Dominica and I were both completely exhausted after being up with the Ralstons so late last night. I am sure that were not as tired as they are as they continue to drive south on i95 towards Florida. We got periodic status updates from Danielle throughout the day as she has Twitter working from her cell phone now.
Dominica got up around five thirty this morning to take care of Liesl who was tired of this sleeping thing. Dominica stayed up with her on and off until seven thirty or so. Then Liesl slept for an hour then I got up and took care of her until ten thirty when Liesl was too demanding for me to be able to handle while working so I had to wake up Dominica and have her take over again.
Today was less busy than most days. Very nice. Needed that after getting so little sleep. I had a lot of paperwork that had to be done today. Sent out checks, filed for STARR exemption for our taxes, mailed out NetFlix – you know, the important stuff.
We needed to make a post office run so late this afternoon we bundled the family into the SUV (oh how I hate saying things like that) and drove out to Mohegan Lake and sent everything out from the Post Office there. Then we went and got ice cream, as a special treat, from Cold Stone Creamery as we had gotten all excited to have been able to have gotten it last night and then failed to do so. They had marshmallow ice cream which neither of us had had before. I think that it must be a new flavour. It was awesome. We both got ice cream creations based on it.
Then we swung into Best Buy because we are in desperate need of a printer and felt that the deals there were pretty good for what we needed. Dominica decided that she wanted to have a photo printer so that she could print photos of Liesl. So we decided to get an all-in-one photo printer, scanner, copier and fax unit that is networkable with both wired and wireless connections. We have to have a printer that connects that way or else it just does not work for us at all. having to have the printer connected to a computer that is configured and turned on at all times is just too much for a constantly changing environment like ours.
After pouring over every Hewlett-Packard printer model that Best Buy had we finally settled on the C309 which we feel was a really good value and really had the features that we cared about included double-sided printing which is awesome. We felt that the price that we got was qutie good as well – about $35 less than the HP website. It is really nice to see network options being available on so many printers today. Hooking printers directly to computers is very passe and not the most effectively way for most people to use them. Having printers be their own, stand alone devices is much more useful in general. This unit is supposed to do a really good job with photos as well.
We got back home and had a little adventure with our naughty dog. It was the middle of the afternoon and no one was anywhere. It is was really quite in our complex. Just nothing going on. So when Oreo almost jumped out of the car I just grabbed him and lifted him down and set him on the ground and then tried to hook up his leash.
Oreo decided to be naughty and bolted. He wasn’t chasing in particular – just playing apparently. We dodged left and right and crossed the road and took off running. So I got to run down the street after him. When I finally caught up to him he was definitely is a mischievous mood and had gotten the impression that we were playing a game. He only stopped running when my voice definitely changed to him being “in big trouble.”
So we don’t get to even kind of let Oreo step outside the door now or anything. Nothing at all. Zero outdoor tolerance. He was a very naughty dog.
Back to work for several more hours. The weather is much nicer today. Not so hot. Just in the seventies.
Danielle posted to Twitter throughout the day so that everyone could keep tabs on their driving progress. That is one of my favourite uses of the microblogging platforms – the ability to keep track of people when they are traveling, commuting, etc. Everyone knows where you are when you are sitting at your desk working but when driving thousands of miles it is handy to know where people are and when and get basic information from the road.
They arrived at the Country Inn and Suites in Wilson, North Carolina somewhere around four this afternoon and then went to Cracker Barrel for dinner and back to the indoor pool to relax before turning in for some serious sleep. They will be driving on to Miama, Florida tomorrow. They did not get off to bed until almost nine tonight.
I’ve always wanted to go to Miami to see that city and now my car is going there but I am not.
This evening we were hanging out in the basement when Francesca called to have Dominica help her get set up with her new laptop which I am assuming just arrived today. That ended up taking several hours and we forgot about getting dinner. We had been thinking about going to Panera Bread for dinner and, at least, this kept us for splurging which we should not have done anyway.
We have two new DVDs that arrived yesterday from Amazon: Whisper of the Heart and Pom Poko. I have been excited to get to watch them and was hoping to be able to take some time off and watch one tonight.
I worked until very late. Then Dominica and I watched Pom Poko or most of it. It was pretty good but was so weird and slow and I was completely exhausted that I just was not, at all, able to follow along. I ended up deciding to give up and to save it for tomorrow and went down to the basement to get some last minute work done so that we could go off to bed and it turned out that it was right at the end and Dominica finished it. Oh well. I will catch up at some point.
Off to bed around one thirty this morning.
Danielle did not think that it was funny when I mentioned that Rocky Mount, North Carolina is the exact spot where the Mazda PR5 – the one that they are driving right not – broke down on Dominica and I on our way north on i95 several years ago. I believe that it may actually have been Wilson, NC where we broke down.