Sheep Guarding Llama

I can’t believe that I woke up on my own at 6:30 this morning. I am starting to adjust to this regular work schedule deal. I think that I actually get a lot more done if I get started early in the morning. I seem to be more productive.

Dad picked me up at 7:30 and it was our regular breakfast at the Omega Grill. Dominica continued to sleep in. Today is her one decent shot at catching up on some of that sleep that she has been missing for the past two weeks. After breakfast we went up to the city to do some banking and a little shopping at Office Depot and Home Depot.

I was home by 11:00 and when I got home Min and Oreo decided to get out of bed. Twelve hours should help her with her sleep deprivation. She then went grocery shopping over at Super Walmart since we were out of just about everything in the house.

Eric came over just as Min was getting back from shopping. He brought me a Stericycle cap. He has one too. Eric is still without a computer up has his office so he has to come here still to even check his email. What a pain that is. At least he found out yesterday that he is getting his college paid for now so he is able to go for free. I have always recommended getting a job that pays for college because that is so much more valuable than paying for it first and then trying to build up experience. We spent some time looking into degree options from Empire State College. He is hoping to be able to begin taking classes right away in the spring. That isn’t too far away. I even managed to get him to call the school today to get the ball rolling.

As punishment for never reading SGL I have decided to include this incredibly cool picture of Eric. Yes folks, that is correct, this is Eric J. Millen. This picture is from sometime in elementary school but I have no idea when. Probably around sixth grade. The picture was taken in my parent’s living room. That is about all that I know. Eric might possibly be able to fill in more details but, he is unlikely to ever bother to read this page to even know that the picture is posted here. He has yet to notice any of the others.

While trying to pick out movies to borrow today, Eric was looking at The Explorers and suddenly remembered the movie and remembered that it was he and I that had gone to see that movie together in the theatres when it first came out. I guess that that means that Eric and I have known each other for over twenty years now. Wow am I feeling old. Nate and I have known each other for just about twenty three years. Jonathan Stagno and I are coming up on twenty five!

Dominica is thinking about going back to college as well and getting an MIS degree. If they do it right they are likely to be able to overlap in several classes. Eric is only reimbursed for going half time but Min will probably go full time to wrap things up as quickly as possible since she probably only needs to take eight classes in order to graduate. At least that is what we are hoping. Since she already has a BS degree from SUNY we are hoping that she is in really good shape for getting a second one.

After working on some college stuff for a while we went down to the theatre and played some Dreamcast. Working from home can be tough.

I went down to Richardson’s at 7:00 so that Jeremy and I could practice the song that we are going to sing at the interment on Saturday. It took us a while to settle on a song. We finally decided to go with the classic “Abide with Me” just like Garrison Keeler would use. We went over to grandma’s empty apartment with my Aunt Sharon and Uncle Leo and we practiced the song. Sharon and Leo sang along to help us learn the song since neither of us really knew the tune very well and then we decided that we should do the song as a family. So my cousin Sara is going to join in as well. We are going to get together tomorrow night to practice again.

Jeremy and I ran down to Cook’s in Greigsville to cut some subs for dinner. We ate down there and then I took him home and came back up to Geneseo where I had to get some dishes and other household chores done before Min came home from work so that she would think that I was being productive.

Min called while I was working on the SGL podcast and had me run over to Tim Horton’s to meet her for coffee so that we could discuss some work that she was doing for her A+ class. I did have time to clean the stinky hamster’s cage before leaving. I can’t believe how quickly he manages to make a mess of that cage these days.

I got my wake up call from Dominica at 6:45 this morning. That is one of the benefits of having a wife that works at a hotel doing wake up calls. I just call her there and have her wake me up. Actually this morning I was all ready awake when she called. Eric will be impressed. He doesn’t think that I am ever up before 10:00.

I went back and added some photos to the 16th’s daily so if you have all ready read that you should go back and check the pics from Letchworth.

