Sheep Guarding Llama

I didn’t manage to get very much sleep last night so I am really exhausted as I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in several days and the past few days have been really busy too. I got up this morning and talked with Bob who is coming up for the funeral as well. We decided to car pool so he is going to come from Ithaca and meet me at the house. I am pretty much on his way to Perry and he is going to be staying here tonight so it makes a lot of sense.

I spent two hours on the phone with Art this morning which took up all of the spare time that I had and some that I didn’t. Bob arrived while I was on the phone and I had to get dressed in my suit while on the phone while Bob was waiting for me. Bob ended up driving us over to Perry with me on the phone the entire way and I even was on the phone for a little while while standing on the sidewalk in Perry. Dad was still feeling sick this morning and didn’t come until pretty late to the funeral. I was supposed to call dad when we left Geneseo but I was on the phone and had forgotten. But it was probably best because he was asleep and feeling sick enough that he really needed the sleep.

The funeral was for John Howlett, Joe’s father, who died last week from the complications arising from a stroke that he had suffered almost two weeks ago. The service was really nice. Bob, Nate and even Jeff Simpson managed to make it. Dad made it but had to take off quite quickly afterwards.

After the service Bob and I came back to Geneseo and I spent a little more time on the phone getting some things scheduled and dealing with a few loose ends and then we went over to the Omega Grill for some dinner. We were both pretty hungry having not eaten all day.

We came back to the house for a little while and then went over to Perry again to hang out with the Parkers in their new “piano room” that they are just finishing building for their newly inherited Steinway piano. Bob has only ever played euchre a couple of times and didn’t really know how to play so we taught him how to play and then he and I played against Nate and Rachel and we kicked their butts pretty good winning three out of four games. We couldn’t hang out too late because Oreo was left alone almost all day long and he needs some company.

We went back to my house in Geneseo and we watched Batman Begins which I have only seen at the drive-in in Perry and Bob has not seen yet. Bob loved the movie. It is really awesome. I think that it is the best comic book turned movie that I have ever seen.

Merry Christmas everyone! Dominica and I celebrated the holiday in Frankfort as usual. We arrived in town around 2:00 in the morning and got a little sleep before we had to get up. The dogs fight over who gets to sleep with us and there isn’t a lot of extra space so it makes actually sleeping pretty difficult.

We pulled ourselves out of bed around 8:00 in the morning or a little thereafter. Christmas morning is a busy time. Everyone was awake and the present opening started around 9:00. Present opening went pretty quickly this year. We were finished not long after 2:00 in the afternoon. The highlight of the day was marshmallow guns. Dominica’s parents put together marshmallow gun kits that we each had to assemble so that we could shoot each other with marshmallows. That was a lot of fun.

Dominica and my big present for Christmas was a Canon Elura 60 camcorder that we had asked for. We are really excited to have a digital camcorder because we have been doing a lot of video recording using our Kodak digital camera over the last few months and we have really discovered that we would really like to be able to record a lot more stuff and in a lot higher quality. So be sure to be paying attention as new vlog content is likely to be coming very soon once I get this thing figured out.

I also got a game of twenty questions called 20Q which is really cool. It is a little video game handheld device that plays twenty questions with you. It is really amazing how good that it is at guessing what you are thinking. I am really impressed. It is a lot of fun. Everyone was addicted to playing Francesca’s 20Q game all afternoon.

At 4:00 we went over to Dominica’s grandfather’s house for the family dinner. We were there for several hours. I had to take off shortly after we got back to Min’s parent’s house. I have a funeral tomorrow back home. Min only gets a little bit of time to visit with her family so she decided to stay in Frankfort for another two days. It was between 10:00 and 11:00 when I finally got onto the road with Oreo back to Geneseo.

Nothing like the holidays to cause me to fall behind on the updates. But here we go with catching up.

Dominica had to work today. The unfortunate thing is that she had to go into work extra early because of the holiday. She had to head in for 8:00 but she was done by 3:00 and got the entire afternoon and evening free to do Christmas stuff. We had some last minute needs at Walmart so we ended up taking a quick trip over there to do our final shopping.

We went to church at Leicester Union Presbyterian tonight. It has become our usual stop for the Christmas Eve service. We have been going there regularly for several years now. That is where my father’s family goes. Dad went to church but left before we got there because he is still suffering from food poisoning. At least we think that it is food poisoning. He thought that he was feeling better but once he left the house he started to feel really sick again and decided that he couldn’t stay out.

