Sheep Guarding Llama

Dad came over this morning and installed our chandelier that has been sitting in the dining room for a month or two now. We are really excited to have it up both because it looks a million times better than the old one but also because it is a lot more practical for us. The old one was really low and had five forty watt light bulbs that shown right down on your head and it was way too bright and way too hot to really use at all. The new one uses four bulbs that shine up to the ceiling and we were able to put florescents in them so we are using only sixteen watts for the entire fixture now. That was the last major bastion on incadescent lighting left in the house. Andy’s bedroom still has one, our bedroom still has one, the basement has one halogen that is almost never used and the laundry room has them. I think that is all. The florescents cost so much less than the regular bulbs and I think that they look a ton nicer. I hate incadenscent lighting, it makes me feel icky. And they give off way too much heat for me, I can always feel it. Anyway, the new chandelier looks really awesome and it ended up matching our ceiling fan in the dining room really well, it matches better than the original lights. So that is a big bonus. It does wonders for making the kitchen look nice and feel more usable.

Min and I did some cleaning today, her parents are spending the weekend here so we want the house to look nice. It is good that they are coming because it forces us to do some much needed cleaning. The house is so much dirty as it is just incredibly cluttered. The dining room is full of equipment that I needed for a job that I was working on and I need to get packed back up and shipped back out to them.

So, our course, I wrote yesterday’s post and forget to post it to the site. What an idiot I am. But then again, everyone already knew that.

Well, I finally managed to post yesterday, yay! Boy did that need to be done. I did some investigation and discovered that the reason that the buttons haven’t been showing up for the past week is because I am an idiot and actually deleted the buttons from the web site. What an idiot I am. So there are new buttons over there now. Maybe I will try some more soon. We are probably getting close to needing a new look update for the site. But I have been awfully busy so that is probably out of the question for the time being. But I will be keeping the idea in the back of my mind, along with other cool ideas like keeping the site up to date.

More work for T-Mobile today. Hey, it is nice to be busy. I decided not to head out until Min had gotten up so that she could come with me. I am mostly just driving, very little time will be spent actually working.

AirTran found Min’s luggage by 7:30 this morning and they stopped by and dropped it off early this afternoon. Min was very relieved to have her luggage back. Her matching Vera Bradley luggage.

I spent the morning doing online certifications from Brainbench. I did some last night and I was pretty close to wrapping up a couple of big job role certifications so I got those done. I now have 101 IT industry certs and 9 non-IT certs. My resume is getting pretty long.

I took the film from the wedding out to Wegmans to get it developed. Two of the rolls were regular print film and two were slides. The slides are the longer 36 rolls and will take a week before we get them back but I had the prints done in an hour so that we could see how they looked. We got quite a few decent pictures in there, I will try to get some up on here when I get a chance. The first roll, though, had apparently been in the camera for some time. It shows how long it has been since I used my Nikon. There were pictures on that roll from early 2000 including pics of Eric and Amanda on the day that they met at our “Empty Apartment” party on February 20, 2000 and Andy holding a pan of corn dogs in the kitchen of our apartment in Pittsburgh in March, 2000. Then the pics jump right to Min and I at the Genesee Country Museum last summer. I guess I need to take pictures more often.

I had to do some errands this evening and so Min decided to ride with me out to Buffalo while I worked. Luckily my work didn’t take long so she wasn’t too bored. There was a Media Play right next door to the T-Mobile where I was working so she did some shopping in there. She picked up Mean Girls and actually managed to get a lower price than what Walmart or Target was offering on it, good deal. We were in Buffalo for only about 45 minutes and then headed over to Greece for me to wrap up the work that I was doing.

Min had to work tonight over at the Fairfield but Andy and I decided to go up the city and do some shopping. So she took off for work and we headed up to Walmart to find Star Wars. Andy had to go with me because me car is still in the shop getting its hood repaired. We made it to the Walmart in Henrietta (Marketplace) just minutes before they closed and were lucky enough to find that they still had some copies of Star Wars and they had them for just $41. So we grabbed a copy.

