When Gordon was buying the house, he mentioned that the seller was the sort to cut a lot of corners.  Well, there’s plenty of evidence of that everywhere you look.  Most of it’s just stupid–like, why bother to repaint if you’re going to do it half-assed?  But one of the things that’s perplexing is that the painters just like painted over everything.  The hinges of the doors, electrical outlets.  Instead of, you know, painting *around* them.  

The door to the office apparently fell off after the movers were done delivering stuff, so Gordon had it propped open.  I didn’t realize this, and accidentally screwed it up some more.  The hinges *cracked,* so not exactly high quality.  And so when we tried to remove the hinge since it has to be replaced, we were all but stymied by the gobs of paint that have buried the screws in the wood.

Got hopelessly, hopelessly lost on the way in this morning.  Had Google Maps directions, but they LIED to me.  I printed out a zoomed in view of the in-city portion of my journey, but only had the larger overview of the highway stuff–this was my downfall.  There’s a place where it tells me to turn right, and bear right onto a certain road, but when I looked at the map again when I got home, it’s very clearly bearing LEFT.  But at least now I know which way to go next time.  My trip home tonight was without incident, and it was pretty quick, so I’m happy about that.  It’s funny–the new office is less than two miles away from the old one, but I think the commute is going to be much easier.  We’re now very close to the highway entrance, so there’s very little city driving required, and I’m far enough away from the tunnels that I won’t have to fight through all that traffic.  

Haven’t done much exploring of the new area yet, though I had lunch at a nearby Chinese restaurant.  Quite good, actually–they make a mean Schezuan chicken (though there’s a definite language barrier problem, so good luck with any special orders).  Also, they stock Sprite Zero, which is nice, since it’s hard to find a restaurant that has a sugar-free/caffeine-free soda available.  

When I got home, however, I poked around on Google Maps, searching for things in the area.  Turns out there’s a post office about three blocks away, and a branch of our bank two blocks away from the post office.  There’s a Rite Aid around the corner from the bank.  All good things.  So maybe we’ll be switching our submissions address after all.  No word on that yet–have to talk to the boss.  He was saying that it took us five years to train the monkeys at our current post office, so it might be better to just stick with them.  But I don’t know–despite our best efforts, there’s really only two people there who know what the hell they’re doing, and one of them moves about as quickly as continental drift.

Also discovered that the Journal Square PATH Train station has parking available, so I can just drive right there with no walking.  Hopefully it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.  But it also looks to be much more convenient for me as a commuter, since JSQ is right near Rt. 1-9, which I use to get home.