After the Christmas Eve Candlelight Service we went over to the Richardsons’ to celebrate Christmas. The pastor and his wife from Union were there as well. Dad didn’t manage to come over because he was still feeling sick. We hung out down there for several hours and exchanged gifts before driving up to Peoria to see dad.

We stayed at dad’s house for about an hour and exchanged gifts there as well. He needed to get back to sleep and we needed to get onto the road so we couldn’t stay for very long. We had taken Oreo along with us all evening so he was having a good time visiting with everyone.

We went back to Geneseo and got the car packed and ready to go. We had gotten most of everything packed earlier but hadn’t put the last few things in and wanted to change our clothes before driving for several hours.

It was after 11:00 when we finally got the chance to leave Geneseo. We took Janet Evanovich’s “Visions of Sugar Plums” to listen to in the car. We didn’t quite get a chance to finish the book but so far it’s awful. It is part of the Stephanie Plum series that we have, so far, enjoyed but I really hope that this is not an indication of the future of the series. Dominica has read the first five books and I have read the first four. This one comes approximately between the sixth and the seventh in the series. I hope that it is just bad because it is a poor attempt at being a holiday novel. The book doesn’t read like Janet’s other books. I think that she may have used an intern to write the book and just used her characters. Hopefully, anyway.

We arrived in Frankfort around 2:00 am and pretty much went straight to bed. We were really tired.

My original plan for today was to go down to Ithaca and spend the day down there. Working last night and needing to get a full night’s sleep kept me from leaving as early as I had planned on. Then it appears that I messed up my schedule some, which you can’t entirely blame me for since my electronic calendar was erased through some equipment failure, and there wasn’t really something in Ithaca that I had meant to go down there for. It worked out for the best though because I have plenty of work that I really need to get to that I have to do here in Geneseo. There is always so much work to get done, isn’t there?

I did some cleaning this morning because the Ralstons were stopping by around noonish. The house is a total disaster between us having been too busy to get a lot of cleaning done, the Christmas wrapping mess and the computers being worked on in the living room.

The Ralstons came over and we hung out for about an hour or so. No one had eaten lunch so they couldn’t stay too long. I called dad to see if he wanted to get something to eat but he is still sick from yesterday with a fever. So it is probably best that I am not going to Ithaca today and that way he isn’t stuck taking care of Oreo when he doesn’t feel very well.

It is really warm out today. So warm that it is raining! After the last several weeks of incredibly cold weather it looks like we are most likely going to have a green Christmas. At least that makes the driving a lot more safe. Dominica and I have to drive out to Frankfort separately this year so we have a lot of driving to do this weekend.

Jeremy deleted his blog “ItSmeOriSit” a few days ago so anyone who has been reading that site or who has been subscribed through a feed and is wondering where the new updates are: there aren’t any. He had about seventy five posts before deleting the blog.

I got a lot of the archives moved over today. I am hoping that I can roughly keep up a pace of about one month worth of archives per day that I am at home working. At that rate it will only take a month or so to have the entire old site moved over.

I got another computer ready for Castile today. It is just a Pentium III 500 but it isn’t too bad for what they use them for. Dominica will be extremely happy that I got one of the computers taken care of so that I can move it out of the living room. The computers have been all over the living room for the last couple of weeks.

In addition to getting that one computer together and out of the living room I also did a bit of cleaning around the house. It isn’t a huge amount but the house does look better and Dominica will be happy.

I drove up to Rochester at 8:00 to meet Joe, Nate, Zach, Susan, et al at Nick Tahou’s. I decided to try Tahou’s Grilled Cheese plate that I had never noticed before and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was really delicious. I am very happy to have a new menu item to choose there other than the fried egg plate that I have been getting for the past few years.

While we were eating at Tahou’s Dominica called to say that she had been let out of work an hour early and that she was heading home so that she could get to bed and catch up on some sleep. Her Friday into Saturday is always tough because her evening is an hour shorter than on her other work nights. Plus she wanted to get home so that Oreo would be alone as little as possible.

During my drive up to Rochester and back down to Geneseo I continued to listen to “S is for Silence”. I made it down to almost the end of the last CD as I pulled into Geneseo so I brought the CDs into the house and listened to the wrap up while I worked on SGL. Dominica will be listening to it on the drive to Frankfort tomorrow night.

It was about 2:30 in the morning before I actually managed to get off to bed.