It's Sunday

Another week has come and gone. It's amazing how quickly times flies. I can't believe October is almost over and the holiday season is quickly approaching. Yet, on the other hand, it's hard to beleive I've only been here for 3 months. It feels like a year.

I'm settled into the apartment for the most part. I'm still working on getting some pictures developed so that I can hang photos on the walls. The walls in my room are especially looking bare. I've settled into a routine which has become quite comfortable. However due to my busy schedule and a lack of funds, I haven't been able to do much exploring. The weeks pass so quickly and come Friday, I'm exhausted. Last Saturday I did some exploring of the neighborhood and found some restaurants to try out, located the movie stores, and learned the bus route of the bus that stops on our corner.

Yesterday I took my first NYC cab ride. Julie and I decided to ride down to 91st Street to eat at Carmine's. The food was good, but a little expensive for just the two of us. The meals are served family style and were enough to feed about 4 people. The prices were high, but if we had two other people to eat with us and split the bill, they would have been really cheap. I decided that we cannot go there again until we make some friends.

That was the only adventure of this weekend. I'm feeling sick, runny nose, cough, etc. and decided to take it easy today. I slept until 11 which means that I didn't get up in time to get to church. I'm feeling a little bit better today though. Later on, I need to go to the grocery store and find a pharmacy to pick up some tylenol cold and sinus.

I've been catching up on the news via the internet and I'm somewhat amazed to see all the publicity on the MRSA infection. As most of you know, this is what ailed me for about 5 months this year. I'm still paying the antibotic co-pays. It's crazy to see that people are dying from this and that schools are disinfecting their facilities. I had no idea it was such a big deal. My doctor told me that it was fine to go to work and that it wasn't contageous unless someone came in direct contact with my nasal discharge (gross I know). I'm glad that the final antibiotic cleared it up.

I'm missing my family a bit and am missing autumn upstate. I totally missed carving pumpkins, apple cider, and the changing of the trees. I am going to a holloween parade in the village on Wednesday, that should be intersting. I'm told that it is a definite must see. I was approved to take the day before and after Christmas off from work and I have the day after thanksgiving off so I'll be able to go home for both of those holidays. However my mom informed me that my family is celebrating Christmas with eachother on New Years because that's when my siblings are coming. I doubt there is anyway I'll be able to get home for that. I only get Jan 1 off so I'd be home for less than 24 hours and it's not worth the hassle or expense for such a short time. I guess I could not go home on Christmas and go for New Years instead, but I've never spent Christmas Day away from my family and I'd rather be home on that day instead.

Well, this is getting long and I need to finish sweeping the floor and wiping down the bathroom. Leave me a post.

The apartment. It goes kind of fast, but I wasn't allowed to increase the time between frames.

The rest of the apartment.

burn after reading

So, I was walking the dog in the park at the end of our street and noticed that there were a bunch of cones blocking off parking and a sign that read "filming, burn after reading" no parking Saturday night - Monday night. Stupid me though, oh they must be shooting some sort of documentary. Boy was I wrong! Today after searching the internet, I found out that BRAD PITT and GEORGE CLOONEY were on my street! This is a major hollywood film, and I missed it!

The apartment is great. I'm pretty much unpacked. Life has been crazy busy and I'm looking to add to the chaos by finding a part time job. For now...sleep.

Week four

And so week four begins. It’s hard to believe I’ve been her for 3 weeks already. It actually feels like it’s been months. I am now on my 4th residence. I’m still in Jersey, but am now staying with friends of the family. The house I’m in is by far the largest house I’ve ever been in. I have a giant room with a king sized bed and a bathroom all to myself. I can’t complain. The commute is a little farther than last week, and I have to drive ½ hour to the train station, but it’s been the cheapest commute so far. The driving is a little tricky, but I should get the hang of it by the end of the week. I’m planning on not going home this weekend, which will commence my longest stay here so far.

We are supposedly signing the lease on our apartment this week and will be moving in hopefully by next Wednesday, the 12th. It will be wonderful to be settled, and then the hunt for a part-time job. I’m thinking maybe I’ll check out Macy’s. I’m sure a lot of department stores will be hiring for the holidays. I’ll probably make minimum wage, but hopefully they’ll have an employee discount and I can add to my professional dress wardrobe.

