Sheep Guarding Llama

Oreo was still very sick this morning but by 10:00 he was starting to feel much better. We are pretty sure that he had a bad reaction to the pain killers / muscle relaxers that he was on and that that was causing most of the problems. He is still limping fairly badly but as badly as he was yesterday. He is able to get around and was so restless this morning that he convinced me to take him for a short walk.

Early this morning we had made an appointment for Oreo with the vet but we decided to cancel it because he was feeling so much better and we were concerned that he might find going back to the vet today to be overly traumatic. I think that he appreciated that decision.

Dad needed me to help him pick up his car from the garage today. So I went over to his place around noon and we picked it up down in Pavilion. While we were out to Texaco Town to get some lunch at the diner there. Yes, the place’s real name is “Texaco Town” and no, there isn’t a Texaco station there but there is a Sunoco. Min’s new graphics card came in last night and I brought that home with me as well. She is excited to be able to play all of her 3D games again although, she really could have been playing them before. The HP dx5150 that she has has a built in ATI graphics card that is not too shabby. Probably the equivalent of a midline GeForce FX.

Dominica had to go to work this afternoon from 3pm until 11pm. Mary is still out with her ankle injury and will probably be out for two or three weeks. It is just sprained but very badly.

I finally posted the last two weeks worth of posts today. I have been trying to go back and get old ones filled in before I posted but that just wasn’t happening so I finally just gave up on some of those days and moved on. I hate having to do that but it is better than having the site go stagnant when I get too busy to keep up with it from time to time.

Andy and I went out to Denny’s for some dinner. While we were gone, Oreo finally worked up to being able to go to the bathroom again and was anxiously awaiting our return so that I could let him out. He hasn’t gone in two days so we were very relieved that he finally went today. He is getting much better quickly. He is started to bounce around again like his old self and he even wanted to play a little bit tonight although he is still really limping.

Andy fired up CircleMUD 3.1 on his desktop and we played some of that this evening. Art had really wanted to play but wasn’t around tonight to be able to play.

No sooner do I type that Art can’t make it than he signs into the game. Cool, three of us playing tonight. Now if we can just get Min and Danielle to get into the game, we will have a decent game going. If anyone is interested in playing, email me and I will get you the details to log in. It is one of the few online games that can be played by someone over a dial-up connection.

It is finally cool enough here that we were able to turn off the air conditioning and go back to having the windows open. It has been a long time since we have been able to have fresh air in the house and it makes me happy to have it if only for one day. I am sure that it won’t last. It never does.

Art, Andy and I played the MUD for several hours. Everyone is really getting addicted to it. I am hoping to get it moved over onto a real server in the near future so that we don’t have to wait for Andy to be home and to have his one desktop up and running in order for everyone else to be able to play.

Min got home around 11:30. She was very happy to get to see Oreo now that he is feeling better. She and I really didn’t get to see each other today so we decided to hang out in the living room watching some of the fourth season of The Simpsons to relax before going to bed.

Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day for me. So if anyone is looking for me, expect to have a hard time tracking me down. I have some important work that has to be completed first thing in the morning. Then I have an important meeting for lunch. I have a little time in the afternoon, I hope. Then Min and I will be going down to Leicester around 4:00 to visit with my family. My cousin and aunt are visiting. They came up tonight but I won’t see them until tomorrow and it is the only opportunity that I will get to see them.

Dad emailed me this morning to tell me that Oreo had run off last night when dad took him out before going to bed and that he had hurt himself some distance away from the house. He didn’t think that Oreo had been attacked but he was limping badly. So Min decided to take him to the vet and to go pick him up so that we could watch over him.

We got over to dad’s and Oreo was, as always, very glad to see us. He was limping quite badly but otherwise seemed to be okay.

My new digital camera arrived today. I bought it with birthday money that I had been saving. I have been wanting to get a small, portable digital camera for a while now and I finally decided to splurge. I got a refurbished unit through dad’s employee discount at Kodak. It is the Easy Share CX7530. It is a 5 mega pixel unit that uses SD cards to store the pics. Those were the two features that I was really looking for. So I am pretty happy.

At 2:30 we went up to Avon to take Oreo to the vet. Normally we would take him to the Genesee Valley clinic in Geneseo but they are closed today so we took him to the sister facility in Avon. They gave him a shot of a painkiller that was supposed to last all night and some medicine for him to take when that wore off. They told us that it was just a sprain or bruise. Nothing too bad. We also had them insert a microchip into Oreo while we were there. Orea was definitely not too happy about that. It obviously really hurt him but it was over quickly. Now we will have a much better chance of recovering him in case of him really running away.

After getting him home, Oreo kept getting more and more sick. We got really worried about him. He was acting very stangely and we didn’t know what to do.

Min had to stay and take care of him because I had to work in Auburn tonight. I left around 7:00 and grabbed some quick pizza at Wegmans in Geneseo on the way out of town.

On the way out to Auburn, I finished listening to the last little bit of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I am all caught up now. Eagerly awaiting the final installment which could take more than a year most likely.

