Sheep Guarding Llama

The wedding weekend has set me behind on my regular updates but I am back at Wegman’s overnights and am doing all that I can to get caught up with everything. I figure between the wedding and the SGL2 postings and the Memorial Day holiday that everyone is managing to survive without the SGL updates.

I was up super early this morning, 3:45 am. Min was up at 3:00 getting ready to leave. I waited until the absolute last second and jetted out the door seconds after getting out of bed. Min is leaving for Houston this morning and I have to get her to the airport in Buffalo.

We left the house by 4:05 and headed through Batavia up to the thruway and out to Depew. On the trip we listened to an audio dramatization of Margaret Atwood’s “A Handmaid’s Tale”. I have never read any of Atwood’s stuff. The book was awfully depressing but many good novels are. The dramatization was only two hours long so I am sure that it left a lot of the novel out. I expect that the original work was more compelling. But it was still quite good. One of those “must reads” of well rounded readers of the twentieth century. Min didn’t quite get to finish the book before having to go into the airport to make her flight. I parked in short term parking and came in with her for about fifteen minutes to make sure that she was checked in and going through security where I could no longer follow. She has a layover in Baltimore this morning and should be in Houston at Hobby Airport before noon.

I finished Atwood on the ride home and began listening to an unabridged reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby”. Gatsby is one of those classics of literature that has slipped past me all of these years. So many high school students are required to read this classic but I was never introduced to it in school. I had heard of the book, of course, but never knew anything about what it was about. While reading (read: listening to) “Reading Lolita in Tehran” I learned so much about Gatsby that I decided that it would be quite important for me to read it. Plus being written in 1925 when Fitzgerald had no idea of the coming depression gives a unique glimpse into the world of America in the 1920’s that we so often miss. To us, a world has never existed without the Great Depression era of the 1930’s. The Roaring Twenties can never be discussed without talking about the great crash. But to Fitzgerald, the crash hasn’t happened, the world might just go on like this forever. And what a world it was. It must have been quite an experience.

I was home well before 7:00 and took the opportunity to shower and get a little bit of work done on the Case’s laptop that I have been working on for the last two days. Man does it take a lot of work to get a computer ready for someone. Wow.

Dad picked me up at 8:00 and we went over to the Omega for breakfast. We have hardly seen each other this past week, things have been so busy. For example, just look at how much I had to do this morning before even going out to breakfast!

After breakfast we went over to Grossman’s in the old Ames’ Plaza and did some shopping for air conditioning units for the server room and looking at some screen options for the basement windows. Then we hit the Chamber of Commerce for a minute to pick up something and then we went back to the house and looked at some options for mounting the screen door in the garage and for putting in screens in the basement.

I worked on the laptop for the majority of the day. Anything that involves a fresh install always is an involved process because I always want to do it right and that just takes time. So I concurrently installed Windows XP Pro and SUSE Linux 9.2 Pro onto the laptop while I did all that I could to clean around the house. I have really been letting things go upstairs and I needed to put some real work into it. I did two loads of dishes, did a tiny bit of laundry and cleaned all over the living room and my bedroom. It is far from done, but I got a ton done today. While dad was at the house I made him help me move one of the servers that I had been working on from the living room down to the server room. That helped things immensely.

Andy and I did a late lunch around 2:00 out at Aunt Cookie’s downtown. Neither of us have been down there for their delicious toasted subs for a while so it was a nice change of pace for both of us.

After lunch Andy continued working on the new Waste Watcher system while I continued working on that dual boot laptop and started setting up that new server. I am excited about the new server because it is a pretty elaborate testing bed for us to use internally and should really help us have a lot more technologies at our disposal to work with. I finally got a hold of Jocelyn around 3:00. She was supposed to come over today to study but she went over to her dad’s this morning and wasn’t around. I never got a hold of anyone at the house because Mary was still sleeping at 3:00 in the afternoon. Oh don’t I remember the days fondly…

Mary and Jocelyn both came over around 5:20 and hung for about two hours learning the fine art of PC Tech under my masterful tutalidge. (I have no idea how to spell tutalidge.) They have both been reading the Mike Meyer’s A+ book but have only made it to the first one or two chapters so far.

Min finally called close to 6:00 to say that she had arrived safely in Texas. She fell asleep just after arriving and had forgotten to call earlier. She is lucky, she is getting to play with our new dog while she is down there.