Andy and I ran over to Tim Hortons across the street from where Min works and picked up some coffee for her (the hotel serves Paul De Lima coffee, the most disgusting coffee in the world – some of you might remember it from my days at the Days Inn Thruway years ago) so we thought that she would appreciate something decent. We also got some donuts for her, but they had run out of the really good toffee glazed donuts that we really wanted. Dominica was awfully happy that we had stopped by and brought her goodies and her supervisor was hanging out too so we got to meet her.

Andy and I came home and watched A New Hope, boy does that look awesome. The picture is the best that I ever remember seeing it, including in the theatre. They really did a good job on this DVD. Of course, it is modified slightly from the previous Special Edition that I have on Laserdisc. But only slightly, little things here and there. It is definitely an improvement, there were some really crappy things added to the Special Edition and Lucas wisely took some of them back out or changed them again.

Today is the big day, the original Star Wars Trilogy releases today on DVD. I am sure that Bob picked it up somewhere at midnight. Mean Girls released today as well. It is a big movie release day. It doesn’t seem very smart to release a DVD on the same day that Star Wars releases.

Ok, the SGL updates have adopted a tradition of burst updates, about evey 10-14 days I do a batch and upload them for everyone. With my massively varrying schedule of late, there isn’t much that I can do about that. I am only managing to update today due to a massive layover in Atlanta combined with serendipity that allowed my the one space in the entire waiting area with a power outlet. So the Lord is watching over us and providing the update today.

Dominica and I are on our way from Tampa to Rochester. We got up at 6:30 this morning so that we could get to the airport on time (hurry up and wait.) We had breakfast at the hotel and checked out by 8:45. We didn’t get to have any cereal this morning since the milk had gone bad yesterday (at least they finally figured that out and didn’t try to put it out again.)

We got to Tampa Int’l without a problem, thirteen minutes from the hotel, not bad at all. We got checked in and right onto the plane. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect. The flight was smooth and relatively uneventful. I was half asleep the whole time. The only real problem was that the air conditioning was not working properly and the plane was unbearably hot. Min was feeling really sick not being able to get any air onto her. My ears had a really hard time adjusting to the descent. I always have a really hard time with my ears but this was a lot worse than usual.

Min and I landed in Atlanta right on schedule around 11:00 and got the chance to enjoy a four hour layover in Georgia. Any longer and we would have considered leaving the airport. We are flying out of here at 3:20 and should be back in Roch-cha-cha around 5:30. Andy is getting us from the airport.

While I am writing the udpates, Min is trying to nap in the terminal waiting area. We had lunch as soon as we got here in the hopes that it would help my ears but no luck there. She is getting some sleep though, but I am sure that she is going to be really soar after trying to sleep on the chairs for so long. She needs the rest because she is working at the Fairfield tonight and won’t have any chance to sleep before then really.

There are two obviously drug addicted teenage hippies across from me at the airport. They look nasty, malnurited and deep sunken eyes. They have been eating constantly since they got here about 45 minutes ago. And not just eating but plowing through more food each than I eat in an entire day or more. It is really gross. And the girl is chewing with her mouth as wide as could be. I am not sure she even knows that she is in an airport.

I am hoping to have a chance to post the updates today. I am expecting to have a chance when I get home. Things are so busy that it is hard to know if I will be able to. Okay, the schedule for this week is as follows: Monday – Min and I fly in from Tampa and Min has to work overnight in Rochester; Tuesday – I am on the road to Buffalo and Rochester doing more work for T-Mobile and Min has to work at the hotel again; Wednesday – Friday – I will be in Geneseo trying desperately to catch up on homework that really needs to be completed and Min should be home most of those days since she is only working a single job as of this week; Saturday – Sunday – Min’s parents are coming down from Frankfort to visit and help get the cinema in the basement completed.

