Today is catch up day. The day to panic and get as much done as possible between trips. Both Dominica and I slept in a little this morning. I am SO glad that I am not driving today. I really needed to have a day that didn’t involve me sitting in the car all day long. The original plan would have had me driving all day yesterday and today before my trip to Pittsburgh tomorrow and I don’t think that that would have made me very happy. I really needed to have a day at home when I could get some rest between boughts of driving as well as get caught up on some of the myriad things that need to be done before I go to Jersey.
I got a chance to sleep in a little but hardly get rested. It will be a while before I am able to catch up on sleep. Right now that is looking to be a pipe dream for the foreseeable future. I worked around the house this morning. I did some miscellaneous stuff in the office. There was tons and tons of emails and phone calls to get caught up on.
The weather is beautiful this morning. We have some rain but the air is really warm. It is so warm that Dominica went around and opened up a lot of the windows and we are getting some of the first fresh air in months. Boy does that feel good.
By 10:00 this morning I had gotten a call from a partner company of ours saying that they needed me to go up to Rochester to a client site to do some work this afternoon. That was not something that I was prepared for today. So I had to jump in the shower and get ready to go. Things never quiet down around here for a minute.
I was really fortunate today. The client in Rochester that needed me had a major disaster but we ended up being able to fix their problems in just an hour so I wasn’t stuck working there all day. That could have been really bad and really left me exhausted. I was actually done by just after 2:00 and was able to go down to the hospital and meet Eric for a cup of coffee.
We had about an hour to drink some coffee before Eric had to get to an interview. It was good timing because I really didn’t have any spare time anyway. I took the opportunity while being in the city to run to the Verizon Wireless store and get some much needed supplies for my cell phone. I picked up the top Jabra Bluetooth headset that they had which has a seven hour talk time and a two hundred hour stand-by time. It also has a vibrate feature so that you don’t make any noise when your phone rings and you don’t have to have the cell phone on you to be able to answer it. That is going to make travelling a lot easier. I need to be able to place calls all of the time and wired headsets just don’t work. I am going to have to get one of these for Dominica as well now that I know how awesome it is. I also got a much needed car charger and a second battery for my phone. I got the super extended life battery that is supposed to last for a week and a half or more.
I hit Borders quickly on the way home. It probably took me less than ten minutes. I am in the process of collecting books that I think that I should have before going to New Jersey next week. It is hard to guess what books will relate most closely to the processes that they are using so I am doing my best to be reasonably prepared. That is not an easy thing to do.
On the drive home the rain went from moderate which is what it has been all day long to torential downpour. It was so heavy that I could barely hold the road at times and visibility was almost nill. NY15 just south of US390 Exit 9 where it goes under the train bridge was completely flooded and there was enough water to come part way up the floor pan of my car. That was almost a disaster as I crashed into it. Lima Road coming into Geneseo had water flowing across it as well. This is the most water that I have seen since moving to Geneseo.
It was just a little before 5:00 when I got back to the house. I scheduled dinner with dad. He is coming to meet us at 6:00 to go to the Omega. There isn’t a lot of chance for me to see him before I have to move. Boy things are going to be busy.
While I was at the house I noticed that there was so much water that the back yard was starting to sink a little bit and that there was standing water in a newly formed ditch back there. So I decided that I needed to do some investigating since at the last home owners association meeting everyone had been complaining about the pond behind some of the houses and how it wasn’t flowing out into the stream like it was supposed to and was instead being used as an overflow for the stream. So I took a walk around and it was really amazing. The entire area between us and Walmart was flooded. The stream was so high that it was just inches from crashing over the banks into the pond. The water was flowing backward through the drain pipes at a impetuous pace. The pond was filling rapidly and would soon have no place to go other that right into the houses that are only feet away from it. The marsh that is supposed to be an overflow for the stream was full and was spilling out into the lawns of the houses and going into the road. The whole woods was underwater. This is definitely a really dangerous situation.
While I was investigating the pond one of the neighbours on that side by the pond came out onto the deck and we spent fifteen minutes or so talking about the water situation and how bad it was. This is a new neighbour, Dave, that I have not yet met at any of the homeowners functions. There are a lot of new people coming in that we have not been introduced to yet. It is starting to be a little weird living in a little community with so many members and not knowing everyone. Maybe this summer Dominica and I will have a chance to get to know some more of them. We are all finally getting a little more settled into the community now that the houses are all almost full. That will be so nice to finally have construction completed this year and we can get down to the business of getting the lawns growing and everything cared for and looking nice. That will be a big change. All of this time, three years now that we have lived in Geneseo, the townhouses that we live in have been under construction. I can’t wait to have that over and done with.
Dad picked us up at 6:00 and we went over to the Omega Grill. On the way there we went through a small lake that had formed at Denny’s. The Denny’s parking lot was completely under water and it had flown out over the lawn and was now flowing pretty deep over the road. I have never seen water like this in Geneseo. This is really bad.
After dinner I set to working on getting ready for the trip to Pittsburgh tomorrow. I had to get the cell phone ready and learn how to use the new headset. I got most everything except for clothing items packed and ready to go. Then Dominica and I went down to the basement to relax for a little bit before going to bed.
We watched a couple episodes of Remington Steele while I continued to work on that server. It took several hours of working but I finally made some progress and by 1:00 this morning the server is finally installed and in very good shape. It will still take a bit of work to get it ready to go back into service but it would appear that I am past the real hurdles and I just need a few hours to be able to work on it now and things will be good. I really didn’t want to stay up late like this but I just couldn’t stop working on the server once things were moving forward. I knew that the feeling that I would get from having the server actually working would far out weigh the lack of sleep that I will have tomorrow.
Dad also dropped off our new HP Proliant server that just arrived today when he brought us back from dinner. I managed to get it out of the box and look at it but I didn’t even have a chance to plug it in tonight. That is very sad. It looks awesome and I am really looking forward to having an opportunity to play with it but that is going to have to wait for Thursday or Friday, I am afraid. Too much to do and just not enough time.
While I finished working on the server Dominica worked on getting my clothes and sundry items packed and ready for tomorrow’s trip. She is so much better at packing than I am and almost never forgets important items. I have such a hard time getting things together when I am leaving the house.