Sheep Guarding Llama

I got closer to a full night’s sleep than I had gotten yet this week. I still had to get up much earlier than I was ready for to take care of the dog. Oreo is very demanding first thing in the morning.

I had work that needed to be caught up on this morning and the phone just wouldn’t stop ringing. I finally managed to get out the door around 1:00 and drive up to Greece to meet with Craig this afternoon. His laptop was dropped after his wedding reception and died so he needs to deal with ordering a new one and we were looking into options for that.

I got down to Geneseo just in time to meet dad and Min over at the Omega for their Friday Night Fish Fry. That was around 6:15. We ate dinner and then Min and I ran over to the Quality Inn to talk to Mary or Chic about the hurricane that is supposed to be hitting us on Monday and how it might affect Min’s travel plans. Min is cutting it a little close on Monday, arriving in Buffalo at 11:10 am and having to work at 11:00 pm. It isn’t nearly as close as it was previously (only a few hours of buffer) but considering the weather, I am really glad that she has as much buffer as she does – she could easily need to use it all.

After dinner Jeremy came over and played Call of Duty in the basement while Min played her new game, Roller Coaster Tycoon III upstairs. I worked on my laptop most of the evening.

Day Three in New Jersey. It was a bit after 8:00 this morning when I finally pulled myself into the hotel. I was only able to persuade the hotel to extend my check-out until 1:00. That meant a maximum of four hours of sleep at best.

I was barely rested by the time I had to arise at 12:30. I had to get showered, dressed and get out the door in half an hour. Fun start to the day.

Leaving New Jersey today, I had the forsight to travel directly west out of Trenton into Pennsylvania and around Philadelphia on US276 and then headed north up the Northeast Extension on US476 to Scranton. I cut at least an hour off of the trip.

I stopped at the McDonald’s on the highway a little north of Allentown. Funny enough, being so far from home, I was standing in line at the McDonald’s and thought that I recognized a girl standing in line next to me. I was at a loss to place her, though, so I got my food and sat down. Coincidentally, her family decided to sit at the table directly next to me. This gave me time to finally figure out why she looked familiar. It was my cousin Sara’s friend also named Sara but that goes by “Toast”.

I got home around 8:00 or a little later. Boy was I exhausted. Min really wanted to watch a movie. We tried putting in Vanity Fair in the living room but the movie was too dark. So we switched to The Bad News Bears. I had never seen the movie previously. It really isn’t very good. Although I have high hopes for the upcoming remake that is due in a few weeks.

It wasn’t until midnight or later when I finally managed to get to bed. I pretty much just passed out once in bed.

Day two in New Jersey. Today was a very uneventful day. I, unfortunately, had to get up at 10:00 am this morning to deal with problems in Binghamton. Since I got out of work at 6:00am, I got less than four hours of sleep. I tried to go back to bed but the phone just kept ringing so I eventually gave up.

I decided not to leave the hotel today since my day was so short. For my lunch/dinner, I ordered the amazing coconut shrimp from Charlie Brown’s again. Boy that is good. I watched some “Full House” reruns (like there are new ones, ha ha) since I had a television in the room. I see television so seldom that it seems strange to watch it.

I discovered to my pleasent surprise that Wegmans in Princeton was just three driveways down US1 away from the hotel. So I decided to hoof it over there and get some excercise in the process of going to work.

No sooner did I start working than disaster struck. One of my first steps in my migration process turned into a total failure of the server that I was supposed to be migrating. Being so far from home without any tools to do anything with, I was in a pretty tough spot. We ended up escalating the procedure and bringing in someone from the region to work with me and getting have of the department up in Rochester. We ended up working until 7:30 am. I was delirious with lack of sleep by the time I got to take the walk home.

Today is travel day. Lots and lots of travel to be done. Good thing that I enjoy travelling.

I got up at a decent time this morning. Min got me up when she got in from work at the hotel and I rested for about another half an hour before actually getting out of bed. I got up and showered and then I took Andy over to Enterprise so that he could rent a car to drive to interviews this week. He ended up getting a pretty good deal on a Hyundai Elantra. His car is getting pretty old and he doesn’t feel that he can rely on it.

