Sheep Guarding Llama

Wow, it is 2005. Of course, everyone is always amazed as every year passes. In reality, it isn’t all that amazing. We are careening out of control towards 2006 already, so don’t be surprised when that rolls around. I’m warning you now, it is right around the bend.

Bob & Lisa and Joe & Brittany camped out here last night and we all went over to Denny’s for breakfast this morning. We had a good time and hung out at the restaurant for a while but everyone needed to get home so we couldn’t loiter for too long.

We came back to the house and Bob picked up one of our computers to borrow for a little while. He has a stack of video games that he has gotten recently that he hasn’t been able to play because his computer has been too old to be able to handle them. So he is borrowing one of our lease machines that isn’t needed right at the moment.

After everyone took off, Min and I did some house cleaning but really the place wasn’t bad post party at all. I got The Sims 2 installed on Min’s computer and she spent the rest of the day playing that. She really loved the original and the new one seems to be quite a bit nicer. For one thing, it comes on DVD which is a huge bonus since the old one took SO many CD’s to completely install, it was really annoying. And the new one is rendered in 3D as well which is a lot nicer. The game seems like it is a bit bigger and more expansive. Min had only played it for a little while when she determined that this one was quite a bit more complex that the old one. Maxis really has a good strategy with these Sims games since they work so well for releasing expansion packs. In fact, the first expansion pack for The Sims 2 is due out in just a few months. In March, I believe.

A boyscout stopped by today collecting cans and bottles for a fund raiser that they are doing. He was very surprised when we turned out not only to have the bottles that were all over the kitchen but also a 55-gallon garbage bag completely full of bottles ready for him. We had over-filled our returnables container and were planning on making a run to turn them in today but they stopped by just in time. So it worked out really well for them, they probably made as much off of us as they did in half of the village!

I have taken most of this week off from work so today I am doing some to catch back up again. It works out well since Min is playing her video game while I work. She did take a break to cook dinner. Andy took a few hours out of his schedule and assembled the air hockey table that we received from Min’s family for Christmas. It is a really nice one. Right now, we have it up and running in the “basement” room, the one right at the bottom of the stairs between the theatre and the server room. I think that eventually we will get castors for it and will wheel it in and out of the sump area when we want to use it. That way it takes up as little space as possible but is still readily accessible. Andy and I played for about half an hour or so. Miranda is still here and spent the day playing the Simpsons video game that Andy has on his computer.

I am putting in a real effort to have the web site up to date in 2005. That is my New Year’s resolution. That and maybe keep the house a little bit cleaner than we have been. That is always a struggle. We attempt to use way too much of the house as living space and we end up not having any space that is ligitimate storage space and so everything spills into the living space.

My schedule this week includes: Monday working all day in Ithaca. Tuesday I will be in Buffalo at the Microsoft show. On Thursday I will be at the Rochester Microsoft show. I have to work in Perry at some point along the way. Whatever day I work in Perry, I will probably work in Castile as well. Dad and Min are going to the Microsoft show on Thursday with me. I think that Andy is going. And John Stephens is supposed to be going. So it should be quite the party. So it should be a relatively busy week.

I moved all of the December dailies out to the archives today (I left some dupes in here just so people could go back a few days in case they missed anything.) I have to apologize again, the last TWO seasons have been the two slowest seasons of SGL since the first quarter of 2002! I will definitely be doing a much better job of keeping up this season. I guarantee. In fact, I think that I may have already written more today than I did in the last quarter of 2004.

Andy and Miranda went down to the theatre tonight to watch some of the third and final season of the original Star Trek. Andy has finally completed his collection and has been working through them at a rate of about two episodes a night. He is really dedicated. I can’t really stay awake even through a single episode. They really are SO much more boring than I remember them being. I think that it might be better for me to just remember them fondly and not to watch them ever again because the more I see of them, the more that it gets ruined for me. I haven’t really seen the original series, more than one of two episodes, since I was very young.