Min and I arrived just after five and Andy came to the airport to pick us up. The flight went fine until we arrived and tried to pick up our luggage and Min’s expensive suitcase was missing. My garment bag arrived so it is kind of weird that they only lost one of the luggage pieces. Min is really upset because she really likes that luggage and it is very expensive and she can’t get it anymore and it is a part of a matched set. So it will really suck if she doesn’t get it back.

TODAY IS JOHN AND MICHELLE’S WEDDING!!

Congratulations to John and Michelle Nicklin who were married today, whoo-hoo!

Min and I had to sleep in a bit today to recover from all of the travel yesterday. The hotel room left something to be desired, the room was so so but the bed was pretty crappy. Instead of a real mattress, there is just a cheap foam pad thrown on top of the box spring so the bed is super soft and saggy. And it really didn’t breath so one tends to get really warm at night as well. Soft beds are terrible for my back and for my sleep apnea [sp]. We got up just in time for me to shower and then rush down to get our continental breakfast. It was okay until I drank the last of my milk after eating my cereal and noticed that there were some chunks in my milk. Then Min tried her milk and discovered that it had actually started to rot and that made her pretty ill. So breakfast was not a phenominal success. So we headed back up to the hotel room so that Min could get ready and I could get into my suit.

It was around 11:00 when we headed out to Clearwater Beach and Sand Key Park. We went to the Sheraton Sand Key and waiting for John to come down to the lobby to get us. That took about twenty minutes (21, actually!) Then Min went up to the hotel room to help the girls to get ready and John and I headed outside to the Tiki bar to relax for a while before we had to head out for the ceremony. It is in the mid 80’s today, sunny and humid. Sitting outside in black suits was definitely a little bit warm. We didn’t really start sweating but it was very tempting.

At 1:30, John and I started rounding people up to go down to the park. No one was really ready so we stopped by the Mainstay Tavern inside the resort for another drink before going back outside. After that we headed out to the cars with Dan, Min and Alli to meet up with the wedding coordinator, officiant and the photographer. We were meeting them down on the beach were it was incredibly hot and there was no shade. John did okay but I was sweating out of control. Once there is sun beating down on my head, I am generally finished. Min got the flowers and drove back to the resort to meet Michelle and Kit.

Everyone went out to the point to get ready for the ceremony. I brought my Nikon 5005 rig with me to take analogue pics, there were two digitals there so we didn’t need anymore of those. The photographer that was there only shot two rolls of film so it was good that I was there because I got at least three off. It is really hard to shoot against sand, though, so we will see if any of my pics turned out. My camera doesn’t let me change the ISO setting manually and I didn’t have time to do all of the calculations manually we the pics could easily end up all too dark.

After the wedding we went back to the resort and stayed all dressed up and hung out at the Tiki bar with Nicholle the bartender for the afternoon. We were at the tiki bar from 3:00 until 8:00. We took a brief break to run down to the beach and take pictures at sunset. The sun was beautiful going down over the gulf. I always forget how nice the sunsets are on the Gulf of Mexico, I have only ever spent a tiny bit of time on the gulf coast. I find it hard to remember that the US has so much gulf coastline, almost as much as we have on either ocean once you look at all of the coast that we have in Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. That is a LONG way around.

We all had dinner at Rusty’s at the hotel. It was really not busy at all, only a few other tables in the whole place had anyone at them. Dinner was pretty good. I wasn’t very hungry, I haven’t been all weekend. Just too much going on I guess. Everyone wanted to get to bed early since we are all flying out tomorrow except for John and Michelle who are staying down for the conference in Orlando starting tomorrow. Dad and Allison are flying out at 6:30 so they are really going to be exhausted, Min and I at 10:00 and Kit at noon. Min and I collected our stuff at 11:00 and headed back out to the hotel. We are the only ones staying in Clearwater instead of Sand Key. So we have to drive but our trip to the airport in the morning will be a lot shorter and easier than everyone else’s.