I had to be out the door by 7:30 to make it out to Amherst in time to work tonight. Imagine me being in Buffalo twice in the same day. Who would have thought. I have to be back here tomorrow as well. At least I have Gatsby to listen to in the car on the way.

This morning when I dropped Min off at the airport, I noticed that the old Wellesley Inn that I used to work at occasionally in Buffalo (this is back in 1998-1999) is gone and has been replaced with a Best Western. Nothing ever stays the same, does it.

I got out to Amherst only a few minutes behind schedule. I had been doing really well but I accidentally got onto i990 north and then tried to get off of that highway and ended up on an exit that dumped me right into the UB campus. What a pain that was. I had to wander around for a while to find my way out since there were no signs.

I am writing tonight’s updates from Wegman’s in Amherst. Looks like I will probably be out at a fairly decent time. I plan to stop by the hotel and get some free bagels tonight but I can’t stay up for long because I have a lot to do yet tonight when I get home and tomorrow in the morning. Not to mention that fact that I have already been up for a very long time.

Min and I finally got a little bit of a chance to sleep in a little this morning. Boy did we need it after this weekend. We were zonked. Min had to spend a lot of time today getting ready for her flight tomorrow. She is trying to pack light which isn’t easy for her. She doesn’t have me with her to carry her luggage and she doesn’t want to hurt her back so she is trying to take as little as she can get away with if at all possible.

We went over to dad’s around 3:00 to help set up a little for the picnic this afternoon. Andy went over to his family’s Memorial Day events closer to noon. I think that he is secretly very excited about having made macaroni salad.

I hit some golf balls around before everyone arrived at 4:15. Dad has a massive lawn now and there is plenty of room to hit golf balls around. It is really cool. Now I just need to invest in a large number of golf balls so that I can actually use the place like a driving range.

Uncle Leo, Aunt Sharon, Granda, Sara, Jeremy and Sara’s friend “Toast” all arrived around 4:15 and we ate near 5:00. Dad cooked on the grill. Min and I had the same delicious Morning Star Philly Cheese Steak soy burgers that I had had the other night. Boy those are good.

We got home around 8:00. I worked on the laptop for a little while. I went to bed around 10:30 and Min followed just a little bit later, closer to 11:00. Luckily, I was tired already so I was able to fall asleep. Tonight would be an awful night to not be able to fall asleep rapidly. I really think that my CPAP causes me to associate wearing it with sleeping and I pretty much fall asleep once I put it on.

The morning after! Dominica and I were up bright and early and on the road back to Farmington this morning. We were still pretty tired from yesterday. We were hoping to get to Josh and JoAnna’s close to 10:00 but it was more like 10:40 by the time that we finally got all of the way out there. We stopped in Lakeville on the way through at the McDonald’s and got some breakfast. We were in need of some quick egg protein.

We hung out with the newlyweds until about 2:00. When we went to leave (we had to leave when we did because we had to return by tux back to Marketplace Mall) we discovered that the waistcoat to my tux was missing. We searched everywhere for it. It was handy that we were out where the wedding was so that we didn’t have to wonder if it was somewhere else. We looked everywhere including in my car and in my luggage. I could have sworn that I had brought it in the night before but it was very dark out and I wasn’t able to see when I brought things in from the tent. So we are really hoping that Phil got the waistcoat somehow by mistake since we weren’t able to get a hold of him this morning.

Off to Marketplace Mall we went. I turned in my tux, that only took a second. They were very helpful about the lost waistcoat. We didn’t get anything resolved, but they were very helpful. Min did some shoe shopping at the Discount Shoe Warehouse Shoe Warehouse (no, I am not repeating myself, that is its name.) She found some flip-flops that she liked. She wanted to get some so that she would have something cool to wear when she goes to Texas in two days.

We got home around 5:00 just minutes after the Ralstons had called to see if we wanted to play a few games of AoE2. It was a long weekend and we figured that we needed a chance to relax so we decided that that sounded like a good idea. I called up Jeremy and he said that he was allowed to play. So I ran down to Leicester to pick him up. Dad also had the Case’s new laptop in his car that I needed to pick up so that I could work on that as well. No rest for the weary.

We played from about 6:30 till 11:30. It was an exhausting night. I needed that. I got Jeremy home around 11:45 and I collapsed into bed as soon as I was home again.

