Sheep Guarding Llama

Today was a sleep in day. Which didn’t actually mean that I got to sleep in or anything. I was up just after eight because, that’s right – you guessed it, of the dog. But I wasn’t all that tired at that point so I was okay with getting up. Dominica slept in until just a little before 10:00 when dad was coming to get us for a late breakfast. He has a really busy schedule this week and this is the only time that he is able to see us for breakfast so we decided to squeeze it in. He came around the house at 10:00 and over to the Omega we went. That is kind of the theme of our lives. We have actually eaten at the Omega more than we have eaten at home the past two and a half years. And I am not exaggerating. Maybe we haven’t eaten there twice as much but even that wouldn’t surprise me. It is just so close and convenient. We stayed at Omega for over two hours today! We didn’t come home until close to one in the afternoon!

My afternoon was spent almost completely on the telephone. At least busy means good things but it is also a pain. I had a hard time getting anything done today because I was on the phone so much.

I did manage to on the telephone with support over at Creative and they were able to help me out with getting the Creative MuVo Mix to work with Audible. It turns out that you have to install special management software off of their CD that replaces the Audible software that I was all ready using. Not something that I would do on my own since the Audible software was newer and I had all ready gotten all of the latest Creative software off of their website. The support guy had never heard of the unit that I was using and it caught him by surprise. So it was a bit of a pain that they didn’t give any directions anywhere about how to get this to work but at least it really did work and the support guy was really nice and helpful. Once we got past that little obstacle the player actually works really, really well. The direct Audible files are super tiny and you can fit several books onto just 256MB. In fact, a 128MB unit would be more than adequate for just about anybody. I am thinking about getting one of these units for myself although I am not sure whether or not that will end up causing a problem because of the way that the software works so I am not too sure that I want to get one and go through all of the possible problems. If anyone is thinking of getting an MP3 player specifically for the purpose of listening to books, especially Audible books, then we both totally recommend this really low cost player. We got it for under $38 and I have seen it only for around $40. So that is a really good deal. And it comes with a coupon for two free books from Audible so that is worth a LOT. If you were to buy two books on CD from the store you would easily spend more than the cost of the MuVo!

We hung out in the living room tonight and finished watching That 70’s Show Season Three and then watched the first season of the 1978 BBC show Butterflies with Geoffery Palmer. I watched a bit but had to spend a lot of time bouncing back and forth between the living room and the office because I am working on a computer for the school and it is a lot of work trying to get it to actually work. I probably burned seven hours or more working on it by the time that the night was over. I worked on it for so long that I didn’t manage to record the Scott Reads Bible podcast until 2:30 in the morning! The podomatic system is on Pacific time so I have until 3:00 am to post and have it register as being the same day so that is why I had to do it then.

Mary and Jocelyn were supposed to come over tonight to hang out but we didn’t end up hearing from them until after nine o’clock. They had just gotten in from Dansville and were exhausted after a really long day and decided not to come over.

Dominica had abandoned me before midnight to get some sleep so I was alone for a lot of the night. Oreo won’t go to bed until I do so he stayed in the office hanging out with me and the hamster until I was finally able to go to bed very, very late.

I have finally convinced Dominica of how long it takes to drive to church and we managed to arrive early this morning. What a great feeling that is.

Amanda is on vacation this week from the Silver Lake Family Restaurant so we felt that it might be dangerous to go down there. Who knows what is happening there. She totally runs that place. She does the ordering, does the prep, cooks the food, takes the orders, does the hiring… We felt that it would be best to wait for two weeks until she returned and just eat in Geneseo at the Omega. So dad and Dominica and I all drove back over to Geneseo and had lunch there. Then Min and I went home to take care of the dog and to change before going over to the Ralstons to hang out for the afternoon.

We drove over to York around 3:00 and hung out at the Ralston’s until it was time for them to run to the evening service at church. We brought Oreo with us because he can’t handle being left along and was really upset from having been alone this morning. Oreo was a real bully with Obi and wouldn’t leave him alone. We really aren’t able to bring Oreo over there because he is obnoxious around other dogs. He is so great with people but he just has to be the center of everything. Art wanted to show us the new office desk system that he had built and installed in their home office. He made an entire three wall desk system completely out of MDF. It is really cool. We are hoping that he makes some desks for us like that as well. Hint hint.