I worked until pretty late. Min was so into her video game that she didn’t even notice so I figured that it was a good chance to get some work done.

Today is the fourteenth annual Scott New Year’s Eve party. That’s right 1990-1991 was the very first party at Arti’s place on Limrick. Bob and Lisa came up last night and so they are here today helping to get the place ready. I had a bit of cleaning to do before everyone starting arriving. Min left Frankfort early this morning to come back home for the party. She actually got home early enought that we were all able to go out to lunch together. We went out to the Omega Grill and Eric and Amanda came out to Geneseo to meet us. We had a really nice lunch and Eric and Amanda decided that they would come out to the party tonight after all.

After lunch we went over to Walmart and Wegmans and did some last minute shopping for the party. We needed some karaoke CDs because we have almost none from before. We decided that this year we were tired of doing the semi-formal thing that we have been doing the last several years so we decided to do a pajama party instead. We figured that that would be significantly different. But it helps to make everything less formal. It is easier to hang out if everyone is in their pjs.

We got home and the girls went to work getting food ready for the party. There is a lot to get done. The guys mostly worked on getting the place clean and set up. We didn’t manage to get ready until the very last minute, but what else would you expect?

Everyone started arriving around 7:00 – 7:30. We had a pretty decent turn out this year. The weather was good so that really helped. We really didn’t announce the party at all. This year has been so hectic that it was really our last priority to do anything big. The party was pretty mellow. It didn’t really get out of control at all. I guess the majority of us are starting to get to that age where we just don’t party like we used to. Its tough getting older.

For the most part the party was winding down around 1:30. I went to bed right around 2:00. I have no idea how long people decided to hang around after that.

Not only have I been keeping up with the site for the last few days, but I also remembered to finally take an entire quarter of the year and move it out to the archives. That should help make the page load a little faster, don’t you think?

Min left yesterday morning to go out to Frankfort so I have had the run of the house most of the week. Andy has been going to work and Miranda has been sleeping really late so I really have been pretty much alone all week. That is nice for a change. I have been so busy recently!

I had a bit of work that needed to be done today so I worked around the house all day long. Mostly I worked in the office but I also did some cleaning and laundry. Nothing exciting today, but I was pretty productive.

Bob and Lisa came up this evening to hang out before the party. We had been hoping that Nate was going to come over and hang out but that didn’t pan out. We ended up just hanging around the house all evening and relaxing. Bob and I made a run out to Mamma Mia’s at 2:30 in the morning and bought them out of pizza just before closing time.

Only two more days until the big New Year’s bash. Min left for Frankfort this morning. She is going to be staying out there until Friday. Bob and Lisa are probably coming up tomorrow for a little pre-party party.

I had breakfast with dad this morning at the Omega Grill before heading down to Castile to do a little work down at the Castile Christian Academy.

Andy decided to sleep in very late today and left for work sometime after 11:00. So I guess that he is taking a half day today. I am supposed to be back at Wegmans in late January, probably the last week of the month. That is good because I will need the time between now and then just to catch up on everything that I fell behind on the last time that I was there!

My cousin, Jeremy, came over this evening and we watching Last Man Standing in the theatre. This was his first time seeing anything in the theatre. He was pretty impressed. Nate came over part way through the movie because he was ordering a laptop for Tammy. They ordered an Athlon 64 Hewlett-Packard. That is going to be a nice laptop.

I took Jeremy home around midnight and then Nate and I stayed up and watched The Princess Diaries 2 with Julie Andrews and Anne Hathaway. It was sillier than the first one although I think that I might have liked it more. It was very cute. I really enjoy cute, live-action Disney movies. I always have.

I am still relaxing today, for the most part. It is so nice not to have anything pressing on me too much this week. I think that I am actually more productive when there isn’t quite so much going on because I am able to do things that I am interested in in stead of being buried under a mountain of back-logged work.

Min and I watched Robbie the Reindeer after she got up. I know it is after Christmas but we hadn’t gotten a chance to see it yet. We watched the original version with the British voice actors which is much better than the silly American version.