Sheep Guarding Llama

Midnight rolled around and I wasn’t tired at all. I figure that I will just lose a night’s sleep and go to bed on the early side tomorrow. I know that I will be anxious to try out my new CPAP equipment and Oreo will be looking forward to snuggling with his daddy.

Around midnight the rains finally came that we have been being told that we were going to get for days. What a relief that is to the heat. It is only seventy five out and dropping. It is supposed to get down to seventy by morning. That will be nice. As soon as I realized that it was raining I opened up the windows. It is nice to have the fresh air again but nothing compares to not having to have the sound of the air conditioning running. My ears can’t take it anymore.

I did some cleaning around the house to get ready for Dominica’s return. Obviously I need to make the house as inviting as possible so that she might actually want to stay for a few days. We have only seen each other for about a week out of the last month. I am getting really lonely down here all by myself all of the time.

I watched some Magnum P.I. Second Season while I did some SGL work. In one episode I noticed some serious discrepencies that should have been really noticable to anyone watching this show back when it first aired. In this particular episode they have two USAF F-4 Phantoms intercept a Russian jet in US airspace (this was the height of the Cold War, remember.) Now, for modern or postmodern audiences it is important to keep in mind that knowledge of US and Russian military aircraft was widespread at the time in the general populace. It is funny looking back all these years later but as a child I definitely knew the make, models and specs of all major military aircraft. No one seems to take any notice of that stuff these days. Anyway, viewers at the time would have been very familiar with all of the aircraft in question. First of all, viewers would have known that the aging F-4 would have been a very poor choice for the USAF to have sent as an interceptor of a Russian MiG-30. Most likely these were used because they were cheap by the early 1980’s unlike the later F14, F15, F16 and F18’s that ruled the air during the 1980’s. Secondly, the F4 Phantom is one of the most recognizable aircraft ever made. No one would ever mistake one for anything else. It is one of the least generic aircraft that the US has ever had. Thirdly, the MiG-30 is not a real aircraft. MiG only ever manufactured a MiG-29 and a MiG-31 and neither of those, nor any other product from Russia, ever even remotely resembled a Phantom F4. So when in making the show they used a US Phantom F4 painted to look like Russian markings it was so obviously a US plane that audiences at the time, and me, would have been very confused by what they were showing on the screen. You couldn’t figure out where the Russian plane was supposed to be because it was so clearly all American planes in the sky. Like driving three Corvettes down the road with one of them painted in a brighter colour and hoping audiences just figure out that it was supposed to be a Porsche – so many viewers would instantly recognize it as a ‘Vette that it would never occur to you that they were trying to imply that it was something else that looks nothing like it.

Today is my big travel day. I talked to the cab company last night and they said to just call in the morning to get a cab sent out. I have to take a cab to the New Brunswick train station where I will pick up the NJ Transit train to New York – Penn Station. That is the big secret to traveling by train in and out of this area – use the NJ Transit and not Amtrak to get in and out of New York City. If you take Amtrak it will cost a lot more and won’t be nearly as convenient. The NJ Transit is less than $10 one way. Then, once in Manhattan, I will hop Amtrak to Utica. The trip won’t take very long once I am on the train. Unfortunately, there is a bit of waiting just to be sure that I have plenty of time between transfers. I have to get the cab around 7:00 am to be at the train station in plenty of time. But that will, most likely, leave me sitting at the New Brunswick Station for quite some time. Then I will ride the 8:00 train to Manhattan and be at the station about forty five minutes before the Amtrak line leaves. So I will be sitting around doing nothing for nearly three hours at that point. Then the train ride to Utica. That won’t be that much longer than the time that I will have all ready spent. I had originally planned to leave two hours earlier but the Amtrak site was down and when it came back up that train had sold out. So I am taking the later train and arriving in Utica at 2:02. Dominica and Oreo will pick me up there. Fortunately I don’t need to take any luggage with me – just my laptop bag and my CPAP. Taking my laptop and my CPAP with me also serves to empty the house and nearly everything of any value. It is handy having an empty apartment sometimes.