I managed to hit the road around 11:00. In addition to my regular travels, I had to go down to Binghamton to drop off a lease desktop down there. Fun fun fun. Always so much to be done on every trip. This is my first ever trip with New Jersey as a destination and, as far as I can recall, the only the second time that I have ever driven any significant distance in New Jersey. Of all of the states on the eastern seaboard, it has to be the one with which I am the least familiar. Even Delaware I have spent some time in. Actually, my grandfather was from Delaware and I have been to the town that he was born in a couple of time at least. Once when I was really little and once about two years ago with Min. I took US476 south out of Scranton but then instead of going down through the Philadelphia area, like I should have done, I went east to the center of Jersey and drove down NJ206 down the middle of the state. What a mistake that was. The trip was scenic and I enjoyed seeing so much of Jersey that I had never seen before but traffic moved at the most incredibly slow pace. I couldn’t believe how slow that it was. It took be over two hours to move just 18 miles at one point. And it wasn’t like anything was wrong. That is just how traffic moves there. That really sucked.

I finally made my way down to Princeton and called Min to have her walk me through the directions to the hotel. That is a really tough area to get around if you don’t know the roads. But Princeton itself is an incredible town. I can’t believe how attractive and nice that it was. It is a beautiful town. I am definitely interested in moving to this area someday.

It was around 5:30pm when I finally got to the Clarion Palmer Inn Princeton on US1. I was surprised by how nice the hotel was. It was just renovated this year so even though the building was decently old, it felt very new. I liked the layout of the place, very comfortable. And I got the easy to remember room number of 123.

I got settled into my room and set up my laptop. As always, I selected this hotel because it had free wireless Internet access. That makes all of the difference in the world. I can’t live without my Internet access! What would I have to do? Nothing. I would just sit there like a bump on a log.

I had a few hours before I had to head back up NJ206 to Bridgewater for work so I ordered some coconut shrimp from Charlie Brown’s which was inside of the hotel and worked on the computer. They didn’t have room service but I just had to walk a little way to get to the restaurant. My hotel room faced into the courtyard of the hotel which I liked. The view to the outside of the hotel is always just highways and traffic but to the inside was very attractive. It made for a nice change. Although it wasn’t good for privacy. I was on the main floor so people walking down the sidewalk would go right next to my window.

I left for work at 7:30. Wegmans in Bridgewater was only 13 miles away but the drive, evening in the late evening, took over an hour. Work was rough tonight and I ended up being stuck working until 6:00 am. I bet Bob is glad that he decided not to come down here with me.

Did you know that Canadians don’t celebrate the Fourth of July? I guess that they aren’t very patriotic there.

Min was nice enough to make me get up and take out the dog this morning when I was still only part way through my night’s sleep but she was getting up anyway. So I spent the day being pretty tired. Nothing that I couldn’t handle, but not as well rested as I would have like to have been.

Today is Craig and Vonari’s (I hope that I spelled that correctly) wedding reception (one of the many.) So I headed up to Greece around 2:00 to go party with them. Min had to go to work at the hotel so she was not able to go with me. This is going to be a very busy week for us. I am out of town all week plus working over the weekend and she is working her normal hours and then travelling to Houston later in the week. So we will barely see each other.

The party was nice and I had a good time. I knew almost no one at the party so it really sucked that Min wasn’t able to go with me. But I am good at meeting and talking to new people so it was fine. In actuality, it is probably better that she didn’t go because she really doesn’t enjoy meeting new people and settings of large numbers of new people is especially unpleasent for her. I ended up meeting lots of nice, new people while I was there.

I came home early from the party so that I could get some sleep in before travelling tomorrow. I need to make up for last night being cut short before driving for such a long way. I talked to Bob tonight and we decided that it would be best if he didn’t go with me because I am going to be down there for such a short amount of time and only if everything goes absolutely perfectly will we have any time to do anything while I am down in Jersey. So he is just going to stay home.