Nothing exciting happened today. Well, I take that back, I got two people jobs and they start this week and my boss said that I should be proud of myself. She also told me that I was doing a great job so far and that she has high hopes for me. That felt nice. I was worried that I wouldn’t measure up.

Over the weekend I went home and since Julie was stuck in the city I picked her up some of her things. I brought them into the city today in a duffel bag that had to weigh no less than 50lbs. It was not a fun affair, but the bag got delivered okay and I’m sure I burned some calories in the process…which is always good J

I’m on the train home now, a bit later than expected. I’m a little nervous about navigating the way from the train station to the house I’m at. I’m not so good at seeing things at night. I’ve driven it once already so hopefully by familiarity, I’ll do okay.

I know I need more pictures. I’ve so busy and haven’t been able to get any up. Plus I haven’t really seen anything worth capturing. Hopefully I’ll have pictures of the apartment soon. I haven’t seen it yet and from what Julie tells me it’s small…Welcome to Manhattan!

A new week

Last night I traveled back to the area from home. This week I'm still staying in Jersey, but with some friends who are semi-related to me through marriage. It's nice. I have my own room and a 1/2 bath to use in the morning to get ready. I've got the bottom floor to myself so I don't have to worry about being too loud in the morning. The commute is less time. I'm taking a bus instead of a train and it takes about 50 minutes. The sucky part is that it cost more.

Work went well today. I visited some employers and have a few potential leads for job placements. Today Julie told me that she heard from the new broker we have an application in with and he said that the apartment looked like it would be ours. We've heard this before so neither of us are getting our hopes too terribly high. We should know for sure tomorrow. I'm not sure when we will be able to move in though. We are hoping for Monday, Labor Day.

Not much else to write about and I'm tired and hungry so I'll keep this fairly short.

I'll hopefully have some more pics to put up tomorrow.

The rest of the week in recap

On Tuesday, Julie came down to look for more apartments. Unfortunately I was unable to help her because I had to work. Tuesday after work I looked some with her and we met with the idiot realtor again. After spending about 1/2 hour with him and seeing that he was just going to show up apartment we already saw, we were done with him.

Julie sneaked me into an apartment she had seen earlier and we agreed to go with it. We met the person selling it Wednesday morning and he said that he was in charge of renting it and if we wanted it it was ours. Julie agreed to meet him the following day to fill out the application and sing the lease. We began making plans for our new apartment and were excited to finally have found something. Well, Wednesday came and Julie tried calling the guy to figure out who she needed to make the checks out to. He never called back. Between the two of us, we probably called 25 times and to this day he never returned our calls.

Julie spend the next few days continuing to look at apartments. Once again she put an application in for one that she found through a friend of her brothers who is a broker. We didn't get too excited, but thought we had a good chance of getting it. On Friday morning, we found out that while the application was approved, the management company decided not to rent the apartment out because they wanted to renovate it.

After work on Friday we went to see a realtor that was advertising an apartment on craigslist. Julie checked out the apartment and put an application in. She said that it's really small, but we are running out of time and have no other options. I agree. So we will hopefully know on Monday if it's ours. Neither of us are too sure about things. If it doesn't work out, I'm not sure what we're going to do. She will probably try to get into student housing so she doesn't have to give up on Columbia and I will have to look for other roommates or move back home. It's not going to be easy to find other options since my credit is so bad and I'm not really looking forward to living with strangers.

It has been a horrible week. The past seven days have felt like 3o. Thankfully the people I'm staying with have been really nice. However so as not to wear out my welcome, I need to find another place to crash. I'll probably end up staying at my sister-in-law's, sister's house.

I'm so discouraged.