Dominica and I came home and relaxed in the living room watching some of That 70’s Show Season Three which we have been working on for the past few days. We pretty much just took it easy tonight.

We both got a hankerin’ for some dessert and so we drove over to Tim Horton’s and got some eats. While we were there we grabbed an extra donut and walked over to the hotel to drop it off for Mary.

Dominca had to go to work today and I had to get over to Perry early this morning for work as well. Early to me these days means 10:00! It was pretty nice when I left Geneseo but over in Perry there was all kinds of snow. There was so much that they weren’t even plowing the roads and in some places it was blowing so hard that it was approaching white out conditions. I didn’t have my cell phone with me because Dominica had needed the battery so I was stuck without anyway to make phone calls. I started worrying about getting stuck somewhere because Oreo was with me and we were in the middle of nowhere. I could easily stay warm and walk somewhere but he might not be able to. He has short fur and he isn’t used to the cold and he doesn’t have as much fur as he should because of his allergies so he would get really cold really quickly. And to top it off I drew a complete blank on how to find the road that I needed to get to so I was just having a dandy of a time.

I didn’t get back home until after noon. I had plenty to work on once I was home. I did take a little time off and play a little bit of video games. I don’t do that very often these days so the brake was nice.

When Dominica got home tonight we went down to the basement and watched some of That 70’s Show Season Three. We have been waiting for a long time for this series to come out so we are very happy to get to watch it. I am really looking forward to this spring when season Four comes out because that is the first season to have episodes that I haven’t seen yet, as far as I know. It must be because I didn’t have regular television access by that time and I feel like by season five or so I may not have seen a single episode. I looked online at the episode synopsis and I pretty much don’t even know the show anymore it is so different. There are some cast changes that I wasn’t even aware of so I am really out of touch. Of note, the first season of Growing Pains is expected out in February. That is one show that I have really been waiting for. Unlike people with cable I have not seen it once since it went off of the air. It was one of my favourite shows when I was younger and I really grew up with it and with Who’s the Boss which I am also really waiting for more seasons of to release.

We were up SO early this morning. I can’t believe that we managed to pull ourselves out of bed. It was all that either of us could do to get out the door but thanks to the wonders of self discipline we somehow managed to pull off this miraculous feat. We were out of the door at 5:22 and on our way to Henrietta for the morning shopping rush. The roads were pretty good this morning and we made really good time getting up to Jefferson. We pulled into the Staples parking lot just in time to run to the end of the line as the line was working its way into the store. Our timing could not have been better. It was only 15F out and way too cold to be standing in line for even a few minutes, as far as we were concerned. Dominica’s coworker, Dan, was at the front of the line and was the second person into the store. Just about everyone going into the store was after the exact same thing: the Samsung 914v 19″ LCD monitors. They were an amazing deal. And we were after them as well. We went as fast as we could and Dominica did an amazing job of snaking through the store and she managed to get the very last two of them. Of course, she didn’t manage to get them before some jerk bashed her in the face with one of his own monitors in an attempt to get her away from the pile. He was there trying to get all of them, apparently, with a shopping cart that he was filling as quickly as possible and a team of people helping him collect them. Dominica was pretty shocked at getting hit in the face AND not getting even an apology or an acknowledgement but she managed to stay in there and get the two monitors. She was a shopping champ. We had been hoping to have been able to get three of them but we were not really expecting to be able to get even a single one so we were really happy with what we got. One of them is for us to put into the upstairs office and the other is for dad. He has been working on a 15″ Samsung LCD for the past several years and that replaced his old HP Pavilion 15″ CRT. He has never had an SXGA (1280×1024) display before and he is really in for a treat. This monitor is 67% larger than his current monitor. That is a huge difference. While we were standing in line to check out Dominica did some scavaging and managed to come up with a really cheap pack of writeable DVDs and her second big score for the day: a Creative MuVo MP3 player that can play Audible Audio (AA) files from Audible.com. Since we use so many Audible books as it is having a player that is supposed to work directly with them is a step in the right direction. It was really cheap. Only $37 and it came with two free books of her choice that she can get from Audible and that is a $22 value right there that we will actually use. So, as far as we are concerned, the unit was only $15. And that is just awesome. Dominica is going to give her iRiver MP3 player to dad. That iRiver has really been around. It started as Andy’s and then it became mine then Min’s and now dad’s. It really is only useful if you are going to be recording with it or if you are only listening to short MP3 files because it can’t handle MP3 files of any length, doesn’t handle most Ogg Vorbis files and can’t play Audible files. So overall it just wasn’t all that useful. I do appreciate, though, that it got us all hooked on having MP3 players. I can’t imagine not having one now!

