Today’s update is being written from the datacenter of Wegmans in Jamestown, NY. Oh yes, exciting Jamestown. I know that you all wish that you were here with me tonight.
Min and I slept in until around noon today. Our work schedules are have sure gotten our lives onto weird schedules. We are always going to bed super late and getting up in the middle of the day. It is really tough, though, because the phone always rings incessantly all morning and it makes it almost impossible to get any good sleep.
Dominica had some shopping that she needed to get done so I went with her over to Wegmans in Geneseo. She has to get food to take to work with her or she is tempted to eat the unhealthy food that they have there. I grabbed two slices of pizza while we were there. It is the one thing that I can never get when I am at work because the pizza shops always close just before I can get to them.
Min went to work just after 2:30. I spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready to hit the road myself. It takes a lot to be able to get out of town for four days. It is surprising how much stuff I need. Having to have my CPAP with me at all times doesn’t make things any easier either.
Dad came over at 4:30 and we went out to dinner at the Omega on my way out of town. That is his second time at the Omega just today! I guess we know where I get it from 😉 Dad had come over to Geneseo to pick up Oreo since Min and I are both gone the next two days. Oreo has a really hard time being home alone. He gets really scared as soon as Min puts on her uniform for work. He recognizes the green Quality Inn polo and starts having a panic attack as soon as he sees it. He definitely has separation anxiety. Today is his first day off of the anti-hystamies (sp) that he has been on. Now we will see what happens.
I stopped by the Richardson’s on the way out of town to pick up some stuff that I needed to work on this week and hung out for twenty minutes or so. Then it was off to Jamestown. I don’t think that I have actually been in Jamestown since I came here for a day trip in 1997!
I am working the Erie area this week. Monday night (tonight) in Jamestown and then Tuesday and Wednesday both in Erie. I am staying at the Clarion Bel Air in Eric up by the lake. I am hoping that I am close enough to be able to take walks out by the water. That would be a nice change. From the looks of the location from Microsoft MapPoint (most people use the Streets and Trips version) it looks like I am half a mile or less from the lake and close enough to the penisula to be able to explore that as well. I am pretty sure that I have never been out on the Erie Penisula. In fact, I am pretty sure that I don’t know Erie at all. I have driven through it a million times since it is on the route from home to Ohio as well as on the way to Pittsburgh. So I have gone through Eric four to eight times a year, every year, since I was born. And we used to stop off at Millcreek Mall a lot when I was young to break up the trip but it has been forever since I was there.
On the way out to Jamestown, I stopped by the Alleghany River Rest Stop. It is a new rest stop that was just built by the Seneca Nation. It is really impressive. I think that it must be the nicest rest stop that I have ever been to. It isn’t really large but it is really attractively designed, very clean, easy to use and has lots of really interesting flora exhibits in a small arboretum that displays native trees of the region with nice plaques describing how the native Seneca people would use them. It was very interesting.
I worked my normal shift, 9-12 (yeah, just three hours, baby!) Then I hit the road to Erie which is only just over a half an hour from Jamestown. Really, neither Erie nor Jamestown are very far from home. Just long enough to keep you from wanted to drive back and forth. It took me a few minutes to find the hotel but this is a tiny town so it can only have been so hard. I got checked in and up to my room. My Internet access is pretty weak here. I can get online but I get bounced off all of the time so things coming from me will be pretty sporadic. To be able to be online at all, I had to use the bench in the room instead of the table and I had to move it all of the way across the room to right next to the door coming into the room. So I am sitting in the doorway using my laptop sitting on a bench. As it is I can’t use my instant messaging because it cuts off so often. But I am able to get email and hopefully to post the dailies. If I move my foot back and forth, it cuts me offline. Isn’t that just great?