I managed to record episode 48 of the SGL Podcast this morning. It feels good to get a second episode done. It has been so long since I was doing the show regularly. This isn’t the most exciting episode but I wanted to take a chance to talk about Dominica and my housing decisions and planning since so many people only listen to that and don’t read the site although more do it the other way around. Just one more episode to go before the big FIVE OH! I can’t believe that I have done that many shows so far. That is crazy. And there has been a ton of good music on there too.

The night went by slowly. I was somewhat tired and somewhat bored but I couldn’t bring myself to do any real work. I got all packed and ready to get onto the train. It is going to be a long, boring travel day. I have one small book, three magazines and I did remember to pack my Sandisk Sansa MP3 player loaded with Audible books and an extra battery to make sure that I can make it the entire way. I am taking my laptop which finally has the battery with it so I might get to use that on the train as well. I have never tried to do that so that will be an experience.

For “breakfast” I heated up the crab cakes and mac and cheese that I had for dinner last night. They tasted okay reheated but not long after eating it I didn’t feel so well. Just great. Good way to start a long day of traveling.

I had to call for my taxi a little before seven this morning. I hate taking taxis. What a pain. But what are you doing to do?

I decided that since there is little chance of me getting to work any further on SGL today that I am going to go ahead and post so that at least the site is updated. It is now seven and time for me to take off.

Fortunately Friday nights are very slow. After a long week of work it is very nice to know that Friday nights have almost nothing going on. It was extra slow tonight and I got to spend almost the entire night relaxing. I needed that. I was really tired, mentally not physically, after a long week. Everyone who does the night shift says that by the fifth night you start to lose the ability to do to much.

I found a centipede in the “dining room” area. Will they never end? I managed to kill it pretty quickly. I am getting better at this. I have to do it so often.

I also got a ton more done on the web site. All of 2002 and a lot of 2003 have been moved over as well as some of the podcasts although that will take a bit longer to get them all moved. That requires coordination with OurMedia. I did managed to record the first SGL Podcast in quite some time. That felt good to finally get moving again. It has been over two months since the last episode! It was tough to record because of the incredibly loud air conditioning. Boy am I getting tired of that. I can’t wait to move to a nicer place where the air conditioning actually keeps the place cold, there aren’t centipedes crawling everywhere and there is nice stuff that I can walk to.

Around three in the morning I discovered yet another centipede. This is really awful. This one I didn’t manage to kill. It made a run for it in the dark and made it into the furnace “room”. I hate that that small “room” or “hallway thing” has no light or its own nor does it have a power plug to allow me to add one. So there was nothing that I could do and I just had to wait him out.

Throughout the night I kept coming back and looking for the centipede but had no luck. I doubted that he would go to far but you can never tell with these things. They are big creatures and really travel. I kept watching the area for hours in the hopes of seeing it again. At seven or so I went to use the bathroom which is right next to that area and, as luck would have it, the centipede decided to take the opportunity to make its appearance. What a pain. He started by running out of the linen closet, the farthest point in the room from me, and making a dart to go under the sink, the nearest point of the room. The sink wasn’t installed very well and there was a good 1/8″ to 1/4″ space under the cabinet for him to be able to roam around in. Just great. I thought that the old adage “he is as scared of me as I am of him” must be true and trusted that he would stay under there. Nope. He decided to make a run at me! This thing is aggressive. He knows that I am after him. I managed to get him with a magazine but before I could step on it he was gone around running around the back of the toilet and making a loop back for the sink. Argh. He went back under and hid this time. I got a glass of water and tried to “swoosh” him out. That didn’t work but he did poke his head out to look at me! I think that I might have seen him give me the finger. But I can’t be sure. It took another couple of hours before he showed himself again. I caught him in the “hallway” making a run for his furnace room hiding place. This time I was ready with the mop and managed to get him – sort of. He started climbing up the mop! But he did make the mistake of getting caught between the top of the sponge and the pressing plate and I managed to get him in there. I doubt that any amount of pressure in that manny would actually kill him so I took the mop into the bathrub and drowned him. Finally. The good news is that even with all of these centipedes – we have yet to have found a single one that we didn’t manage to kill eventually. It is also encouraging that we have not had any that once we have found them have not remained very obvious so we are pretty certain that we are currently aware of any current guests and that we find them shortly after they decide to move in.