After we got out of Staples we ran over to Target to see how things were over there but the place was a total madhouse and we decided that it would be best to completely skip any attempt at shopping there and to just head back down to Geneseo. We called dad and he met us at the house and we all went over to the Omega for some breakfast. Boy we eat there a lot. Dad was pretty excited to be getting his new monitor. So was I. I hooked up the new one to test it out before dad made it over for breakfast. It really is a bit larger than what I have been using and the screen quality is really good too. It isn’t an amazing monitor but it sure is amazing for the price. Only $200!! It is a 19″ LCD, thin black frame, 1280×1024 at 75Hz, 600:1 contrast ratio and a 12ms response time. Way better than what I am used to. And the whole thing is absolutely sharp. I am really pleased.

After breakfast Dominica had to drive back to Rochester to go to work for the day. She has a full, normal ten hour day today just like any Friday. I am working today too and had to run over to Perry this morning. Oreo tagged along. That was a bad idea because the weather was really had over there and we are really lucky that we didn’t get stuck somewhere because they were not plowing the roads that the snow was getting pretty deep in places.

I was home a little after noon and managed to spend the whole afternoon just doing little odd things around the house. It is a really slow day for me, no calls, because no one is working today. Very little to go wrong. I love days like today. It is so easy to get so much done. And much easier to relax than on normal days that I just need to take off. That never works. The moment I make an attempt at relaxing I get tons of panicky calls about things going wrong everywhere. It is very stressful.

Dad IM’d me and asked if I wanted to do a fish fry for dinner. I think that dad and I are some of the most faithful Friday Fish Fry people anywhere. We are also some of the most faithful Omega Grill eaters. We aren’t the top though. There are a few groups of people that I am pretty sure eat there everyday. But we have to be really close. Min and I eat there sometimes without dad and he eats there at least once or twice a week without us. And once in a while I have a business meeting there. And once in a great while Eric and I will go there. And once in an even greater while Jeremy and I might go there. Even my “aunt and uncle”, Shirley and Jim, who are really Jeremy’s aunt and uncle go there several times a week. Enough that we normally run into each other there more than once a week. So between us ourselves and our immediate clan we are there for almost every meal. It is kind of scary.

Dad and I hit Walmart on the way back to my house since the rush seemed to have subsided and there weren’t really all that many people there. There weren’t too many great deals left but we had some more mundane shopping to do anyway. I had to get some batteries. We are going through them like mad now between our digital camera and two MP3 players that we both use all of the time. I found Pleasantville on DVD for only $3.44 which was such a good deal that I couldn’t pass it up. I also grabbed That 70’s Show Season Three. It was not on sale but getting it on sale at Target was way too scary for me and I was sure that I would be happier just paying the extra money and not having to fight through mad mobs of people just to find out that all of the copies had been sold all ready anyway.

I recorded my podcasts and played with the hamster before Dominica got home. I also snuck in a game of AoE2 against the computer. Sometimes I just need to play for an hour to really relax. I think that we need to get the FNG up and running again because the games are so intense that they really lower my stress levels. Watching DVDs or television doesn’t have the same effect.

After Dominica got home we popped in some That 70’s Show and watched three or four episodes. What a great show. We managed to get to bed just a little after midnight. Dominica has a full day of work tomorrow so she needs her sleep.