Sheep Guarding Llama

Unlike most mornings when people stay at our house, everyone woke up at around the same time this morning. That was awfully handy. Everyone but Andy, of course. He didn’t get up until later. He didn’t go to bed when the rest of us did either.

Bob, Lisa, Min and I went out to Denny’s for breakfast. Denny’s is like our place to go with Bob and Lisa, it is pretty funny. They first went there the night of Min and my wedding because they were staying at our house when Min and I were staying at the Hillside Inn where the wedding had been. So Denny’s has kind of become a tradition.

Bob and Lisa took off right from Denny’s to get back down to Ithaca. We came home and I worked on posting yesterday’s SGL dailies and Min played The Sims 2 University which she hadn’t had a chance to even tough yet. So far, she really likes it.

If you are online and trying to find out about the Omega Grill, we are now on the first page of Google’s searches if you include Geneseo in the search – “Omega Grill” Geneseo. Funny enough, you can also just do a search on “Bob and Lisa” Ithaca and there is our Bob and Lisa mentioned right there on the first page to come up as well. Tee hee. And Lisa thought that she didn’te exist on the web anywhere!

I did some work on my Mac today and got the X Window Environment running on it which gives me the ability to run programs remotely from my Linux machine which is totally cool. I have a thing called the “X Live CD” that allows me to do the same thing under Windows but it works tons more smoothly under Mac. It is very cool. Now both Min and I are able to use graphical Linux applications (including word processors, spreadsheets, etc.) through our regular desktop machines without having to have multiple desktops sitting around. Very cool.

Min ended up getting so hooked on her new Sims expansion pack that she packed up her desktop (yes, her actual desktop) and took it to work with her so that she could keep playing the game while she was at work. It is her sixteen hour double tonight so it makes the most sense for her to do that now. But that is still pretty fanatical over The Sims. I suppose that if I had to work a double like she does and didn’t have anything to do at work that I would pack up my desktop too. I remember those days.

I have been thinking recently that it would be great to get a D&D group back together. I don’t think that I have played in a real, steady group for twelve years and have only played a little here and there since then. So, if anyone is interested in playing in a group, let me know. I know that Jeremy is playing a little bit of the RPG’s these days, so I bet that he would be in. It would be nice to get 4-5 players who would be really dedicated to playing a game. Maybe getting together like once a month of something. I am looking for people who are into serious role playing, not the hack and slash stuff. This would be D&D 3.5 so everyone would have to pick up a copy of the Player’s Manual.

I haven’t been down to see my grandma in a week or so, so I thought that I would go down to visit this afternoon.

I ended up visiting for about three hours. We had Pizza Hit for dinner and played a couple of games of Skipbo. Then I went over and Jeremy showed me Morrowind, this RPG that he has been playing for a week or two. It looked pretty cool. They did some pretty dumb things with it though assuming that it would never be used on an LCD monitor which kind of sucks. So it will never look up to par on an LCD. It did look fun, though. But it is only a single player game and I never have a chance to really make use of single player games so it will just have to remain a game that looks interesting. Jeremy did say that he is definitely in for a serious D&D game in the near future. So that is one player already. Now just 3-4 more.

I had an email from Nicklin when I got home saying that he was ordering both of the Bunny Suicide books. I knew that he wouldn’t be able to resist.

The OpenOffice.org project announced the first public beta of version 2.0 today. This is a major milestone for the project and I am very excited.

Today is Nate and Tammy Parker’s baby shower. Bob and Lisa are supposed to be coming up sometime this morning but I don’t know when yet. Min and I were actually up decently early on a Saturday morning. I didn’t even realize that they turned the power on this early on Saturdays! 😉

I got a chance to chat with Steve and Jen Bulkley online this morning. I haven’t had an opportunity to talk to them in a couple of months at least. Jen had the baby just recently and they both have been busy with school.

Bob and Lisa are shooting to get here just in time to head right on over to the shower. The shower is in Perry at 2:00. I have no idea what is going on later.

Min and I went out for a late breakfast / early lunch to Dennys. Then we hit Walmart for a quick shopping trip. The Sims 2 University Expansion Pack is out and Min had to have that. So you know what she will be doing for the next few days, err… weeks. We also got Sabrina on DVD because it was $5.50.

While we were out, I downloaded the demo of Empire Earth 2. I will let everyone know how it is once I get a chance to play it. It might be a while before I get a chance to use Min’s computer again now that she has the expansion pack to her favorite game.

We got back and we did some cleaning before anyone arrived. Bob and Lisa arrived around 1:30 and we hung out for about half an hour before going over to Perry for the shower.

The shower went well. Bob, Nate and I did all that we could to avoid the “baby shower games” portions although we did take part in the “thaw the baby frozen in ice in an easter egg” competition which I easily won. Bob needed to leave the party a little early so that he could watch the SU basketball game. So we drove over to Nate’s parent’s house and watched the game. Everyone came over to join us later.