Monday August 21, 2007

This I wrote on Monday, August 21,2 007, on my way into work:
Yesterday could mark the beginning of the end of my NYC adventure. We didn’t get the apartment that we were promised. The realtor said something about rent control and not being able to release the apartment blah, blah, blah. I don’t know why he even showed it to us then. He told us that there were two others in the same building that we could look at, so I made a plan to meet him at 8pm. Hoping that he would be at his office and we could get started a little earlier, I got there at 7. I had forgotten my cell phone at work so I wasn’t able to call anyone. After standing in the middle of Harlem until about 8:45, some passersby let me use their cell phone to call the realtor. As this was our last ditch effort for finding an apartment, I agreed to take the train another 3 stops and meet up with him. Well, the jerk showed me two apartments in a completely different building that we had already seen before and said “no” to. I was so upset. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Julie needs to be in the city by this weekend and now it’s not enough time to find a place. Plus, she’s upstate and can’t really look for apartments and I have to work all day.
After wasting my time, I booked it to the Port Authority Bus Terminal to try to get back to my car and place I’m staying in Jersey. I was able to catch the 10:30 bus out, and got back to the house a little after midnight. I slept for about 5 hours and now I’m sitting on the train heading to work. Speaking of trains, I missed the first train; it arrived as I was pulling into a parking space. I decided I was then going to drive right up the road to burger king and grab some breakfast. Well, what’s supposed to be fast-food drive through ended up being slow. Slow, slow. Once again as I was pulling into a parking space, the train went by. This time I waited at the station for the next one which was about one half hour later. I’m going to be really late for work.
I brought my laptop with me hoping to find some wi-fi connections at coffee shops, but once I got on the train I realized that I left my wireless card in the car. This has been a horrible two days. Let’s make that three.

On my way back to Jersey on Sunday the traffic was horrible. I’ve been so anxious and I had a bit of a melt down and really didn’t want to come back. Things are too crazy and I don’t know how to remedy them. I’ve been praying like crazy, but it’s just not working out. I’m really second guessing my decisions. At the beginning, things were working out. I had a job, we had a month or so to find a place and Julie was helping out a lot with the apartment. I basically can’t get one on my own because my credit is so bad. At least that’s what the realtor stated. However, he hasn’t been able to get one for us with just Julie’s credit which is excellent.

I don’t know what I’m going to do. Today is really my last day to make something work. I’m going to see if anyone at work has any ideas and I think Julie might be meeting with the realtor. He’s a jerk, but he’s pretty much our only option unless we want to start completely over which won’t get us into an apartment by this weekend.

I’m so frustrated and sad and exhausted.

I’m ready to go home…even if there isn’t a job for me.

sorry for the delay.

Not having internet access for a week makes it difficult to post. I'm home for the weekend so I'll try to get some new stuff up.

TGIF

DL's granparents are really sweet. They were very accomodating and didn't make me feel like I was imposing at all. It was nice to sleep in a bed and not the couch. The funny thing about staying there was when I went to take a shower. Sitting on the shelf was Hemp Shampoo which had a giant marijuana leaf on the label. I pondered the bottle and tried to decide if they knew what it was or if they had no clue. I'll have to ask Tif. It definitely caught me by surprise and made me laugh to myself.

The commute today was a little bit longer because I'm about 15 minutes away from the station instead of 2. However, I was finally able to fall asleep on the train. It was a sleep interrupted about every 5 minutes when the conductor announced the station stops, but it was definitely sleep. I just hope I didn't drool or snore. I also slept for a little bit on the train home. Oh! I finally didn't get lost in Penn Station. On my way in this morning I made sure to make mental notes of which way I had to walk and were I had to turn and what stairs I had to go up or down etc. Since I didn't get lost, I made the first train at my connection and arrived back to my car about 35 minutes earlier than the previous days.

Also, last night the realator called my friend Julie and told her that the landlord of the apartment wanted to meet with us. I'm guessing it's to sign the lease since she was asked to bring the money for the deposit, rent, and fees. I'm still not getting my hopes up until the lease is signed. So, all of you that are praying, keep praying and thank you for the prayers so far. I know that God is taking care of me.

After getting back to the car, I drove home to Amsterdam. I have some more packing up to do and I want to see my family while they are up camping.

It's late and I'm exhausted so I'll leave you with some pictures. They are nothing great, just some things that I thought Janice would appreciate.

My work computer - flat screen and it works - sure beats CITRIX and the ancient computer I had at my previous job.

I have my own office!

The view from my office...not so great.

It's thursday!

I don't know how to backdate a post, but this one should be dated August 16. Today work was a lot of fun. I did some marketing and went out to a few stores to speak with managers and owners about setting up internships or hiring our program graduates. This is the part of the job I thought I would hate, but it was actually enjoyable. I even did some marketing on the train home, when one of the managers I spoke to approached me to see if I had gotten anywhere with the corporate office. I think I finally developed my "train legs" I was able to stand without holding on and write down everything she was telling me. This is great improvement from the time a few months ago when I fell off the seat when the train started as I was going to sit down.

