Today, much like every other day since we moved here, I woke up at 5:30am. I showered, got dressed and was ready pretty quick, and ended up playing Beautiful Katamari to pass the time until I left to go pick up Jason.

Once we arrived at work we hung out in the reception area until we got picked up by Sean from HR. We did some paperworky stuff for a while, and then we got our desks and laptops. Getting the laptops ended up being pretty exciting, because they were brand new ThinkPad T61s (read: really fast). Then when we got to our desks, I had a 24" Widescreen LCD waiting for me, and Jason had two 19" LCDs (I have a request pending to swap my single for the dual screen setup).

We got to each lunch in the cafeteria, it was good, and mostly free (I went $1 over my $8 stipend). During lunch I learned something I did not know before. Since the time that I interviewed there, some policy in the Engineering group changed, and now everyone works from home on Fridays unless they're scheduled to be on-call. This is particularly awesome, because Dad is done with the big desk for upstairs, and I'll have lots of room to work without clutter.

After lunch, we saw someone else in HR about relocation reimbursement. The good news there is that we're getting $1000 bucks back to cover the moving expenses.

The remainder of the day was reading up on some team-specific stuff and setting up our machines. We left around 5:30.

When I got home, Brooke was just finishing up with dinner (Filet Mingon and mashed potatoe pie). It was gooood. Now we're playing Katamari again and watching Dr. Who before we go to sleep.

More tomorrow!

Dear diary, I know what I want for my birthday. Greased Lightning: Orange Blast. I've had the pleasure of using this cleaner along side Fantastik with "OxyPower" and the difference is night and day. In all seriousness, Orange Blast is the only household cleaner I think anyone could ever need. The solution is so powerful, they suggest (for most purposes) that you dilute it. Without added water, it cleans just about anything. The reason I'm so impressed, is because I tried cleaning some brown stains out of the carpet that were there since we moved in with the Fantastik cleaner, I followed the directions, but didn't have much luck getting the spots out. I tried a second round of the Orange Blast directly on the spot, let it soak for a few seconds, and wiped away with a damp wash cloth. Success. All of the noticeable stains are completely gone.

Today Brooke and I spent most of our time signing up for contests and sweepstakes. We figure, if no purchase is necessary, the more we sign up for the, greater our chances of winning something (anything!) for free. Our diligence paid off already. Today Brooke one a movie ticket, a candy bar, and a Flip Video "Ultra" camcorder (MSRP: $150). Not too shabby. The bigger sweepstakes end around June 30th, so we'll see if we win anything else by then :).

Cup management is a hard thing. You don't start thinking about it until it's too late. "Gee, I could use a drink. Oh. The cups are in the dish washer. I can't have a drink, there are no cups." We come into this world thinking our supplies of cups are endless. But they're not, you take a drink, you put it in the dish washer...it stays dirty until you've got a full load to run. If you don't have a full load, you either don't drink, or you wash by hand. Quite a predicament. This is something they should teach you when you're young. Forget cursive hand writing, kids in today's society don't need that. Teach them how to manage cups, and you will change the world.

Before the furniture came today, I decided to vacuum the living room again. Given my first pass through, I figured it couldn't hurt to try again. Not too long into it I realized that the entire tube that passes dirt from the roller to the filter and emptying canister was clogged with more dirt, and dust and hair and who knows what else. I spent the next twenty five minutes pulling wads of dog hair and crap from the vacuum with my fingers, until it could work up enough pressure to pull the remainder of it through on its own. After that I did another sweep and emptied the canister two more times. How gross is that?

Then the furniture came. The guys delivering it were great, they brought it all up and set it up for us. Unfortunately there was a tear in the leather (exposing wood below) on our love seat, and they're having to send someone down on Tuesday to look at it. I'm 99.9% sure that it's irreparable and we're getting it replaced, but we're in no rush, so we'll go through the motions.

Once that was done, I set up the peripherals in the TV console and tried to get cable hooked up again. Since the TV is now on the other side of the room, we needed a longer cable. Brooke happened to have one from school, so I used that. Sadly, one end was broken and unusable. So we went across the street (to the mall) and stopped at Radio Shack to buy a new connector. I didn't have a stripper to just expose the wire, so I spent some time with an exacto knife pulling away at the insulation until I could fit the new connector on. A little bit of electrical tape for good measure, and we were in business. Then we came to realize that this is the first time the cable box had been powered down (full power down initiates the reset sequence the next time it boots), and every time it came back up, it thought the cable card in the receiver was not inserted. Talked to someone very nice at Cablevision for about 30 minutes, only to be told the box is fried and I need a replacement. This isn't incredibly inconvenient because I need to replace it with an HD set anyway, but it still is a pain in the butt. Tomorrow I'll take a trip to Norwalk and get the replacement.

Now Brooke is cooking dinner and we'll eat for the first time on our new table. While we're doing that, you can check out some new pictures of the furniture, by clicking here.