Dad picked me up at 7:15 and we met Min over at the Omega for some breakfast. I think that I like this four hours of sleep deal. I tend to get up earlier and get more done and I don’t end up feeling tired until the end of the day so it works out pretty well. It has been a long time since I have been able to get my sleep down to such a low amount but I have a feeling that now that I am able to have a more or less regular sleep schedule that I might be able to do it again. Especially now that I have the CPAP. In theory the CPAP was going to drop my total sleep time quite a bit but instead it seemed to just make me able to sleep all through the night. I think that the secret might be to force myself to get up at a regular time all of the time and I might start to only sleep four hours or so on my own. That would be awfully nice. When I was in high school I only ever slept four hours a night and I felt great. As much as I enjoy sleeping I hate wasting so much of my life doing it.

Before heading off to class Min went down to the theatre and watched the final two episodes of Roswell. She has been waiting to see the whole third season since she was in college and the show was moved to UPN which even now doesn’t have a local station here in Geneseo. Not that it would matter now as we don’t have a television. But if we did we still couldn’t watch it.

Once Min got off to school I was back to work on my paperwork for Empire State. As I said yesterday – that is my one big project this week. Anything that I can do to get caught up with that is a top priority. I would be so ecstatic if I could just get that taken care of. Heaven only knows how much productivity I have lost over the last year because I have had this hanging over my head. I tend to get buried under the load and then I panic and don’t manage to get anything done. But now I am feeling the burdens lifting and I am able to move forward on this and soon, I hope, it will be out of the way altogether.

Today’s picture is one of Oreo that I took late this summer out in the back yard here in Geneseo. The sun was bright and Oreo was having a grand time laying out in the grass and so I went out and laid out in the lawn with him and took a bunch of pictures. He is such a handsome dog. Being black and white he is very difficult to photograph. He doesn’t like to look at cameras either which makes it even harder since he is almost always facing away.

PodOMatic now has statistics on their podcasts which is really cool for us podcasters so that we can get a feel for how many people are actually listening to our shows. I was surprised to find that there are a number of people listening to the SGL Podcast that I just got set up on podOmatic. Even with there being only a single new episode hosted there there have been a number of people listening to the show. That is awesome. Now I will have to start making the show a little bit more regularly and a lot more interesting! But thanks everyone who has been listening. That is AWESOME!

Min got home just before 2:00. Her professor has asked me to go in to their class sometime soon and be a guest speaker to talk to them about UNIX and Linux.

Here is a great quote: In response to a question on the role of open source software in Africa, Gerald Ilukwe, the general manager of Microsoft Nigeria, said that cost is not important, even though he admitted that the average annual salary in the West African country is only US$160.

Dominica was so tired when she got home that she fell asleep on my office floor instead of making it to bed. Oreo thought that that was great and took a nap on his pillow basking in the afternoon sunlight sitting between Min and I.

I managed to get tons of work done on my school stuff today. I am really happy with how much I accomplished. I even got a chance to talk to my mentor at college and she is on track with me now and I think we have a pretty good idea of what we are doing.

By 6:30 I was pretty burnt out. I don’t know why but I felt exhausted. Not exhausted like I wanted to go to bed, though, but like I had just had enough for the day.

Dominica woke up around 8:30 and wanted to watch a movie so we watched The Transporter which we got recently on Art’s recomendation. It was pretty good. We really enjoyed it. Then we decided to watch Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines which is very long and we decided we couldn’t handle finishing tonight so we only watched half of it and then turned in for the night very early around 11:00. We never go to bed this early but we were both really exhausted.

Hurricane Wilma in the Gulf tonight went to 882mb making it the most powerful hurricane in recorded history and bumping Katrina down to number four. It has sustained winds of 175mph and is expected to slam into Miami on Sunday.

Min got home from work around 7:30 this morning and got Oreo out of bed to hang out with her in the office until I got up at 9:30. I got dressed and ready to go and we went out to leave to go to the Covington Presbyterian Church where the funeral service is going to be at. We got into my car and I noticed that my driver’s door was ajar and that my seat had been completely moved since the last time that I was in the car. We searched the car but couldn’t find any signs of attempted hot-wiring nor was anything visibly missing from the car or from the garage. So we were at a total loss as to what might have happened. I started driving down the driveway and the brakes started making some noise so I decided that we should take Min’s car and so we went back to the house and switched cars.

