If I recall correctly, tomorrow is the Big Day. Good luck to you, my friend, and try not to throw your back out when you’re moving the sofa.
Keep in touch and update us when you can.
So our merry Michigan clan gets whittled down. Damn you, olives (and Dom)!
Good luck and happy travels. Go and represent.
Yeah, but try to represent the good parts. The rest of it, we get enough bad press here already.
Wait, are we trading her for a New Jersey Doper To Be Named Later?
I don’t know about trading a NJ doper for you, but WELCOME to NJ!!! I hope we see you at the next dopefest. 
Good luck Olives & Dom! Watch out for cops on the Ohio Turnpike, and may you arrive happy, and all your property accounted for present and unscathed.
You NJers are lucky. Can we trade her for What Exit??
Oh. Hi. I just found this while searching for another thread.
We’re finally in New Brunswick! It was supposed to be a 10 hour drive but it turned into a 2-day debacle, our U-haul broke down in Pennsylvania. We ended up staying the night while the mechanics helped us load all of our crap into another U-haul. My traumatized cat got lost in the mattress in the hotel room (we got him out.) Fun times.
We’re here and it’s beautiful. I took a train into Manhattan today to scope out a potential job opportunity/promotion with my current company. It’s roughly a 1 hour and fifteen minute-ish commute but at least it’s on the train – better than fighting Detroit traffic like I used to on my way to work every day. Besides, I love trains. Tomorrow I’m going in to shadow for the job (on Broadway St., 2 blocks from World Trade Center), test out the commute for real. They said if I like the position I can have it. I will probably end up taking it because I really want the job, it is the next logical step up for me and how cool is commuting to Manhattan? I didn’t expect it because I’m not much of a mover and shaker, but the city just lifts my spirits instantly. It’s too exciting not to do.
I think the job is really going to be good for me. And this month I’m putting in my application for grad school at Rutgers.
The energy is so different here. In Manhattan near Penn Station we ate at a place called Tick-Tock Cafe, absolutely delicious food, and we got the funniest response ever to Dom’s allergies. He ordered a chicken wrap ‘‘with no tomatoes, no cheese, no salsa.’’
The waiter just looks at him and says, ‘‘Really?’’
Mostly we’ve just been unpacking all our stuff, shopping for some new things for the apartment and trying to find our way around. Having reliable public transportation is a little unsettling, but we’re getting used to it.
I LOVE the spirit of the people here–everyone is very friendly and fun. We did go for a short run (1.3 miles) on the running trail behind our place. Still unpacking, but mostly done. We’ve been watching the Olympics too. I get kind of obsessive about them.
Oh, and Emily Litella, what’s all this I hear about meeting you at the next Pope test? Why should the Pope be required to take a test to be Pope? Isn’t it enough that he’s been given the blessing of the Almighty himself? Now he has to take a test???!!
Oh. Never mind. 
Yes I will be there. We need friends. Please be our friend…
Oh, no. Apparently you have too many friends. That’s why you left us in Michigan.
Yes, that’s the real reason. I’m onto you.
I was actually going to post a whole long essay about your possible commute right when the boards went down for a few days recently. (I spent a good while typing it, too, dagnabbit.) Anyway, welcome to Jersey!
When you say your commute takes an hour and a quarter, are you taking the express train from New Brunswick? Most of the regular trains take around an hour, but there are several that are significantly shorter - the 6:10 am one (early, I know) gets in to NY Penn at 7:01, and the 8:17 gets in at 9:06, in only 49 minutes. I don’t know if saving ten minutes on your commute is worth manipulating your daily schedule like that, but you might want to check out the full schedule.
I miss them already, notice how overcast it was yesterday? 
Rutgers grad here. Woo hoo! Class of '89, represent!
Ummm… ok, well, carry on.
Okay, I think I’m going to the next New Jersey Dopefest if olives and Dom will be there. QT and I can carpool and we’ill take LOUNE with us to navigate since he’s currently on foot right now. Wow, what a road trip that would be!