Yesterday my parents and Brooke's dad and Debbie came to visit. My parents were here early, so we had breakfast and took a ride back to Bob's to see more furniture. We ended up buying:

- Kitchen table + 6 chairs (2 were a gift from Mom and Dad)
- Sofa + Loveseat
- Coffee table + end tables (gift from Mom and Dad)
- TV/Wallunit console

Everything will be delivered on Tuesday, and we'll have a mostly furnished apartment once it's here. At that point we're cool to have company over, because at least there'll be seating for people.

The only outstanding piece of furniture that remains is the desk upstairs. Dad is going to build a custom fitting modular desk that will sit perfectly in the loft. 8 feet of desk space facing out towards the living room below.

The futon is together, and there's a TV (with cable), DVD player and Xbox in the guest room, so it's suitable for company staying the night. There's still some boxes and totes in there I need to dispose of, but the room is still very usable.

Everyone is invited to visit after this Tuesday (17th), and stay the night if they please. Weekdays are obviously the most open for us since I don't start working until the end of the month, but I think we have some weekend time free. If you want to come, let me know what days are best for you and I'll check with the schedule master (Brooke) to confirm availability. Can't wait to see you all!

These last few days have been fun. With the exception of a few furniture pieces, we're just about settled in. The only efficient way for me to share what we've been up to is to break it down day-by-day.

Day 1 - Tuesday

The day started early as Brooke and I left NJ and NY separately to meet up at the leasing office here. We carried only a few items in our cars. Brooke's dad drove a van down with the mattress and Brooke's things, the moving company met us not much later with the couch, futon, and my stuff. By about 1:30pm, the move was done. The apartment smelled fresh from a carpet cleaning and nearly everything was in working order. I moved boxes to their most appropriate unloading points in the apartment and then we made a second pass at unpacking the things we could. Brooke got a quick start on the kitchen, and she was very obviously excited about that. After we were thoroughly exhausted, we took a walk to Bedford St. and ate at a nice Asian restaurant. On the way there, a bike rider got hit by a car at the intersection of Spring and Bedford. We only saw the aftermath: bloodstained asphalt, an absurdly mangled bicycle and a TON of cops. Came back, setup the TV and DVD player and watched a movie. Beastly setup. Who needs a 52" TV? At some point on this day we walked to Target, I forget when - doesn't matter. We got toilet paper. Went to bed real early.

Day 2 - Wednesday

This day and most others so far, we've been up around 6:30am. By the time we were dressed and showered, it was still way too early to visit any stores. We did luck out however that Stop and Shop is open nearly all the time, so we took a trip there and loaded up on food, $200 later it feels like we have some orange juice and milk. By the time we finished unpacking the food and eating breakfast, we were able to ride over to Bob's furniture and pick out a bedroom set. After that we headed to Jennifer Convertibles to look at sofas, and then Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy all the necessaries for decorating the bathroom. Installed a new shower head and hooks on the door for towels.

Day 3 - Thursday

It's Christmas! We woke up early again, did more unpacking, cleaning, laundry. Our savior came in the early afternoon. After hooking up the wrong cable box (one belonging to another customer), exchanging our dead remote for a working one, assuming our account had a balance, and giving us the wrong invoice and account number when we had to call customer service to prove I had paid the installation and first month's bill - we finally had cable and internet, and an $85 credit to the account. Amen. We immediately realized we needed a wireless router, so we took a trip to Norwalk and stopped at Best Buy. Also checked out TVs while we were there, and then stopped at Circuit City next door just to be thorough. Took another stop at Walmart to get a garbage pail and some other little things we needed. Got gas: $4.50/gallon. Ate dinner, watched a TV. Went to bed...

Day 4 - Friday

This morning we took a walk to Target to buy a vacuum cleaner. I walked the thing 4 blocks back to the apartment and Brooke detoured to the bank and the public library to get herself a card. While she did that, I setup the vacuum and tested it out.
OH MY GOD.
You'll note in Day 1 that I mentioned how nice and clean the place felt. It was the smell of clean floors. But "I give you my word, on humble knee, whence you shall not say it wasn't ere to be" that this floor was filthy. I kid you not, I made one pass forward with the vacuum, and one pass back, I had a wad of dirt, dust, dog hair (looks like a Black/White dog with long hair lived here previously) and God knows what other crap the size of a softball in the container of the vacuum. I emptied the container FOUR times on the downstairs carpet area alone, and that doesn't include several large areas (under the bed, in the closets, and under the couch, I didn't do at the time). It feels much better knowing all of that was sucked away, but I almost feel like the floor should be shampooed again, because I get the feeling they didn't bother to do this vacuuming themselves. It looks like they just ran the carpet cleaner over the entire place, which in effect cleaned the dirt and dog hair lining the floor, but did nothing to remove it. Thanks guys. Anyway, after that I took a nap (I think I'm tired because I'm slightly bored), Brooke read a newly loaned book, and then the phone rang. The delivery guys for our bedroom set came, installed the new bed and delivered our other pieces, and then we proceeded to unpack more clothes into them. And that about leaves us at present time.

Tomorrow our parents are coming up. As a treat for reading this entire post, click here to see some pictures of the place!