The funeral service was at 11:00 and after all of the issues with the car we only just made it in time. It was a really beautiful service. Dominica and I both noticed that the chapel at Covington Presbyterian is just like the church in Dibley from The Vicar of Dibley. But it made sense once I thought about it because growing up in Peoria is a lot like growing up in Dibley, I imagine.

There was a memorial lunch down at Brian’s USA Diner in Leicester after the funeral. There were a of people there. We weren’t able to stay really long because Dominica hadn’t had a chance to get to bed yet and she was so tired that she was barely able to talk to anyone. She was falling asleep at the table. So we headed for home as soon as we could so that she could get to bed.

I decided that I needed to post a picture of my grandmother today. This picture is of her and her sister Elizabeth who died several years ago. My grandmother, Euphemia Miller, was the eldest of all of her siblings and had two full siblings – her sister Elizabeth and brother Bill. My great Uncle Bill is the last of the three left alive and he is fading fast in a nursing home in Canton, Ohio. We are hoping to be able to all see him this weekend when we are in Ohio. Dominica and I had gone out to Ohio and had hoped to have seen him last winter but no one felt that he was probably up to it. Grandma’s mother, my great grandmother, died in the Great 1918 Influenza Pandemic. Grandma was born October 31, 1915. She was only three years old when great grandma died. Elizabeth and Bill were twins. Great grandpa remarried and there were a number of siblings that were half-siblings to my grandmother. Of them, only my great Aunt Ruth is still alive, I believe.

The sun actually came out today. I think that today is the first direct sunlight that I have seen in at least two weeks. Oreo was ecstatic. He immediately laid down in the sunlight in the office to sleep.

I am extremely excited that the Anonymous Game Developers have released a new journal update today stating that their remake of Sierra’s classic “Quest for Glory II” is still underway. There has been no updates to the developer’s journal since July and a lot of us were getting nervous. I am quite looking forward to seeing their rendition of the game. Their versions of the classic “King’s Quest I” and “King’s Quest II” were amazing and significantly better than the originals. Which isn’t quite fair because the technology now is significantly better as well but still the games are really amazing.

It just occurred to me this afternoon how much the Lord has been watching over us that grandma’s death didn’t come until my Wegman’s project was completed. I would have been in a very difficult position trying to deal with everything while having to be out of town three nights a week. Had the Wegmans project gone just one week longer I would not have been around for the couple of days just before she had died. That would have been awful.

Since Min has been too busy to be able to keep up with things I took care of submitting her to jobs today. She hates job hunting so took over job hunting duties. It is really helpful that I know just about everyone that she needs to talk to about positions already.

I watched some movies while working. I watched The Rugrats Go Wild which I didn’t even know that we had. That wasn’t very good but Tim Curry does one of the voices and it is almost worth watching anything if it has Tim Curry doing a voice. Almost worth watching. Not really worth watching but you could see where it started to come close because of Curry. After that I watched A Cinderella Story. That was cute. Very entertaining. Not what I would call serious cinema but it was enjoyable.

I wrapped up job hunting a little after 7:00 and got to work on my paperwork for Empire State. That is my one and only major priority right now.

Dominica woke up around 8:30 pm and decided that there wasn’t enough time between then and when she had to go to work to bother going back to sleep so she got up and got mostly ready to go to work and started making dinner while I watched the one episode of Roswell that she had all ready seen and that I hadn’t and then she came down to the theatre and we watched an episode together. We managed to get in one whole episode together while we ate dinner and then she got to stay for about fifteen minutes of the next episode before she had to leave for work. We were down to the final disc of the final season so I decided that I was going to wrap up the show and see how it all ended. It was just after midnight when I finished watching the last episode. It was sad seeing the series end. When you watch long series of shows that have a good emotional storyline you tend to get into the show quite a bit and it can be really sad when the show comes to an end. Roswell was definitely a very involved, emotional show and it was sad to see it go. It is extra sad because it is years later now and we know that the show was not continued or resurrected in any way.