After the party, Bob, Lisa, Min, Andy and I went up to the Pakistan House for a nice dinner. We ended up sitting right next to Rochester’s Mayor Bill Johnson. It was an interesting day to have sat next to him at a restaurant considering that Sheriff Duffy announced just a few hours ago that he would be running for Mayor of Rochester in this coming election and that the Mayor has been such a hot topic recently because of Rochester’s purchase of the fast ferry under his direction. We were guessing that he was trying to get a quiet evening away from the city so he came out to Brighton for dinner.

After dinner we all went over to Borders to do a little late night shopping. We looked into going out to see a movie but didn’t see anything that anyone actually wanted to bothering sitting through – which is often the case. While we were there, Bob got a couple of books and I picked up The Return of the Bunny Suicides which is just way too funny not to own. I had seen it the other day but just couldn’t resist it anymore. Once we got back to the house, Bob had to go through the entire book!

We decided that everyone but Bob was pretty tired already so we went to bed pretty early. I am still making up for the night that I went without the CPAP.

No game tonight, it is very sad.

I felt like total crap today. I accidentally fell asleep last night without putting my CPAP on. I hate that. Min woke me up around 5:00 because I was snoring and told me to put in on. That wasn’t enough time to get any real sleep though and I felt it all day.

I spent most of the morning either in the shower or on the phone. My head was swimming from the “didn’t sleep right” migraine that I had. Dad came by the house at 8:30 on his way to the city and we went out for breakfast.

I ended up not even really having time to get everything ready for our trip down to the Castile school. I had to load up two more computers and a monitor. That cleared out a bit more of the basement. Things are really starting to get cleared out here.

At the school today, Min and I had to judge a snow sculpture contest. We had to trapse through a lot of snow and Min fell down once.

We ended up hanging out down at the school until 5:30. We headed home and stopped by Wendy’s to get some dinner.

No game tonight but now that there isn’t a game Min and I can’t figure out anything that we want to do. We are both in a “I don’t feel like doing anything at all” kind of mood. Jeremy and Sara can’t do anything tonight because they both have play practice at 10:00 in the morning. Tony is in the play tonight so he busy. Art and Danielle are also busy. No one can play with us. Andy doesn’t want to do anything tonight because he wants to work on the video game.

Min talked me into playing a two person game of Winopoly. For anyone who has every tried Monopoly with only two players, you should have a good idea of how that went. It took forever to buy all of the properties. After playing for about two hours, Min finally got the last piece that she needed to lock me out of ever getting a whole set of anything on the board and, obviously, the game was over because she did have one complete set. She said that she had never thought about it before but once I had explained it she understood why the game was over. No matter how many of my worthless little things that she landed on, she would never lose her $200 per round that she got passing “Go”. But, I might land on Boardwalk – or Champaigne, in this case – and have to pay out more than I had. So we knew the game was over, we just didn’t know how long it would take to play out. She was like “No wonder these two player games went on forever when I was a kid!”.

So, after the very intense Winopoly game, Min had me teach her how to play Risk. I am not into two player Risk since it is lacking most of the game play of the real thing. So we just set it up and she learned how it works. I don’t think that she was very excited.

We were both pretty tired so we went to bed early. I read some more of Wil’s “Just A Geek” before falling asleep. I remembered the CPAP this time.

I couldn’t stop watching Roswell last night – I watched from just after 6:00 until 2:00 in the morning! That is a little bit obsessive, I guess. But, for those of you who have never seen the show, it is such an amazing show. Because it is a serial and not a sitcom, it makes it very difficult to stop watching because the story just continues right on. It must have been really tough watching it week by week when it was first on television. I think that this type of show really lends itself to the recorded media formats far better than televised. That is in contrast to a lot of sitcoms that get extremely little value through being able to watch them consecutively. Who’s the Boss, for example, has little need intraseasonly to be seen in any particular order. But with Roswell or a lot of British shows like As Time Goes By, you really have to see them all in a row to really get the emotionaly impact out of them.

The house is still having those occasional shakings that started a few days ago. It is only once or twice a day and always during the daytime but we still just can’t figure out what it could be. It is a little unnerving.

Andy left for work exceptionaly late today. I don’t know if he is going with the assumption that he will come directly home to see Tony’s show or what. He was just getting into the shower at 8:30 this morning but I didn’t actually see him so I don’t know if it was intentional or not. We had talked about going to the show last night but the last I had heard was that he was going to go on Saturday. But with Nate and Bob coming up this weekend, maybe he changed his mind and decided on tonight instead. I guess that we will find out.

Min and I ran out to dad’s to pick up some packing material so that we could get some stuff sent out from UPS. We made it to the UPS store just before 5:00 and got the stuff sent out and made a quick stop to the post office to mail a few things. Then we decided that we needed a break so we went over to the new Starbucks across from the Chamber of Commerce and gave them a try. It is weird being in the Delbucks (Starbucks in the old Del Taco buiding) because it only kind of looks like it was supposed to be a coffee shop. The space is really live which makes it rather uncomfortable to spend any amount of time in. It is so loud in there even though we were the only customers most of the time. We couldn’t talk at all. It just wasn’t a comfortable environment to hang out in. Which, I am thinking, is their aim. They seem to be moving away from the “place to hang out at” marketing strategy and really becoming just the fast food of the coffee world. So, it doesn’t look like I will be using the local Geneseo Starbucks as often as I had hoped that I would be. It is probably better this way – just ask Eric how many calories are in a Chantico.

