Sheep Guarding Llama

Most of the final details for the Wegmans / Dell contract are coming together today. Work is slated to begin tomorrow so we are getting down to the wire. It is funny that this is supposed to be my first week or regular work for Wegmans and next Friday is supposed to be Andy’s last day. We always have so much overlap in our jobs even when they are so completely unrelated like this one is.

After such a busy week, Min didn’t think that she was going to be up for going to Sunday School (or Church School as she is determined to have it renamed) this morning but when this morning rolled around she was raring to go. Well, willing, at least.

Sundays are my boring update. Sunday School -> Church -> Lunch with Dad in Perry at the Silver Lake Family Restaurant.

My cousins Mike and Cheryl are visiting from Ohio this weekend. They are staying with dad and arrived last night but as you can tell from yesterday’s schedule, we had no opportunity to visit with them at all yesterday. So our plan was to visit a bit today. I don’t think that we have seen them since either the wedding or mom’s funeral in the fall of 2003. There are a lot of people that we haven’t seen since then. Speaking of not seeing people, we haven’t had a chance to see Nate and Tammy’s baby yet either! Boy there is a lot to do when you get old.

We spent most of the day hanging out down at grandma’s with the family. We had a good time.

Today is my second week of having a Friday night lecture at the Castile Christian Academy. Last week seemed to go alright so we will see how this week goes. Min and I did our new tradition of going to Burger King for breakfast before going to the school. That seems to be good motivation to get us moving in the morning. We got to the school as everyone was arriving and Min managed to pretty much get right to work on her first class.

I was very busy today because I had to do most of my preparation for my lecture while at the school. I sat at a little desk facing “computer alley” where Min was teaching and worked on my laptop getting everything prepared. That seemed to work pretty well. It takes me about the same amount of time that it takes Min to teach in a day to get everything prepared for the class. There are a ton of “overheads” and example pages that I have to do so that the students have access to all of the materials that they will need both during the class and throughout the week while I am not there. This weeks lecture is the last one on XHTML. We did the basics last week and got the class up to the point where they could be making basic web pages on their own. This week we are doing some cooler stuff. I really think that this class gets more and more fun each week because the material really builds on itself and becomes fun very quickly.

While we were at the school today, they talked with us about the possibility of having Min teach there starting in two weeks. The teacher who currently teaches the seventh and eighth grades is unavailable for the last month of the school year and they have had a hard time getting someone lined up to take the class without having to use a string of substitutes. So Min and I will have to talk about that over the weekend. The school was very excited when they learned that Min had just given up her old job on Monday and that there was a possibility of her being available to do this for them.

After the lecture, Min and I went down to Cook’s gas station in Greggville and got some subs for dinner. We have a really tight schedule tonight because we get out of the school around 5:00 and we are starting a bible study small group tonight in Caledonia that Eric and Amanda invited us to. We are very excited because we have been wanting to find a small group that we could get involved with but LaGrange, where we go to church, has almost no one of our own age bracket. This group started last week and is doing the Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren which is the hot religious book going around right now. Min and I managed to save a bit of money by borrowing my grandmother’s and aunt’s copies of the books.

We got up to the place in Caledonia around 6:40. Luckily, Eric and Amanda had arrived first so we knew someone there. We got there before almost anyone else which worked out really well because there were so many names to try to remember. I am notoriously bad at remembering people’s names so that worked out very well for me. The small group meets at the home of Eric and Jenn who have just completed building the house and had seeded the lawn this morning. The small group is put on by the Avon Wesleyan church that Eric and Amanda attend. Chris Wurth who went to high school with me and was on the swim team with me also attends that church for those readers who remember him. The church is affiliated with the Roberts Wesleyan college for those who went there. Altogether, there were fourteen adults in the small group – a very good turn out. Apparently there were only eight last week. So that is a pretty good increase. There were also a ton of kids there. I am pretty sure that Min and I are the only couple there that doesn’t have any kids.

We wrapped up around 9:15 with the Bible study and Min and I had to rush home for the Friday Night Game. We thought that we were going to have to pick up Jeremy at Art and Danielle’s but my Uncle Leo had gone over there and picked him up and taken him over to our place already so we just had to rush home and get the party started. We had six people this week but only four at the house. Boy having that VPN in place sure is handy. I can’t believe what a different that makes!

Things finally appear to actually be happening on this Wegmans project. I am in constant contact with everyone and things appear to be falling into place. We will see how it actually pans out, but things are starting to look better.

I spent the day working from home and doing a bit of preparation for the XHTML Web Design class that I am teaching tomorrow. It will be my second lecture that I have given since I taught the Linux Administration class to the IBMers and CTG consultants back in 2001!