Sheep Guarding Llama

Happy Anniversary to Dominica and I!! Two years today!

Unfortunately, for our second wedding anniversary Dominica and I don’t get to see each other at all. I called her from Wegmans in Virginia at 12:15 this morning and caught her just starting her shift at the hotel in Geneseo and wished her a happy anniversary. We won’t get a chance to see each other until Friday.

I got up at 11:00 this morning. Six hours of sleep. Not bad for a project day out of town. More would have been nice but I needed to get moving and get connected with the world again. Min is at class this morning. She took dad’s car and hers went into M&R in Geneseo to get the brakes fixed. She and dad had breakfast this morning and he is staying at our house with Oreo while she is at class. And hopefully she will be able to pick up her car before he has to leave.

I wasn’t able to get a hold of John Nicklin early this afternoon so I just hung out in the hotel. I am generally pretty amiable to just hanging in the hotel. It is nice and quite and no one bothers you and I am able to catch up on SGL easily enough. I emailed and called John Stagno too to see if he was around. I haven’t talked to him in months (since January!) but the last time we had talked we said that we should get together when I came through town with Wegmans. I didn’t even remember that conversation but I found a copy of the email just a few minutes after I had called him to get together. How coincidental is that?

Oh, Andy picked up his new car today. He bought a 1998 Buick Regal from John Holtz. Almost identical to my dad’s car. Or so I imagine. I haven’t seen it yet. Obviously.

As I often am… I was tempted by some television and a Domino’s pizza. Annapolis has been my traditional Domino’s location for many, many years. I turned on the telly and there was As Time Goes By, Season Four, I think.

I got to see Ed McMahon doing horribly cheesy local Ford dealership commercials. To think, Ed used to be the idiot sidekick on the Tonight show. Now he isn’t good enough to spit shine Andy Richter’s boots and Andy can’t even get any good work. It wasn’t just a local Ford dealership but one of those used cars with credit for anyone places. They even had weird fake callers calling in to ask credit questions while they video of the caller sitting in a dark room with low backlighting so you can only see a silouhette. The infomercial inspired used car ad. The lowest of the low. And we all thought that there was nothing lower than Publisher’s Clearing House.

Are You Being Served? came on too. It is just like being home! Nicklin called at 3:00. He has meetings until 6:00.

John called just before 4:00 and I drove up to the southern edge of Baltimore to meet him up there between meetings. We managed to hang out for about half an hour before he had to go off to his last meeting for the day. I stayed at the bar while he was at his meeting until a little after 6:00.

While I was waiting for John, I got a chance to talk to someone about the interview that I had last week. We don’t have any update yet but everyone that is going to be interviewed has been interviewed and we are told that we will get results on Thursday. So only two more days of prayers:)

We went over to John and Michelle’s and hung out for a little while. I haven’t been over there in forever. John has a new Hummer that I haven’t seen yet. I knew that it was there but haven’t been down to Maryland yet to see it. They also have a new dog that I didn’t know about. He is a ten month old, very large weimaraner. We watched Constantine with Keanu Reeves. It was okay. Weird and cheesy but watchable.

I got back from the Nicklin’s and watched some more telly. It isn’t often that I get a chance to watch anything so it is a nice change from time to time. I managed to catch a hilariously funny Iranian/British comic. His name is Omid Djalili and he has been in movies like Notting Hill and The Mummy. He is one of the funniest stand up comedians that I have ever seen. You can check him out at Omid-Djalili.com.

Today is my super busy day. Tons to get done and very little time to do it all in. I have to work in Dulles, Virginia tonight and will be out of town until Friday so I have to be prepared.

Newforge had a good article about Microsoft and the size differences between the forthcoming HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc formats.

I left Geneseo around 2:30 after getting lots of work done this morning and running lots of errands. It is a long drive to Sterling, Virginia where I am working tonight. About six and a half hours from Geneseo. It is pretty much a straight shot down route 15 the whole way. I don’t get off of 15 or a highway mirroring 15 (like 390, 99, 180 and 11) until about five minutes away from Wegmans. That is really handy.