I watched a couple of movies this morning like Not Another Teen Movie and Road Trip. Stuff that I have seen before but haven’t seen in a while.

For some reason I wasn’t all that tired when the end of my shift came so I decided to stay up for a while. I got an email from dad early this morning saying that his Buick’s engine had seized up on him and the car was dead. Totalled, in fact. So he is quickly shopping for a new car. My aunt is helping him to get a rental today to hold him over until he finds something. He has been looking at the Saturn Sky but didn’t think that there would be any way to get one. So this morning I walked over to the Saturn dealer that is right next to where I live and sat in one to see how it was. They have two on the lot there and one of them would work for dad. I called him but he doesn’t want a black one. So I called all over New Jersey and found a dealer with a perfect silver one that could be traded to the local dealer. So dad had to run up to Rochester to find a Sky to test drive so that he can decide whether or not he wants one.

Dad got a Nissan Altima for a rental. That is a pretty nice rental. He is really liking it. He would never have looked twice at a Nissan before but now he is driving one we will see how this affects him.

I went over to the Omega Diner at 3:00 to get some dinner. It is Friday and they have their crab cakes with mac and cheese on Fridays and it is really awesome. I didn’t want to miss that like I did last week. So I ate alone and then came right back to the apartment. It is very sad. The upside to the crab cake/mac and cheese meal is that it is huge and I have plenty of left overs from it. So that should make for another meal for me later. Hopefully I will get a chance to eat it before I leave.

Once I got home and had some food on my stomach I decided that it was time to actually go to bed. I suppose that I should get some sleep before I have to go to Frankfort for the weekend. I basically have ended up skipping an entire night’s sleep at somepoint. Weird how that happens. I am starting to miss my bed. It feels kind of weird going to bed now.

Dad called at 4:30 to let me know that he had looked at the car and that it was too small and low for him to be able to use all of the time so he is going to pass up his dream of owning a Saturn Sky. He also looked at the Ford Mustang convertible but decided that it, too, was too low for him to use. So he was going to look at cars at a dealer in Batavia that he likes. He is looking at a Mazda 6 that they have there.

I slept until about ten o’clock this evening. I was very well rested and decided that it was time to get up. It is a bit earlier than I had hoped for since I am going to have to be awake until I arrive in Utica at two tomorrow afternoon and then I have lots to do all day. So I am going to be up for quite a while at this point. Ugh. But I feel good so we will see.

I watched some more Magnum P.I. Season Two and continued working on the SGL Dailies from 2003. I am about halfway through the year now.

It is weird, as always, changing the day that I am writing as even though I am still sitting at the computer as I have been for the past eleven hours or so. But switching at midnight is about the only thing that makes sense and is consitent so let Thursday begin. I have been working since five in the afternoon yesterday and am scheduled until eight in the morning but I have a server checkout that isn’t likely to start until then so I could easily end up getting stuck a bit later than that which is really not what I am hoping for. I will be really exhausted by morning. I am adjusting to the overnights well and have no been doing too badly, in general. I am staying on the overnight now until Monday (that is I will work from Sunday night into Monday morning) but on Tuesday I will be back to days. Or so I have been told. But there is a decent chance that I will be on overnights again on Thursday and Friday working with the new, full time overnight guy. That means that I won’t be able to work from home, though, and will have to go into the office those nights which will not be nearly as nice.

I finished watching The Thomas Crown Affair that I started in the evening. I had gotten mixed reviews of it and I can see why. Brosnan is always good but this was not a particularly exciting role for him to be in. Rene Russo is generally hot and cold and I don’t find her very likable in this role. The movie isn’t bad but not gripping. The characters are kind of flat and boring and the female lead could be given a positive spin by calling her a top notch insurance investigator or you could give her a negative spin by calling her a seven figure prostitute. Likewise our investment banker male lead could be a world class art thief or perhaps just a big time practical joker. This is a film that leaves a lot of room for “spin” but ends up just spinning out.