When we got back to the house, Bob had called and said that he was reading the site (no really, he actually said that he had been reading the site, YOU are not the only one (unless YOU ARE Bob, then maybe you are the only one)) and realized that we were still planning on him coming up on Friday (tomorrow) and spending the weekend and that we had cancelled the all important AoE2 game because of it. Oops. He and Lisa aren’t coming until Saturday now. The moral of the story? Read SGL or you may miss something important. No, that isn’t it. Oh yeah, that there is a game tomorrow now 🙂 That must be it.

Ok, I have found some disturbing products online before but this one from Thinkgeek really takes the cake. I think that the most disturbing part is that I actually shop at this place! Eek.

We went to the show at 7:00. We passed Andy on the road on the way there. He was just heading home from work. We got to the show a bit early but we got a chance to visit with Andy’s family who got there just a little bit after we did. Andy did end up coming to the show just before it started.

My cell was off from 6:30 – 10:30 so anyone trying to reach me during that time – sorry.

The show was decent. Andy had never seen Oklahoma! before and Min had only ever seen the movie. I probably haven’t seen it since 1989 but I have seen it multiple times and both in live and movie versions. Tony did an amazing job – he played Judd and it was a really cool character for him. He got to be all dark and brooding. He sang really well too. He friend Rob played the peddler and did it in a totally convincing Hank Azaria style that was really entertaining. He sounded just like Hank playing the crazy doctor from The Simpsons.

We got home late and pretty much went straight to bed. I even saved the last of the updates for tomorrow.

Before I forget, Tony West’s performance in “Oklahoma” at Avon High School is tomorrow [Thursday] night at 7:00. I am pretty sure that Min and I will be going. I think that Andy is going on Saturday because it isn’t a work night.

I had to get up super early this morning and drive up to Henrietta to get Min from work again. We had anticipated the weather being really awful but it really wasn’t all that bad. But, I had a feeling that today was going to be a slow day and Min really wanted to hang out so I mostly blew the day off.

We went up to Mel’s to get some cheap breakfast. We called Eric to see if he was up for coffee but it was too early for him, I guess. This is the earliest that I have been out for breakfast in a long time.

After breakfast, I twisted Min’s arm into going over to Borders for a little shopping. She *finally* gave in – ha, ha. She looked through all of the knitting books and I looked through the geeky stuff. I tracked down their one hidden copy of Wil Wheaton’s “Just A Geek” that I have been searching for there for a long time. It sure took enough effort to buy that book! While I was hunting for it, Eric called back about coffee and decided to stop by and have some.

While we were waiting for Eric, Min and I looked through the Bible selection. They have a ton there. Min has been looking for something portable that she can carry around more easily because her good Bible is large and very heavy. Eric showed up while we were still looking at Bibles and ended up looking at them with us for about forty-five minutes. Then we went over to the cafe and had coffee and bagels. We ended up hanging out at Borders until almost 1:00.

I had to stop by dad’s to pick up some stuff we headed straight over there. We ended up staying at dad’s until 4:00 and convinced him to go out for some dinner. He has no car still so we have to drive him if he is going to go somewhere. We went down the hill to Greigsville and ate at the Barn right next to my old high school. It is a really weird, out of the way kind of place. Really hard to believe that there is an actual restaurant in such a location. It has been there as long as I can remember – but I have never gotten used to the idea of a restaurant in that location. They aren’t open late and are really just a local farmer’s hangout greasy spoon kind of place but the people are really nice and the place is quite inviting. The are famous for being the only place around that served sheep fried but I think that they discontinued that practice years ago. I used to walk past this place going to Cook’s gas station on the corner all during high school but never really thought about it much. They do a really good breakfast there and very inexpensively.

After dinner, before we took dad back, we ran over to York to take a look at York Landing which is available for lease. The Landing has been vacant for months and Min thinks that it might be an ideal location for her yarn stor slash coffee shop, if the price is reasonable. We would have to modify the building a bit to make it work and it would take a bit of effort to convince people to go way out into the middle of nowhere but it has the advantage of being in a decently easy to find location and it should be cheaper because there is almost no way to be getting any local traffic coming in.

We ran dad home after dinner and got ourselves home. It was after 6:00 when we finally got in. I was right about the day being slow, no phone calls at the office OR on the cell except for Eric. I can’t remember a day ever being so slow.

We came home and decided to watch some more of Roswell because I am still working my way through the second season. Min fell asleep about an hour into it. It took a long time before I managed to convince her to actually go to bed. I kept watching for about seven hours! Man I love that show. I still have a couple of discs left to watch of it too.