Dominica called from work because she was doing some research on the Disney Food and Wine Festival that is going to be going on while we are in Disney World. This is a major draw for us to go to the park when we are going because we think that this event is going to be a lot of fun. Disney has this event every year and a whole bunch of countries that don’t normally have a presence in the World Showcase come and set up small displays and offer a small selection of traditional local dishes that you can get inexpensively and try. We are really looking forward to doing that. She found a website that is listing all of the 2005 Walt Disney World Food and Wine Festival Menus so that we can get ourselves all super hungry way ahead of time. There are a lot of vegetarian, vegan and vegaquarian meny options which is very exciting. We are going to have an amazing time eating in the park. We are planning on probably coming back to Epcot’s World Showcase almost every evening which is totally what Eric, Mark and I did when we were there last.

Eric, Mark and I totally figured out the formula for getting the most out of Disney World on our last trip. We had such a good time and on a decent budget too. We were in Florida for ten days. We stayed just barely off property but closer enough that we could walk into the park. That was one of the best decisions ever. If it is your first time at Disney World I suggest saving up and taking advantage of one of the midline or better Disney resorts. They are some of the best hotels in the world and by staying on property you get a level of immersion that you just don’t get when you are off property at all. I wouldn’t even suggest staying in one of the nice “semi on property” hotels in the hotel area. Best to be in an all Disney resort. When I first went there with my parents we stayed at the Contemporary Resort and that was an excellent choice. You never, ever had to leave the park. You really felt like you were in the “Magic” at every moment. It was really a completely different experience than being somewhere else at night and returning to the park in the morning. Then when my family went back when I was a little older we stayed at the then new Carribbean Beach Resort which was also very nice but not nearly as cool. But if you are three bachelours on a serious budget you might need to be off property. But I digress.

We managed to stay inexpensively for $45 per night or less for the hotel. We would skip breakfast and go straight to the park in the morning and go to whatever park we wanted to do first thing in the morning. We would normally do that all day until that park closed and then we would work our way over to Epcot late in the evening and get dinner very late in the World Showcase. One of the great things about the World Showcase is that a lot of kids don’t tend to find it very interesting so it is mostly adults and it is a lot more mature and much less crowded than other areas of the park even though it is such a great place to go.

Often, after the World Showcase would close, we would then find our way to The Boardwalk or Disney Downtown to get the maximum bang for our bucks. We never went to Pleasure Island. None of us found the club scene to be our thing and paying to go there didn’t make much sense. We had a much better time hanging out in the tamer but more “Disney” areas.

It is 1:30 in the morning and Dad is going to be here in a but under six hours to pick me up so that we can meet Min for breakfast at the Omega Grill. So I am going to get off to bed so that I can get at least a little sleep before he gets here. I only got about three hours of sleep last night. But I shouldn’t complain because I am still way ahead of Dominica. She has been having a terrible time trying to get caught up on her sleep at all and she has to go from work in the morning to breakfast with dad and I and then she has to drive out to Canandaigua for class and she won’t get a chance to go to sleep until at least 2:00 in the afternoon!

We might have been exhausted when we finally arrived back in Geneseo last night but when we got to spend the night sleeping in our own bed we were quite happy. I slept for nine hours not getting up until almost 11:00. Boy did that feel good. I have not yet caught up on my sleep but that is going to help a little bit.

Dad called at 12:20 and said that he was down at the Silver Lake Family Restaurant and that the Ralstons were going to be there in a few minutes and that we should come down for lunch. So I woke up Min and we ran out the door. We made it right at 1:00 which was pretty impressive for having woken Min up only forty minutes before.

We took Oreo along with us down to Perry and after lunch we took him down to Letchworth to go for a hike. Oreo has never been to Letchworth before and he had a great time. We went for a walk from the St. Helena parking area up to Tea Table and back down again. Then we drove up to the Middle Falls and went for a shorter walk. We stopped at the Upper Falls snack bar and had a quick meal. I love eating at park snack bars. When I was a kid my mom and I used to come down to Letchworth all of the time during the summers and we would get hot dogs and French fries at one of the snack bars and eat while looking out on the falls. It was a lot of fun. One summer my mom and I came down to Letchworth at least once or twice a week and walked consecutive sections of the park so that we managed to walk the entire trail on the west side of the park which is more than double the length of the road that runs through the park.

