Just as I was leaving work yesterday Dominica emailed me to let me know that she was able to find a dog walker who would be able to come to the apartment and walk Oreo on Thursday and Friday which leaves no one to come walk him today so I am planning on running home during lunch and taking him out and getting him calm so that he doesn’t panic with the house empty all day. He is such a nervous boy.
I got home from work and immediately Dominica and I left to do some emergency shopping that needed to be done tonight. We ran to CompUSA in Edison and picked up a bunch of Category 5e cabling in preparation for the move to Scranton. We managed to get everything that we needed and then took a quick drive down to East Brunswick to go to Borders there. I had finished reading the book that I was working on today and am getting low on books to read even though I brought a few down from Geneseo so I picked up a couple technology books to keep me busy and I also picked up the new Dungeons and Dragons book “The Dungeon Master’s Guide II” which I have been eyeing for a month or so. I haven’t played a real role playing game in probably thirteen years and I would really like to get a game going again soon. Even if just once in a while.
We got back from shopping and boy were we tired. It was nine o’clock and both of us were ready to collapse. We decided to give up and to just go to bed. Oreo thought that that was a great idea. Sleeping is one of his four favourite activities.
Today I discovered the really handy online version of The Shotgun Rules that would have been much easier to have around when I was younger. Of course, the issue with all of these kind of rules things is that they don’t quite manage to remove all of the ambiguity and this particular set of rules makes the point of saying that no everyone has to be outside in order to call Shotgun but they seem to imply that the person calling must be but all we know for sure is that someone must be. They say that making sure that everyone has to be outside doesn’t work but in Nate and my experience it is the only thing that works or else it is a fight to get out the door first and that is the same as rushing to the car and not about calling Shotgun. Once you have a physical limiter by participant you have eliminated the underlying purpose for having the Shotgun system in the first place. They also don’t have the cool Bitch and Boomstick additional rules.
I found out this morning that Cory is in East Rutherford, New Jersey working this week. Too bad this week is so busy or we might have been able to have gotten together. As it is I am just swamped. Dominica was up very early this morning, around five in the morning, so that she could get ready and be into the office for half past seven! Ugh. She is going to be really exhausted tonight.
I slept in until half past six with Oreo and then did a little work from the apartment before getting ready for work and going into the office for ten. I figured that if I did a little work from home today that Oreo wouldn’t be alone for nearly so long. That way his alone time didn’t start until ten which wasn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things.
Work was okay today. Enough going on to stay busy and not so much to be a problem or stressful. I normally get to do a bit of reading during the day, a score or two of pages at least, but today that didn’t end up happening.
For my lunch break, which I took very late, I ran home as quickly as I could and spent my lunch with Oreo. I tried to log in and work from home but, as usual, that didn’t work like it was supposed to and I wasn’t able to connect to the office. Oreo was quite glad that I was home and didn’t seem to be upset at all. I ate lunch, vegetarian spaghetti-o’s, and walked the dog. Then it was time to rush back to the office.
During my lunchtime drive I finished listening to Garrison Keiler’s “Lake Wobegon Boy” which was an interesting aside to the usual stories of Lake Wobegon – the little town that time forgot. This particular book followed the life of one of the lesser known characters from the town as he grew up and moved away and followed his life in the Ithaca area which I thought was very interesting and noticed more than a passing resemblence between the university mentioned in the book and a certain “Ivy League” school located in Ithaca in it being a well known school as expensive as Harvard or Yale but where the rich could send their children whom were unable to handle demanding schools and would be basically guaranteed a sheep skin for their money regardless of their childrens performance, attendance or intelligence.
I moved on to listen to “Wicked” which Dominica read and really enjoyed. For those who have been living under a rock for the last several years “Wicked” is the biography of The Wicked Witch of the West from “The Wizard of Oz”. A retelling of the infamous Oz story from a different perspective – from someone who saw Dorothy as a murder and shoe thief. So far it is interesting.
Dominica got home before I did by about half an hour. Oreo was in good shape and not upset that he had spent the day mostly alone. But he was very happy to have us home with him. He had been bored all day and really wanted to play with us when we got in.
Neither of us felt like dealing with food tonight so we broke down and just ordered from Papa John’s. Dominica ate, did some miscellaneous work that needed to be completed tonight and went to bed early. I had a lot of work that needed to be done in preparation for the move to Scranton tomorrow so I was up until about one in the morning working on that. But I think that I am ready or at least as ready as I am likely to be. I am driving out to Scranton after work tomorrow evening to deliver the equipment which will be installed on Friday morning. This will be the first of many trips to Scranton over the next two months.