So then it’s settled.
welcome!
We need 9 more passengers at these gas prices.
So that’s what the luggage rack is for! :smack:
Good luck, Olives. I know how unsettling (and downright scary!) a big move can be.
BTW, if you’ll be in Manhattan a lot, could you check if the guy with the burnt-almonds wagon by the Natural History Museum is still feeding that four-pound squirrel?
I don’t think you wanna go around saying things in NYC like Broadway St[reet]. It’s just, simply, Broadway. Wouldn’t want the Noo Yawkers pointing and lauging at you, would you? 
(There is, indeed, a Broad Street in lower Manhattan, and it’s very close to the WTC site, but I suspect that you were really talking about Broadway.)
And welcome to New Jersey! They keep telling me that it smells like a refinery, but in the almost 7.5 years that I’ve lived here, I don’t know that I’ve smelled it yet. Then again, when you drive on the Turnpike at the speed of a thousand bats out of hell (like yours truly), I guess you wouldn’t smell much of anything, huh? 
Um. I call being *inside * the vehicle.
I work at the WTC, two blocks west of Broadway. If you need a friendly face or a good Korean lunch to help get you acclimated, just let me know.
Awesome! We should meet up sometime. I actually will be going back to Michigan for training September 8th for two weeks, so around the end of September, just PM me, we’ll do lunch!
I did just go into the job to shadow today. It is in a ginormous building, the Old Equitable Building. I am extremely excited to take the position, even with the commute, because it is a big promotion and exactly the kind of work I feel I need this year. I used to work in the call center but now I will have my own desk and a very intimate office environment. It’s a complex, ‘‘problem-solving’’ kind of job, lots of administrative stuff and interpreting policy, which is exactly what I want to do in social work. Not only that, but they’re paying me more than standard, because I have experience with the company… and I’m also eligible for a raise as of 2009.
Gila, thanks for advice on the Express train. I took it this morning, and transferred to the PATH in Newark to WTC. Then I got lost. Who knew W. Broadway and Broadway are two different streets?
I also got lost trying get back to the WTC. I thought there might be an entrance at Liberty St and somehow ended up in the One World Financial Building. You know, WTC is a huge gaping construction hole in the middle of Manhattan, kind of hard to miss. But I missed it. :smack: (On a more serious note, being there was a sobering experience. It’s one thing to see it on TV and another thing to actually be in the environment and see how massive and obvious the damage is. It’s very easy to visualize the horror of that day when you’re standing right there. But the tourists snapping photographs were a bit much.)
I already miss all of you in Michigan. You’re making me feel really appreciated and loved. I will always let you know when I’ll be in town (psst… September 10th through 19th.)
I seriously still can’t believe the weird turn my life has taken. I’m living in this sort of suburban paradise and working in Manhattan! I feel like I should be standing on a street corner tossing my hat up in the air.
Hehehe… remember when you are down in that area of Manhattan you are trodding the original streets and cowpaths of New Amsterdam… hence the odd angles and wandering streets and buildings that look FAR too close together. You’ll need a good map for a bit - there’s just no guessing which way a street will go around there!
If you’re in the mood for sobering thoughts, in Battery Park there is a bronze sculpture. It used to be in the middle of a fountain in the WTC plaza, not too far from the twin towers. They found it in the pile of rubble, with a few dings and holes but mostly intact.
Then:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:World_trade_center_new_york_city_plaza_fountain.jpg
Now:
Or if I forget, send me a PM. Brain. Sieve. Same thing, really.
The Equitable building is neat place to be, so you’re in luck. The food over there is much better than where I am, in the WFC.
Don’t plan on hanging out in the neighborhood at night, as it shuts down quite early and becomes very dull. You are also fortunate to be back in MI for the annual 9/11 hoopla. Working down here becomes a royal pain in the ass for a few days.