Although the drive is long I find the Route 15 corridor to be pretty nice. It winds through a lot of varied terrain and shows a very interesting slice of Americana.

Work went okay and I was done by 1:30 am. I hit the road as quickly as possible and drove out to Annapolis. It only took just over an hour to get out to Old Mill Bottom Road where I am staying at the Comfort Inn by John’s house on the bay. I will be here tonight and again tomorrow night. On Wednesday night I am going to be staying somewhere either in New Jersey or in Pennsylvania. I am playing it by ear for now. I am planning on working in Ithaca on Thursday so if anyone needs me, that is where I will be.

Made it to church on time this morning – almost. Went to the Silver Lake Family Restaurant in Perry with dad after church. Then home to get Min off to work.

This week is going to be a super busy week for me. I am scheduled to be in a different state everyday this week. Today I am in New York, obviously. Then Virginia tomorrow. Maryland on Tuesday. New Jersey on Wednesday. Ontario, Canada on Thursday. Back to New York on Friday. Then Pennsylvania on Saturday. Back in New York on Sunday. Luckily I am not scheduled to be out of town next week at all until the end of the week when Min and I are heading out to Turning Stone for the weekend.

I am working on a project today hoping to get some stuff done before I have to leave town. I decided to watch Iron Eagle which is a horrible campy mid-80’s Cold War Air Force movie that I used to love when I was a kid. I haven’t seen the movie since sometime in the 1980’s so it is almost like seeing it for the first time.

After Iron Eagle I was in the mood for campy 80’s teen films. So I decided to move onto Space Camp. I always wanted to go to Space Camp in Alabama when I was a kid. But I also wanted to be in the Air Force. I was very good at thinking through my goals back then.

Min went shopping this morning for yarn in Rome. We left Frankfort around 3:00 and went over to Utica and stopped in at Appleby’s for some lunch on the way home. I have been wanted some of Appleby’s salmon and shrimp ever since I got some in State College two weeks ago.

We got home around 6:00. We both did some work around the house. Then the Ralstons came over around 7:00. They have been working on getting the movie Just Visiting for a while and were anxious to watch it. Min has been wanting to see this movie for a long time too. It is one of Art’s favourite movies ever. Or maybe it is his favourite movie of all time. Something like that. It was good. I am a huge Jean Reno fan. He always rocks.

After the movie all of us went shopping at Walmart around the corner. It is becoming a ritual for us. We did some shopping and Min and I picked up the third season of Roswell which we have been wanting for a long time, Iron Eagle, Gung Ho, The Life of David Gale, 9 to 5 and In & Out.

After shopping we did our usual stop over at Tim Horton’s. After that Min and I went home and got some sleep.

Today Min and I are going out to Albany to see her brother Joe’s “White Coat Ceremony”. The WCC is something like a junior college graduation ceremony for pharmacy students who symbolically transition from students studying pharmacy into junior pharmacists on their first rung of the ladder. So they transition from the traditional lab coat into the pharmacists short white coat (go to a pharmacy sometime, you will see what I mean.) So it is a pretty big ceremony for pharmacy students.

We were on the road just a little after 10:00 in the morning. Albany is a good drive away so we had to get moving pretty early. It takes three hours to get out to Frankfort where Min’s parents live. We got there just before 1:00 and got ready to go there. Then we road out to Albany with them. Luckily for us Frankfort sits directly along the path to Albany so we don’t have to go more than two miles out of our way in order to carpool with them.

We got out to Albany and Min and I got a chance to see Joe’s apartment at Albany College of Pharmacy. It is a lot nicer than anything that I ever had in college. Apparently this is his third place that he has been living in since coming to school out here. Then we went to the ceremony. We were concerned that it was going to be really long and drawn out but they actually did a very nice job and it didn’t last too long. A lot of people complained about how warm it was but I was in a sport coat and it didn’t feel too warm to me at all.

After the ceremony we all drove across town to the Macaroni Grill and got some dinner. Then it was time to drive back to Frankfort. I was so exhausted that I ended up sleeping in the car a bit on the way back.