Sheep Guarding Llama

Min got home just after 7:00 but didn’t come to bed until 9:00. I slept in as late as I could which was till around 2:00. The phone rang some but not nearly as much as it used to.

Miranda took off this morning before I was awake. Andy and I both ended up having tons of job hunting stuff that needed to be done so that kept us both busy for much of the afternoon. After 5:00, once things had calmed down a little bit, we drove up to Tom Wahl’s in Avon to get some dinner. Andy was in the mood for a veggie burger. Weird, I know. After dinner we went over to Woody’s II on Genesee Street to get some ice cream.

I didn’t have much time at home before I had to get ready to go back to work. Tonight is Holt Road in Webster.

As I neared the store this evening, I noticed that there were no street lights working. Then I noticed that none of the buildings in the area had any lights on. It was still decently light out so it took me a while to assure myself that there was really a black out in the area. The weather was fine so I was pretty surprised. It has been incredibly hot the last few days (New York has been in the mid to high nineties while Houston has only been in the mid eighties!) so it could have been rolling black outs but we don’t normally get anything like that up here.

I got to the store and they informed me that they had been without power for about three and a half hours already and that they had had a similar outage on Friday without any explanation as well. It took a little while before we got the go ahead for me to get to work anyway but the store does obviously have its own generator and battery systems for the server room so I expected that I would be all set. The thing that I hadn’t been counting on was how hot the server room would get in such a short period of time. One of the things that goes off with the power is the air conditioning system that keeps the servers cool. So between the heat coming off of all of the equipment in there and the incredible heat outside, the room started to climb above ninety degrees in no time. And, of course, I remembered how cold the server rooms were tonight so I wore warmer clothes even though it was so hot outside. So I was really dying in there.

The power came back on part way through the night. We had an issue, though, when the generator kicked off and the store went back over to the grid, the batteries in the server room died and took everything that I was working on down. That sucked. I lost a lot of work and ended up having to repeat an hour and a half of work.

I came home and worked at home again tonight until 5:00 am or so.

Dad picked me up to go get breakfast at 8:30 this morning and we went over to the Omega Grill. After breakfast I had just enough time to do some last minute cleaning before having to drive out to the Buffalo Airport to pick up Min. Her flight is supposed to arrive at 11:10 but she is flying out of Houston and through Atlanta durng the hurricane so I am doubting that she will be arriving on time.

Right after breakfast I had to drive out to Buffalo. I got there on time and had to wait for a while because Min’s flight was delayed, as expected, but they weren’t announcing that the flight was delayed. In fact, they kept the boards up saying that the flight was on time half an hour after they were supposed to have landed. And then, instead of giving us an updated status on the flight, they simply removed it so that I was in a panic thinking that the flight had been cancelled in Atlanta and that I hadn’t heard anything yet. Luckily, Min called just as I was on my way to find someone who could tell me something about the flight. They had only been delayed about forty minutes and they had just landed. So it didn’t end up being too bad.

Tonight is a busy night as both Min and I are working. Min is working the overnight audit at the hotel every night this week and I am working a full three overnights with Wegmans.

Dominica went to bed as soon as she got home. She slept a few minutes in the car on the way back here. We did stop in Batavia and we had some Taco Bell for lunch.

Tonight I worked in Brockport. I ended up leaving home way too early to go straight to work so I went to Burger King and got some dinner. I had tried to BK for dinner two nights ago at the one in Buffalo where I was working and ended up throwing out half of the meal because the onion rings were discusting.

Work went well tonight and I ended up stopping by the hotel on the way home and hanging out with Min for about twenty minutes. I came back home and ended up working until around 5:00 am. I have tons of work that can only be done late at night so it works out often for me to stay up really late working. I get tons done that way.

Today is my one day to myself. Min arrived in Houston early this afternoon. She was extremely exhausted after having driven all through the night. I called her in the car just as they were beginning to drive across the city. So she will be pretty much sleeping straight through until she leaves to return to New York early tomorrow morning.

I took the morning to sleep in significantly as I was extremely exhausted from the entire week. Work went well last night and I managed to get home at a reasonable time. So I was able to go to bed not that long after midnight which made for a nice change of pace.

I needed a change of pace today so I spent most of the day cleaning the house – the upstairs at least. The house looks completely different now than it did just a week ago between the furniture being rearranged, the quilt finally being hung on the wall and the computer being moved into the living room. Now I managed to clean a large portion of the house including the living room, dining room, kitched and our bedroom so it really seems like a new place. I even managed to do a tiny bit of cleaning in the garage and even less in the basement. Min will be very surprised when she gets home.

Miranda arrived this evening. She is down for just one day to visit. She and Andy spent most of the night out and about hanging out.

Min is leaving for Houston with Francesca and the girls. They are driving down today and will arrive late tomorrow. Then Min is flying home very early Monday morning. Hopefully nothing goes wrong on the drive down or Min will miss her flight back. Even more of a possibility is that the hurricane that is expected to hit us on Monday will affect her trying to fly out of Houston or flying through Atlanta.

Oreo decided to get me up twice during the night. He wasn’t interested in sleeping in late. So he first got me up after four hours of sleep and then again after just less than two more hours. I am bound to never get any real sleep this week!

Min got out of bed around a quarter till 10:00. She wanted to use my Samsung YEPP on her trip to Houston so I worked hard this morning attempting to listen to all of the book that I am currently working on. Not long before Francesca was due to arrive, I finally finished listening to “Sea of Glory” which details the United States’ first naval exploratory exbitition to explore the South Pacific, Pacific Northwest, Antarctica and to circumnavigate the globe.

Min left for Houston right at noon. She has a long car ride in front of her. I am glad that I am not driving all of that way today. I spent the afternoon hanging out with Oreo. He is only here for the afternoon and then he has to go back to dad’s for the weekend. I won’t be here enough to take care of him while I am away. Andy went to Batavia this afternoon to see what he could do about finding an apartment. It is going to be difficult because Batavia is such a small place that they aren’t likely to have any kind of rental information the way that regular cities do.

I am almost delirious with lack of sleep this afternoon. I am having a terrible time staying awake and I am getting really bad heart burn from being so tired. I really wanted to take a nap but there just wasn’t ever a gap of time long enough to safely take one. Everything is so perfectly spread out today that there is no time for anything.

I left for dad’s at 4:00. I have to get dinner, gas and drop off the dog all on the way to work so I have to get moving awfully early. Plus I have to arrive early tonight because the store that I am working at is closing tonight at 6:00 and locking its doors so it will be a pain if I don’t get there early. Hopefully I will be home between 10:00 and 11:00 if all goes well. I am going to post early to get everyone caught back up on the events of the last few days and give everyone a decent idea of where Min and I both are and Orea in case you need him as well.

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.