January 15, 2005

John is supposed to be picking up my new (new is a very relative term here) IBM AS/400 computer down in Baltimore today. It is going into the office for the next few days until I can get it. They really need the space right away so I am trying to figure out how I can get down there to get it. It looks like, at this point, that I will be travelling down to Washington tomorrow afternoon. I plan on taking the train out of Rochester at 2:57, which is perfect because Min will just be heading into work and can drop me off without any problem. That couldn’t work out any better. I will take the train to Penn Station in New York and only have a fifteen minute layover before hoping on the next line heading down to Washington. My plan is to head to New Carrolton, Maryland which is just outside the city and very accessible. I think that I can walk from the train station over to the Marriott Courtyard without a problem which will make things really easy since I will be arriving around 1:00 in the morning. But taking the train is a good $50 cheaper than flying and I can’t drive down because I need to drive a truck back. But I like train travel so I am happy. I will take some books and magazines with me and get plenty of work done while I am on the train. It will be a nice way to get some quiet time to myself. Plus, I might even get lucky and have an electric outlet and have a chance to use my laptop for a bit of the way. That would be really nice. But I have plenty of reading to catch up on so I am not worried about having enough to do.

The trip to Washington wasn’t expected so I am in a little bit of a panic trying to get everything taken care of before I have to leave tomorrow. Luckily the beginning of my week is relatively free but Min and I are travelling down to Pittsburgh later in the week and that will disrupt things a little bit. I am pretty much going to be out of town from Sunday until Friday at a minimum. I will be home on Wednesday for about half of the day. So much for having an easy week.

I got rid of the December dailies today so if you want them, go to the archives. This page is already pretty long and we don’t need anything extra slowing it down.

We took out my new luggage since this will be the first two trips that I actually get to use it since I got it for Christmas. It is going to work out really well since there are lots of different sizes (it is a five piece set) so I can take one small one tomorrow going to DC and then I can take a nice big one for Min and I and a garment bag for my suit when we go to Pittsburgh later in the week.

I woke Andy up around 1:00 and the three of us are heading up to Henrietta to get some lunch and to go to Borders. We were tired of eating in Geneseo and I wanted to go to Borders to find a book or two to read while I was on the train (ten hours is a LOT of reading!) So that worked out well. Andy got up and jumped into the shower. I am the only person to actually get up in the mornings around here.

We got lunch at IHOP (it was only barely lunch since we ate at around 2:30.) Lunch was really good but the restaurant and, in fact, the entire shopping area was completely packed with people. We couldn’t believe how many people were out shopping today, it was crazy. Min needed to go to Old Navy to return a sweater and I ended up buying two new fleeces while we were there. Hey, they were on sale. Only $6. Then we dropped Min off at Target and Andy and I went over to Borders and did some shopping. I got two books to take with me to Washington so I shouldn’t get too bored on the train. Although I could, theoretically, finish two books on a ten hour train. I doubt that I will be able to keep myself reading more than half of the time. We didn’t buy any more movies today, a rarity when shopping. Andy did pick up the first volume of Aqua Teen Hunger Force though. So we will probably watch some of that this evening.

John didn’t manage to pick up the server today so I am going to have to figure out how to deak with it once I get down there.

Min had some shopping to do and I wanted some Wegmans pizza (I am sure that everyone is aware that Wegmans won Forbes’ Magazine’s listing of the top companies to work for in the US. They won for the large business category! – AmGen whom Andy worked for last year came in in the top 10, Andy, I am sure, is not impressed) so we headed over to the grocert store. I got my pizza and was very happy to be able to get diet Cherry Pepsi – which for the longest time I couldn’t convince anyone existed – to go with my dinner. I discovered that Wegmans had four or five racks of movies for under $6. So, I went a little crazy as I am sure all of you expected. Min eventually found me and joined in and we ended up bringing home the following movies: Win A Date with Tad Hamilton!, New York Minute, Duplex, Down with Love, The Day After Tomorrow, House of Sand and Fog, Laws of Attraction, Connie and Carla, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, The Alamo, JetLag, Dirty Dancing: Havanna Nights, Uptown Girls and… Bob, get ready for this… Bring It On, Again. What a haul that is. Fourteen new movies! We are bargain movie shopping fanatics. Phil and Kate will be happy that the selection of movies has increased so dramatically. We were stuck getting one or two of the movies in Pan and Scan but only two, I think. None of the really good ones. So, of course, we decided to watch some movies tonight. Min popped some Wegmans French bread pizzas into the oven and I headed down to fire up the theatre.

We started off by watching New York Minute starring the Olsen Twins. It wasn’t a great movie but much better than you would probably expect. Definitely not bad. Then we decided that we weren’t tired so we watched Dirty Dancing: Havanna Nights starring Diego Luna (Y Tu Mama Tambien) which was better than I had expected. It is actually set prior to the original Dirty Dancing and has Patrick Swayze as a dance instructor in Havanna on the eve of the communist revolution there. After that movie, we still weren’t tired so in went The Lizzie McGuire Movie with Hilary Duff. That was cute, mostly a long, big-budget version of the television show. But it was enjoyable and for those who have seen the show before, I think that it was a pretty decent ending to the show – although I think that could have cemented the relationship between Lizzie and Gordo a little bit more to make for a happier final outcome to the show.

By the time we were done watching all of those movies, it was pretty late. Time to get to bed, lots to be done tomorrow.

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