Today is the wedding. I decided to stay at home last night to make logistics easier this morning even though it meant considerably more driving. I got out to Josh’s at 8:55 – five minutes before Josh told me to be out there but he was already calling me by then to see where I was. Even when I am early I don’t get any credit for it.

Josh, Phil, Bob and I spent most of the morning getting the decorating done for the reception. We set up tables, chairs and did almost all of the setup in the tent. The tent was up the night before so we didn’t have to worry about that this morning. That was a relief. We would never have been able to deal with that today. We had been planning on playing golf this morning but we ended up barely being able to get everything done and to get to the wedding. After getting the decorating done, the four of us had to run up to Eastview Mall so that Josh could get his hair cut. Luckily we walked into the mall and there was a place right there that had no line so he was able to get right in or we would have been in big trouble. He managed to get right in and out. We ran across the street to Amiel’s and grabbed subs to go and ate them back at Josh’s while we took showers in shifts. We weren’t able to shower previously because we had been working outside so we were tight for time.

Phil and I went over to the Granger Homestead first to get everything in order since Josh wasn’t quite ready yet. Min and Andy were about the first ones there (unlike at Phil and Kate’s wedding where Min and Jenn were incredibly late.) It was kind of funny that Min and Andy sat together at Josh’s wedding where Phil, Bob and I were the best men since Min first sat just behind Andy and Josh at Phil’s wedding where I was the best man. Funny how things turn around like that. I bet no one else even noticed how that worked.

Bob and Josh made it over not too far behind us. Phil and Bob got everyone seated and we got the show rolling pretty promtly. The weather was absolutely perfect. We couldn’t have asked for a better day for the wedding. The rain held off for all of the times that there were actual wedding activities going on but the sun didn’t get so warm that it was ever uncomfortable.

The wedding went smoothly and afterwards we all headed over to Josh and JoAnna’s for the reception. Having the “village” park right next to their house really worked out well since they were able to put the reception tent onto the park lawn but it faced their house and blended right into their lawn it was really cool. Very easy to deal with. We got over to the reception around 5:00. Dinosaur BBQ arrived to do the catering at 5:30. We partied on until about 9:00 when people started to move on. Min and Andy took off and I stayed around to help out for a little while. I didn’t head home till around 10:00 or maybe a little bit later. Over at SGL2 there are three audio postings from the reception that you should go and check out.

Today is Min’s last day of teaching for the year (season.) She had finals for the first half of the day and then had basically a fun day for the afternoon. I went up to Greece and spent a good part of the afternoon hanging with Craig. I went up and visited him at his new house. He has been there for a little while but I haven’t seen it yet. He lives in Greece not too far from the lake. Megan used to live very near there. Only a few blocks away from where Josh, Andy and I used to live at Greenleaf. We hung out and had coffee out on the patio. I wasn’t able to stay there long, though, because I had to get back down to pick Min up so that we could get out to Farmington for the wedding rehearsal this evening.

I got home right at 4:00. Min and I loaded up the car with whatever we needed for the evening and drove out to Farmington. The tent was already set up in the Farmbrook Park when we arrived. It really looks like there is going to be a wedding here. We got there at just the right time. We mingled with everyone getting ready to go over to the Granger Homestead for about fifteen minutes and then we all loaded into the cars and caravaned on down to the wedding locale.

The wedding (and ergo the rehearsal) is taking place at the Granger Homestead. The Granger Homestead is a historic building in Canandaigua that reminds you of being at one of the buildings at the Genesee Country Museum. Only there is only a single building plus a carriage museum. It is coincidental that both places have similar carriage museums. But that really isn’t very interesting.

After the rehearsal, everyone went back up to Josh and Jo’s for the rehearsal dinner. Phil, Bob and I had to run up to Eastview Mall to get Bob’s tux because everyone had forgotten about it and we were really down to the last minute. So we ran up there to take care of it tonight since waiting until tomorrow would really be asking for trouble. I had to take him up because Bob was without a car and everyone else was busy with the dinner.

It was decently late by the time we left Farmington to go home. Probably around 10:00. On the way home, I discovered that by taking Buffalo Street in Canandaigua, I am able to shave off a couple of minutes and a couple of miles of city driving between Josh’s house and mine. That will make the trip a little bit easier. Especially as we make this trip over and over again over the next few days.