get something to eat which was really cool and a treat. This was the same year that I played soccer and the referees would not let me play with the cast on my arm. Dad came up with the idea of wrapping the cast in foam so I would not accidentally clobber some innocent kid on the field during the game.

I also remember that on Saturdays he would work half a day at the office and sometimes I would go in with him. Not only did I get out of doing work around the house but we usually would get breakfast before we went to the office. Once at the office I would just hang out or “help” out doing stuff (which meant I drew pictures and made paper airplanes). I would also jump at the chance to go to Cleveland with him when he had to go to Cleveland for optical seminars. I remember that there were times when we would be traveling late into the night and keep him company while he was driving (which might be why I have trouble sleeping in a car). There was one time we were driving to the beach and for some reason we drove through the night and while mom and my brothers were in the back (we had a suburban) sleeping I was right up front talking to him and trying not to fall asleep myself.

The last time I got to spend time with dad was Labor weekend 1997. He and I went to the island and went boating. It was great because it was just the two of us and I got to spend some quality time with him.

I will always remember the last thing he said to me the last time I talked to him was a week or so before he died. It was the beginning of my sophomore year of college and me and some of my friends thought it would be cool to leave Buckhannon, WV early Saturday morning and drive to Virginia Beach for the day then drive back to school that evening. It was a long drive and we didn’t get back until about 4am in the morning Sunday. Well that evening mom and dad called and I for some reason told them about the weekend excursion and let’s just say that they were not happy, but before the call ended dad told me how proud he was of me and was glad that I was doing well and enjoying school. Had I known that was the last time I was going to talk to him I can’t begin to think the things I would have wanted to tell him about how much I appreciated the time we got to spend together over the years.

If I become a father someday I hope I can be half the dad that he was that I can take the things I learned from watching him and raise my kids the way he raised me and my brothers. Not a day or milestone in my life goes by that I don’t think of him, but I take comfort in the fact that he is looking down from heaven and one day I will get to see him again.

I miss you Dad...

-c