Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Everyone needs to jam along with Captain Jean-Luc Picard. See if you can spot Wil Wheaton in the video. Actually, he is kind of obvious.

Lots to do today on the final day of me being around before the actual holiday. I called dad this morning and we decided to do The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe early so that our afternoons would be free. The digital theatre at Tinseltown in Gates has an early show at noon so we decided to shoot for that. Dad hasn’t seen the movie yet nor has he been to the digital theatre to see how amazing it is.

Well, dad was pretty impressed with Disney’s new Chronicles of Narnia. He decided that the movie is in his top three movies of all time if not number one. I think that I will concur. I might even have to allow TLTW&TW to displace the original Star Wars but I will have to see it a few more times and consider that one carefully. Upon seeing it a second time I have decided that it is better than I had remembered and is totally amazing. I caught more the second time through not being nearly as caught up in being awed by the film itself. The most disappointing thing is that it was filmed with film and not digitally because it shows even though the film quality is excellent.

After the movie we went over to the Omega Grill and got some dinner. Or for me, breakfast. It seems that quite often I don’t manage to eat anything until dinner time. Vicky, who owns the grill, baked Greek Christmas cookies for the regulars and dad and I each got a plate of them. How cool is that? It really pays to be a regular, I guess. The cookies ended up being the best cookies that I have ever tasted! Wow are they good.

I did a bit of work around the house in the evening, including the dishes, before driving over to Dan and Amy Mayne’s house to drop off a package from dad that he was going to ship over to them. I hung out there for about an hour or so and got a tour of their new house. They are now living pretty near to us and are only about eight minutes or less away towards Lakeville.

I came back home and got back to work which is really hard to do because so many people try to talk to me when I am at my desk. I did as much as I could and then joined Dominica in the living room to watch a little Chef! before heading off to bed. We have a lot to do tomorrow so we both need to get some sleep.