The horrible part about today was that it was really hot and humid and I had to wear a business suite. I was sweaty and gross before I even arrived to work. The subway cars have air conditioning but the subway tunnels and the tunnels in Penn Station do not. It is soooooo hot. Speaking of Penn station, I seem to have a problem navigating it's corridors. You'd think that after three days I'd have the trip to work and home down pat, but I always seem to get lost in Penn station, especially on my way home. Today I somehow exited to the street (34th) and couldn't figure out how to get back into the station. I ended up walking around the entire block to 33rd street, which was crazy because there was a million people on the streets...and again, it was HOT!

I think my trip home would be a little shorter but by time I find the correct coridor and get on the right train I arrive at the next station just as the first train to my desitnation is leaving the station.

My friends that I'm staying with are moving back to Rochester in the morning and were packing up the van when I got home. I'm going to stay at DL's grandparents tonight. I don't know them but they seem really nice and have a few extra rooms.

Still no word on the apartment...

What a commute!

Today I woke up very tired. I once again caught the 6:38 train into the city. I timed the commute and it's about 1 hour 45 minutes there and 2 hours home. I was able to sleep for a few minutes on the train this morning. The first few stops there aren't a lot of people, but the train quickly fills up. I switch trains in Seacaucus and that train is so full I have to stand the rest of the way into the city. I then arrive at Penn Station and walk to the subway to catch the 1 train to Rector Street, from there it's just a few steps to my office on Broadway. The commute home takes a little longer because you have to fight the rush hour crowd. When you get to Penn Station on the way home, you have to watch the screen for the track number of your train, and then walk quickly to the track so that you can be one of the first people on and not have to stand. I definitely miss being home in 20 minutes. I also miss my mom's cooking. Microwavable mac and cheese just doesn't cut it.

Work was better today. I got to meet the people under me and they were really receptive. They are new college grads and don't have much experience. I realized that the company did a lot of firing/hiring and a lot of the people are new. All the people under me have been there less than 6 months. In a supervisors meeting today I found that there were a lot of errors by prior staff that need to be corrected. I had some ideas based on my work at Lexington and the HR manager thought they were excellent ideas. Score! Some people probably will have problems with me coming in and fixing everything, but that's what I'm there to do and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty from day one. They'll have to adjust.

Now I'm going to take a shower and try to get to bed a little earlier. No new pictures for today. I walked around a little, but not much past where I walked yesterday. Leaving for work at 6:30 and getting back to Tif's around 7, wipes me out!

Oh- no word on the apartment yet. The longer it takes, the more I worry.

Day Number one

I guess technically this is day number two since the first day was spent hunting for apartments all over upper Manhattan. After much sweat, a few tears, and some fits of emotion, my friend Julie and I found one worth applying for. The paperwork is all in and we should have an answer by tomorrow. I'm really nervous about it since we don't really have an alternate plan.

I'm currently living at my friend Tif's house in New Jersey. It's nice and I'm very thankful that she and her husband were willing to let me stay. Especially considering that they are moving up to Rochester on Friday and their house is in complete disarray.

Today was my first day at the new job. I woke up at 5:40 and caught the 6:48 train into the city. It was a bit of a commute and I'd hate to have to do it every day. I arrived downtown around 8;30 and grabbed a muffin and some juice from a cafe. Work started at 9 and I spent most of the morning watching really boring orientation movies that made me want to sleep even more. I survived the movies and was then ushered off to a department orientation...which wasn't much of an orientation. My supervisor didn't even introduce me to the staff I will be supervising. She even said that they didn't know I was coming. Weird! Their program is completely disorganized and it's going to be a very challenging job. I like to fix things though so we'll see how this goes. Basically they hired me to turn things around.

My lunch hour was fun. My office is located on Broadway right near Wall Street. On my hunt to find cheap lunch food, I got to experience all the sites and lunch hour in the city. It totally reminded me of the movies. There is so much going on and so much to see. I took some pictures of the city icons near my work. Perhaps tomorrow I will explore some more. Until then...

The Bull - located a few steps to the left of my office.

Trinity Church -a few steps to the right

Federal Hall - around the block.