I moved on to Lethal Weapon 2 which I haven’t seen in a long time. Strangely Walmart only had 2 and 4 available. It seems like they would have an easier time selling them if they sold all four films together. I realize that 2 and 4 are the “bargains” of the series with 1 and 3 being the classics but still. Who buys only the sequel and never the original to anything? You just don’t do that. I did but only because I have all ready seen them all and plan to get 1 and 3 when I find them.

The night dragged on and my six I was totally exhausted. I went in and lay down a little a few times. At one point I think that I slept for a good fifteen or maybe even twenty minutes. That helped – a little power nap and I was pretty good for another hour. I was really happy that they decided not to do my server checkout until after I had signed off at eight so that I didn’t get caught having to do that while being so tired. I went to bed a few minutes before eight and I was out like a light.

I slept for a solid seven hours. I don’t think that I woke up once the entire night. Boy did that feel good. I was up at three in the afternoon and felt great. Funny how just seven good hours of sleep can do so much revitalization.

I did more site maintenance today and there is a ton of the old dailies on the database now. What a relief that is. Soon, I hope, they will all be moved over and the site will be whole again. This afternoon I went outside for a few minutes and took some pictures of the apartment and the complex so that people could see what it is like where we are living. I put up two pictures of the apartment taken from the parking lot that you can see here and here. Plus a picture of a wooded area in the complex and one of the main complex driveway leading out to US Route 1.

I watched The Road Warrior which is the better know sequel to the film Mad Max. Everyone knows the name of the movie Mad Max but very few people have actually seen the film. Most have seen the sequel and confuse it for the original although if you actually see the first one you would realize that they are not the same movie at all. And then a lot more people get really confused about the third movie in the series, Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome which was a really awful movie with Tina Turner. The first two were sort of serious movies and were very important in their genre but the third was just crap. And everyone thinks that you mean that one if you ever say Mad Max. Frustrating.

I was running very low on DVDs to watch so I decided to go out to Best Buy this evening and do some stocking up. I am doing the overnight again tonight and then at least one day next week and these overnights cause me to go through a ton of stuff when otherwise I might go for a week with only watching one show or so. I also looked for CDs but didn’t find anything that I had wanted but I didn’t find a good deal on the soundtrack to the musical made into movie Paint Your Wagon. I had a cassette copy of that soundtrack as a kid that I made from my parents LP. What an awesome soundtrack. I would own that movie as well but dad has it.

I did manage to get a bunch of movies. A bunch of really stupid movies, for the most part, but stuff that I kind of wanted to have and that are perfect for semi-watching late at night: Old School, Not Another Teen Movie and Road Trip. I also got some good serious movies like Pride and Prejudice and Broken Flowers as well as Ocean’s Eleven which seemed appropriate since we recently got Ocean’s Twelve. I was really glad that I went because I also managed to find a one buy, get one free deal on the Magnum P.I. series so I bought seasons two and four so I have all four of the first series now! That saved a lot of money.

While I was in the Best Buy parking lot I decided to walk over to the grocery store and see if there was anything there that I wanted. There wasn’t but there was a Dunkin Donuts inside of the grocery store (they have one like every ten feet down here.) So I grabbed a croissant sandwich for dinner.

It was nine thirty when I got back to the apartment. I discovered another centipede tonight. Argh. This one died pretty quickly. I really hate centipedes.

I did some additional work on SGL and watched Old School before my shift started. Nate and Bob had raved and raved about Old School so when I found it fairly cheap I figured that I shouldn’t pass it up. I am not sure that I would go along with their rave reviews but it was a passable movie. Luke Wilson is always good. It is definitely not a classic by any stretch.

I was doing some meandering on Amazon tonight and found this awesome CD that everyone has to own. Ok, just kidding. But can you believe that CD actually exists?