I included some pictures that I took while we were out walking. The leaves were really nice and I am really glad that we managed to get out to go for a trip outdoors at least once with the leaves changing.

We didn’t get back home until after 6:00. While we were at the park we stopped by the gift shop. We got an Empire Pass so that we can go to Letchworth or any of the New York State Parks anytime. I also picked up the book “Events of the Genesee Vally 1668-1986” while we were there.

Min had to get ready for work when we got back home. She had switched shifts with Mary earlier in the week. So she is working from 9:00 pm tonight until 7:00 am tomorrow. A little shorter than her regular shift. She was almost delirious with exhaustion by the time that she left for work. Hopefully she will be able to make it through the night. We have a busy week ahead of us. Tomorrow morning is the funeral at 11:00 in Covington. It is at the church just down the street from my parents’ house. I haven’t been in that church in years. Probably not since Sonic Brass played there in the mid-90’s. Ten years ago easily. Maybe more. Dad, Min, the Richardsons and I are all going out to Ohio on Friday and will be there until Sunday. The Ralstons are taking Oreo for the weekend. We are all going to be staying at the Comfort Inn in Canton.

Min got off to work and I got onto the computer and got caught up on the weekend’s updates. I finished watching A Wrinkle in Time that I started watching several days ago. It wasn’t very good. I had loved the book but the movie was just blah. It wasn’t awful but it sure didn’t live up to the book. I haven’t read the book in forever. I plan on reading it again soon. Oreo appreaciated the chance to pass out on his pillow and get some rest.

I was hoping to get a lot of work done tonight but it didn’t take long before I figured out that that wasn’t going to happen. I pooped in Hooper which is an old Burt Reynolds’ film from the late 70’s that we have had for a while but I have never gotten around to watching. Nothing special but a cute film. I hung around in the office for a long time but Mr. Humphries never got up to hang out. I thought that he would want to come out and visit but he decided to snub me tonight. We got up when Min was still home and got his food but after I fed him he was gone for the night.

I wasn’t really tired yet and I had some paperwork that I needed to take care of so I hunted around in the basement for a movie that I hadn’t seen yet and came up with Another 48 Hours. I never saw the original 48 Hours but I read a quick synopsis and it didn’t look like I was missing very much. The good news is that the movie has Eddie Murphey. The bad news is that it has Nick Nolte – one of the worst actors to ever sneak into a feature film. The hamster did finally decide to wake up and come out to play.

I ended up staying up really late because I got my paperwork done but wanted to get some technical work done before hitting the hay so I stayed up to get a jump on that. There is an unlimited amount of work to do. I never seem to be able to get on top of it.

Dominica and I decided that we really do need a real vacation so we are going to Disney World in two weeks. We are flying out of Rochester on October 31st which is both Halloween and my grandma’s birthday – and we will arrive in Florida around 3:30 in the afternoon. We will manage to get half of a day in the park probably once we get there. We are staying in the same hotel that Eric, Mark and I stayed in many years ago when we last went to the park. I called today to get the hotel reservations moved forward one day and discovered that the hotel was no longer a Radisson. That was a surprise. It is a really good thing that I called to make the change or we would have discovered that the hotel was no longer there once we actually arrived. That might have ended up being a real problem if we had arrived down there and then couldn’t find the hotel. With the change in plans we are going to be able to be in Disney for 6.5 days! We are pretty happy with that. That should be enough time to get pretty sick of the park. The hotel is in an ideal location that allows us to walk to the park in the morning and get Disney provided transportation all day long. It is great because it keeps us from having to worry about how to get back to our hotel if we decide to stay until the park closes because the Disney transportation always runs until everyone has had a chance to get home. We aren’t doing anything in Florida other than going to Disney. It is going to be a nice relaxing time. Min has been going crazy making plans for all of the places that we are going to go.

