Still here for now

Well, I’m still here. I’m not going back to LA tomorrow as planned. I’ve signed on to one more week. This will give me a needed boost in cash so that I have a little something once I get an apartment. I’ll be temporarily moving hotels tomorrow to the much nicer Hyatt Regency Greenwich-Stamford. It’s a four star against the current two star I’ve been in. Alas however, it for only one night. They couldn’t keep me here without moving me. I’ll be back in room 219 here on Sunday night though. Ahead of me is laundry, mapping my CT sites and making some more copies of the forms. It’s a bit odd, but I’ve sort of found myself getting into zone on these things. As long as I just complete two a day, I can keep the hours to about 14 from when I wake to when I finish paperwork. I think some of the other FSRs are making the mistake of running too hard each day. Then again, their expenses are different than mine. Once I get back to LA I’ll have a week to find an apartment. Luckily I’ve communicated with my hosts and discovered that the June 1st date was more of a timeline than a deadline. They’ll be going to Northern California for a few days over the fourth holiday, so if I don’t find a place they’ve reassured me they won’t kick me out.

As far as restaurants go around here in Nanuet, the mainstay has been Chilis, mostly for knowledge of their menu and the fact there is a bar I can sit at to have a beer in public before I take my food back to the room. However, the Bhuna lamb at the Indian restaurant in the parking lot of the hotel turned out to be quite good. I also found an excellent Chinese take-out place that passed the “orange chicken” test. The test involves me ordering Orange Chicken the first time I get take-out from a new Chinese place. It is a test I developed in NY and it has served me well. Basically Orange chicken should be crispy fried chicken pieces that are glazed in an orange and pepper sauce and plated on fresh al dente broccoli. It occasionally happens that the place is so bad that the chicken is just cubed pieces with no batter and the broccoli is so over cooked it might as well have come from a can. The true and final test is that when it travels, either by delivery or pick-up to your house, or where you’re sleeping, it arrives and is still crispy. The place I found passed with flying colors. The only down side to them is that they don’t make their own noodles for soup, theirs come in a bag like chips, and that their dumpling sauce was not sweet enough. I like a ginger soy dipping sauce for dumplings. Oh well, I ramble on about take-out. Maybe the Hyatt Regency Greenwich-Stamford will have a nice place to eat on site.