The map on Wegmans’ site is completely wrong and got me totally lost looking for the store. I had to call the store and get directions once I determined for sure that the map was wrong. I ended up not getting to the store until almost 10:00 which is significantly later than I normally start. Once I was there things went okay.

I took my regular walk this evening during the migration process and took a little walking tour of downtown Auburn. I have never really spent any time in Auburn before and I was really interested in seeing town. Everyone that knows me knows that I am really into small communities. I love local history and small towns and all of that kind of stuff. Auburn is a really cool, old historic Upstate New York town. I had a great time walking around looking at all of the grand old houses. What a beautiful area!

I managed to get home and get into bed around 3:00. Oreo was still very sick when I got in. We are really worried about him and don’t know what we can do. He appears to be really scared but he can’t tell us what is wrong.

I didn’t get out of the hotel until a quarter after noon. The room wasn’t really cold enough for me and that always makes me sleep much longer than I normally would.

I spent the afternoon working in the Varna area. It worked out well that there was some work to be done in the area so that I was really able to make use of my time down here. I ended up being very busy today. Then it was off to work in Syracuse.

I got to Syracuse a bit early so I went to the mall and did a little shopping at Borders. I did manage to find the book Planning Extreme Programming that I have been looking for so I picked that up. Then I went over to Wegmans on James St.

I got to Wegmans and was still way too early so I drove around the area looking for someplace that had pizza. I got a couple of slices and then went back to work.

Work went well and I managed to wrap up very early but they had some issue at corporate and I wasn’t able to leave the store until almost 1:30. That sucked. I had been hoping to have been home by that time.

During the trip out I have been listening to Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (HP6) on CD. Both Min and I bought it on the day that it released. She got it in hardcover and I got it on CD as I always do. She finished it days ago. On the way home tonight, I made it to the last few minutes of the book. It was good. One of the best ones yet, I think.

I left to go to Ithaca right after Min left to go to work in Geneseo. I figured that I would, for once, get down to Ithaca way ahead of time so that I could get checked into the hotel and be all relaxed before going into work. So I left around 3:00 and got to the Comfort Inn in Ithaca around 5:00. That gave me over three hours before I had to go into Wegmans.

I got into work a little bit earlier than I had meant to but it gave me a chance to get a good head start on the evening. I called Bob to let him know that I was in town at the Wegmans. He said that he would stop by to see what was going on when he was done with stuff for the evening.

Bob came by and visited me at Wegmans around 10:30. I was moving along really well so he hung out until I wrapped up just before midnight. Then we headed out to the commons to attempt to find a bar that was still open. That isn’t the easiest thing to do on a Monday night in the summer in Ithaca where closing time is 1:00 as it is. We eventually settled on Moonshadows and got one drink each before they closed. Then we went down to our old haunt, the State Street Diner and got some late, late night dinner.

With Min and my overnight schedules, getting to church has been nearly impossible. We got up around 11:00 this morning. It was very nice to have Oreo around to snuggle with.

Dad came over just after noon and took Min and I to lunch at the Omega Grill. Today is Min’s last day on the first phase of the South Beach diet. We are very excited about her being able to eat more normal food again. It has been terrible trying to eat together for the past two weeks.

After lunch, Min, dad and I went over to Walmart and did some quick shopping. I found the video game, “The Bard’s Tale” which I have been waiting for for a while. Back in 1987 I used to play the original Electronic Arts “Bard’s Tale” game on a Commodore Amiga 1000. But there was a flaw in the game and I wasn’t able to complete it. BT was one of the infamous EA “Class of ’86” collection of video games that did loads to build the company. I spent tons of time playing that game. It was one of my favourtie games of all time. I think that I still have notes that I took while playing the game sitting around my parent’s house somewhere. The cool thing about this new version of “The Bard’s Tale” is that it comes with all three of the original BT games from the 1980’s. I am happy to own copies of them again. They are some of the last classic video games that I want to get. I already own the entire “Pool of Radiance” AD&D collection from SSI. And all of the original Sierra King’s Quest games. This new BT game requires a GeForce FX 5200 but recommends a 5700. That is the highest requirement that I have seen yet on any game. Unfortunately, that means that we can’t play the game yet because Min doesn’t have a new graphics card yet. Once she gets it, which should be early this week, then we will be able to fire up the game. I am anxious but am pretty sure that it won’t be very good.

Mary fell on the stairs today and hurt her ankle and wasn’t able to go into work. Min got called in to work from 5:00 till 8:00 to help cover the shift.

Andy and I played CircleMUD this afternoon while Min knit on the couch before going to work. Dad left Oreo here for the day and is picking him up this evening so that he doesn’t have to be alone at dad’s house while dad is visiting with grandma. Andy is really enjoying playing CircleMUD now that he is getting into it.

After playing for several hours, Art logged onto the CircleMUD server from home and started playing. He put in a few hours on the game himself. He thought that it wasn’t going to be very good but ended up really liking it.