December 4, 2003: Scott and Dominica’s Two Month Anniversary

I was doing well this morning, running on time and everything, about to head out the door to pick up Danielle to head out to Warsaw to do some sales when Min called from the hotel to say that she had locked herself out of her car and that I needed to drive over to Lakeville to let her in. She wasn’t aware that the PR5 will not let the remote door lock work if the car is running. So she had started the car to warm it up and had locked it and had gone back inside. So when she went to unlock it, she discovered that she was not able to get back into the car. So I drove over to Lakeville before heading off to Warsaw.

Danielle and I were pretty productive today, managing to complete our sales in Warsaw, Attica and Pavilion. Right at the end of the day, we ran into a couple of really rude people in Pavilion. I was really surprised; I had expected people in the same mailing address as our company to be, at least superficially, polite to us. But I guess that that is just asking too much. We did manage to run into Brandon Zeches in Warsaw. Brandon went to elementary school with Eric and I years and years ago. I don’t think that I have seen Brandon since fifth grade when he left Pavilion Baptist to go to Warsaw. It was really good to see him again. In some ways, he looks just like he did all those years ago. It is always strange running into people from you childhood like that. It is especially strange, I think, for those of us who went to PBS together because being in a class of just 18 or less students a year means that you necessarily are very close with everyone that was in your class and most likely lots of people not in your class. So running into people you haven’t seen in 17 years is really weird.

I had a major set-back on my college studies today. My last two classes (which I never really started) got marked as incomplete. Which is sort of okay because I really did push them off forever and not do anything with them. However, I think that it was relatively unfair to go back and give me an incomplete applicable in January 2003 when I was only beginning to work on the class in April, 2003. The Ithaca office also told me to transfer to the Rochester office. Which is probably for the best. But now I have to get the Rochester office to accept me. Not that I have any particular reason why they shouldn’t but it has been a long day and it is bound to end up being a problem. It always is. And I was so close to being able to finish up – or so I thought.

I did remember to shave my head this morning for all of you who have noticed that I have been starting to get pretty scruffy recently. I don’t think that I have shaved my head since I did it just before the wedding.

I am really looking forward to tomorrow night’s Age of Empires 2 fest. I need the break, it has just been a long week. Jeremy has been practicing a lot and is planning on being over here around 8:30. Art will be here for sure and Phil is planning on being able to make it. It will be Phil’s first time playing so he will be needing a lot of work before he is a threat. Art picked it up pretty quickly, though, so our job will be to get Phil addicted.

I talked to Andy briefly this evening. He is doing okay but it is really hot down there. We didn’t get to talk long because my phone died in the middle of our conversation. I guess that I accidentally left it off of the charger for the last several days. Oops.

I found a site that has a really good biography of Al Capone at Court TV’s web site that you should check out if you don’t know much about him. I found the bio to be really interesting. I never really knew anything about him so I learned a bit from it. The Untouchables follows a bit of the true story but many of the events are scrambled and involve different people in different places than how it really happened.

After Min headed off to the hotel, I watched A Better Tomorrow II, one of John Woo and Chow Yun Fat’s lesser known and lower budget films. The first movie was okay but this one is significatly weeker than the first one. The story line isn’t great and the dialogue is pretty poor. It never is good when translated from Mandarin to English but this one is exceptionally bad at times. But, it is a classic of Hong Kong cinema. And this is my first time watching it so it illiminates another movie from the “never been watched” list. The movie does have a really good “cop has to shoot his own brother who is also a cop” scene that does a lot to redeem the movie. The movie has some really cool shots of the NYC skyline from the 80’s. The music is just awful. Way too much like watching one of those terrible 80’s Saturday afternoon action shows like The Fall Guy or Simon and Simon. The one character’s name it Kit, probably named after the car. There is one scene where they shoot a model of a house against a fake stary sky. Only, the sky bounces around behind the house, it is really strange. They really needed an effects budget.

Min found out from work tonight that no one at the hotel works on Christmas or Christmas Eve. So that is a big relief. She didn’t know what she was going to do because we spend the holiday out in Frankfort with her family and it is her only real chance to get to see our neices all year long (although she has seen them more than usual this year.) This morning, before Min went to bed, she put up a new curtain in our bedroom on the strangly shaped window. That window has been such a problem because we couldn’t find blinds that would fit it and it lets in so much light all throughout the day. It makes it hard to keep the temperature regulated in the room and makes it practically impossible to do any work in there during the day because you can’t even see the monitor with all the light streaming onto it. The room will be a lot nicer now during the day. I will even be able to sleep in sometimes. It will affect Min tons more because she has to sleep during the day at least three days a week and it has made it really hard for her.

I have been very domestic this evening. I did the dishes (like I am supposed to do) and I even packed a PB&J sandwich for my wife to take to work for her midnight snack. I even cut it into halves like you are supposed to. I did laundry too and even cleaned Mr. Humphrey’s cage. Min will be very proud of me in the morning.

Well, I have discovered why I am unable to get the network card working in the new Windows 2003 installation. Since the time of the demo version that I had been using, they have discovered that the Microsoft signed drivers for that card were faulty and could potentially leak dangerous information out onto the network. So, it looks like they simply disables the driver instead of removing it or issuing a statement or anything. Seems like there would have been a better way to handle that. I had to really look to figure out why it wasn’t working. So, unfortunately, the only known solution to the problem that I am having is to go and install a new card to replace it. What a pain. Now I am short a card.

I went on to watch the movie that really put Ron Howard on the director map, Backdraft, even though it was his eighth movie after some greats like Parenthood and Willow. I love this film. I figured that I should watch it since I have had it in my collection for at least five years and have never watched it AND, to continue the tradition from last night, because this movie has Scott Glenn from Silverado and Robert Deniro from The Untouchables. So this movie was an awfully appropriate choice, I thought.

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