November 24, 2006: Dominica’s Ten Year Reunion

Boy were we tired this morning when we dragged our sorry butts out of bed. Oreo had an early morning appointment with the vet in Ilion so we couldn’t sleep in at all. We had to be up and out quite early to get him there on time.

After the vet visit we drove back to Utica and met dad at the hotel and he drove us out to New Hartford where we met Dominica’s parents at the Hartford Queen diner in the middle of the strip. They had been up since very early doing the Black Friday shopping.

We had a nice breakfast and then dad, Min and I returned to the Hotel Utica and dad took off to go back home. I had some work that had to be done even though today was going to be a vacation day, sort of, there were a lot of people in the UK that didn’t think of it as a holiday and had a lot of work for me to do so I still was rather busy. So Dominica ran out to run errands and stuff while I worked in the hotel.

We are really happy staying at the Hotel Utica. Like I have said before, it is a grand hotel from 1912 that was recently completely refurbished giving it a feel much like our Newark apartment. The lobby is simlpy stunning and the rooms are very nice. I was quite impressed and the wireless worked really well too. And Oreo is allowed to stay with us which is very unusual for a nice hotel of this level. We will be utilizing the Hotel Utica quite a bit in the future, I imagine. It is just so handy and inexpensive.

Around half past three we had to start getting ready to go to Dominica ten year class reunion (Frankfort Schuyler High School Class of 1996.) It took me a really long time to get ready because we forgot to bring a shaver with us and I need to shave my head. So Dominica’s parents grabbed a Gillette Fusion razor for me and I used five blades (that is five blade units each with five actual knife blades on it for a total of twenty five blades) to shave with. It took forever and my head was really soar by the time that I was done. It took almost three hours to cut off all of my hair. That was a really bad idea.

We were fashionably late to the reunion but it was actually just about the right time to show up. Any earlier and we would have just been standing around waiting for things to get going. We had a good time. It was mostly a whirlwind of meeting people that Dominica has mentioned and lots that she hadn’t and trying to attach faces to names. We hung out for several hours until about ten thirty. Then a good number of the classmates headed over to Delmonico’s Steakhouse for some drinks after the party. We didn’t stay there for long. We are old and showing it.

After the party we had to run over to Frankfort to pick up Oreo before going back to the hotel to go to bed. Apparently Dominica was in a mood where everything was very funny as she went up to her parents’ bedroom to get Oreo and both of the dogs were laying in bed and being very cute and popped there heads up together to see who had come for them and apparently Min just stood there laughing for a while and woke up her parents. We didn’t find out about that until later. Joe and I were dying when we heard about that. It was after midnight by the time we got back to the Hotel Utica and got to sleep. Quite a long day for us.