With the exception of my honeymoon last year this vacation will be my first vacation longer than an extended weekend since Eric, Mark and I went to this very same destination in 1999. I am almost 100% sure that it was 1999 because we went in November (so Min and I are going to the same hotel to visit the same park in the same month) and I wasn’t able to help drive down because I didn’t have my driver’s license back yet after having lost it for having too many speeding tickets in too short of a time period. I am pretty sure that I lost my license in early 1999. I know that I did not lose it until I had been working at the Wellesley Inn for several months because I went back and did some consulting work at the Days Inn for a day or two and I had to be chauffered around to be able to do it. I am pretty sure that I started at the Days Inn in late 1997 and left there in 1998. Then I worked at the Wellesley from 1998 until February 19, 2000 when I quit to move to Pittsburgh. February 20th was the big moving out party when Andy first introduced “For Me To Poop On” which all of the SGL readers know and love. I must have been without a license during most of 1999 because I was getting rides to and from the Wellesley and not the Days Inn. But I know that I had a driver’s license by the time that I quit the Wellesley to move to Pittsburgh. I think that I only ended up losing my license for about six months but I am not sure.

It is amazing how time plays tricks with you. It seems ages ago that I was living with Josh in Greenleaf Meadows in Greece and commuting down 390 to the Wellesley in Brighton and going to MCC. I can barely put together enough pieces from that time period to figure out when I was where and what I was doing. I went to school at Monroe Community College from the fall of 1996 until the spring of 1998. I finished three semesters. I had graduated without knowing it in December, 1997. My appendicitus was towards the end of the spring semester in 1998 if I place it correctly. It was because of the operation that I was unable to complete the semester. Josh and I got the apartment in Greece in September 1998 I think. Prior to that we had been living in Irondequoit. The appendicitus hit within my first two weeks at the Wellesley so that places that pretty well. So I must have worked at the Wellesley for almost two years. I would have been at the Days Inn from summer 1997 until very early 1998. Could it have been less than a year? I can still remember going to apply at the Days Inn. The previous auditor had quit the night before and they had no one to work that night. I interviewed with the front desk manager, Chrissy, who was doubling as the life guard and so interviewed me in her swimsuit. That is how I am able to remember that it was summer that I started there. She hired me on the spot as the only auditor that she was able to find. It was a crappy job but it worked out well for me. A few months later Andy came to work there as the other auditor. What a joke that place was. But it was a good experience for me. Part of growing up. It definitely made me sure that I didn’t want to get stuck doing anything like that for the rest of my life. It was about the worst job like that that you could possibly imagine but it should me just how mad it could be and I think that I needed that right about then. I was very lost when I was there. I had no idea what I wanted to do or where I was going. I was in college to be a performing musician. I was pretty serious about it back then. I guess most twenty year olds are pretty serious about music. That sure isn’t what the Lord had planned for me. But it definitely had a lot to do with who I am today. I can’t say that I am unhappy for the experience. But what a strange trip it has turned out to be.

One of these days I am going to construct a timeline and try to fill in as many chronological details as I can. I am so disappointed that I didn’t start keeping this journal/diary/blog thing until so late in the game. Now that I understand that value of it I so wish that I could go back so much farther and see what was happening back then. Now I have to piece together significant days as much as possible through loose records and connected memories. My father has a really good record of a lot of important stuff that he is going to try to convert to some form that I can use. A lot of it is handwritten and very inaccessible. But the last several years are digital and can be used pretty easily. So maybe I will be able to start using that to start building back more information from the past. Now that I am looking at turning thirty in just a few months I am starting to see how the memories of my youth are starting to slip away. And now that I have fewer and fewer of the people left around who shared those memories with me I find it more and more important to try to hold onto them.

Now that I am using the upstairs office all of the time I have really come to notice how incredibly loud the water heater in the basement is. I always knew that it was unbearably loud if it came on when we were trying to use the theatre in the basement. But this is really loud upstairs as well. I can’t believe that Andy never said anything living directly above it for two years.

Okay, it is 4:10 am and I have to be up in the morning for the funeral. Min will be home in three hours. I just wrapped up the work that I was trying to get done and luckily I did manage to get it done. Oreo is looking at me trying to convince me to go to bed so I had better get going.