Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is the travel day, Min and I are flying south to Tampa, Fla for John and Michelle’s wedding. We didn’t have to fly out until late in the day so Min was able to get home from work and take a little bit of a nap before she had to get up and pack. It is too bad that they decided to keep her late at work so that she got a lot less sleep than she would have otherwise. She didn’t get in until almost 10:00 and she had to get up at 1:00. Three hours is not a lot of sleep before flying all day.

Min got up at 1:00 and we packed and got everything ready to go. We left around 2:45 to go up to Tom Wahl’s and get some lunch. We took Andy out to lunch since he is dropping us off at the airport.

We got to Rochester’s airport with plenty of time to get to our plane. We can get through Rochester so fast and easily that it makes flying a lot less stressful than it might otherwise be.

The flight to BWI was fine and short. It is onlyabout 45 minutes of airtime from Rochester to Baltimore so that is an easy flight. We had almost no time in the airport there which made the flight extra fast (but dangerous since we were running a little bit late on the way down and only had a few minutes to get to the next plane.) The next leg of the trip was a bit longer, a couple of hours from BWI to Tampa. Min really doesn’t like flying and a long leg like that is really hard for her. It was especially bad because the flight was loaded with little kids who were being really obnoxious the whole way. They were fighting and bouncing and being loud the entire way. The were being so rough in their seats that they kept crashing into Min making her unable to sleep or relax. It was kind of bad for me too since my seat didn’t recline properly and I was stuck in that uncomfortable crash position the entire time.

We arrived in Tampa and decided to rent a car rather than to get a taxi because it was likely that the rental would be cheaper and definitely a million times more convenient. We went to Avis because we have had Hertz beat into us what idiots we are for ever trying to use them. Avis was great, cheap and polite and the car was fine so that all worked out really well. I have used them before and was very happy with them.

It took us about twenty minutes to find our hotel out in Clearwater. We stayed at the Fairfield out there not because Min is working there now but they had the best deal that we managed to find in the area. We got checked in and checked out our room quickly. Then we headed right out to find the rest of the wedding partiers out on Sand Key. We had good directions and didn’t have any problem finding our way out there. Our hotel was about ten minutes away from Sand Key so that wasn’t bad at all. Everyone was at a restaurant called Backwater out on the deck waiting for us.

Dinner was nice, the food was really good and interesting. The best thing was the fried mac and cheese (eat your heart out, Andy!) We ate dinner but didn’t hang out really. Min and I went back to the hotel to get some sleep. I guess John and Michelle went out and hung out on the beach until late. I don’t know who all went out and hung out with them.

It was really nice because we got a chance to meet John’s sister Allison and her husband Dan was live out in Colorado. I have never met them before so that was really cool. We all got along really well and had a really good time.

Today was another crazy day for me running all over the place. I got up this morning and drove out to Buffalo to work for T-Mobile. Then I had to drive to Rochester to do some work up at Greece-Ridge Mall for them. This was my third trip to that store location. I was able to determine that their equipment there was faulty and we came up with a game plan to get that all taken care of but it will have to wait until Tuesday when I am back from Tampa. Then I had to run to the Marketplace and Pittsford Plaza locations that I was at yesterday to pick up a part that I had accidetally left at each of them. Andy met me up at Pittsford Plaza to take me up to my car deal, Vincent Mazda, to drop off my Mazda 6. I need to have a recall taken care of as well as an oil change and to have the hood repaired after having that incident with that chunk of scrap metal. We dropped off the car and Andy decided to come with me to do some work out in Syracuse on Erie Boulevard since there wasn’t any way for me to get him back to Geneseo and still make it out to Syracuse before the store was going to close. So we drove out there as quickly as possible. We tried to call the store ahead of time to let them know that we were on our way but they turned their phones over to night service early so that they weren’t hearing us at all. We got there about eight minutes after they had closed but two of the sales reps were still there closing the place up. It took a while to finally convince them that they needed to let us in. They were very adamant about not letting us in. But Andy finally convinced them that it was in their interest to have us do the work then (I am sure their manager would not have been happy if they would have found out the next day that we hadn’t been able to do our work and had to charge double because they had turned off the phones early.) The work went smoothly and we were out of there in about twenty minutes. They were still closing when we left so we had very little impact on them at all.

After work in Syracuse, Andy and I had to run down to Ovid to meet Nate with Min’s dress for the wedding that we are going to tomorrow. We were really pressed for time because we had Min’s car and Min needed to get to work with it and we had a lot of driving to do yet. It was pretty late by the time we got to Ovid. We made the pickup and headed out as quickly as possible to get Min’s car to her. We managed to get home in time for Min to only be 10-15 minutes late to work. There was a lot of rain from the hurricane and that didn’t make things any easier.

Today I am working a contract for T-Mobile / Deutche Telecom. I am working in Rochester today and Buffalo and Syracuse tomorrow. It isn’t much of a contract but I have done work for them before and they are always nice and low maintenance so I am happy to do the work.

The work ended up an all day project. Eric went with me to the first location up in Greece which made the time pass a little bit faster since I am just hanging out in back rooms installing new switches. The work is good and easy. Then I ran over to Pittsford and worked for a little while and then it was on to Marketplace. After hitting all of the Rochster sites, I had to run back up to Greece to fix something that didn’t get fixed previously. Min came up to meet me after I was done working and we got dinner up in Greece. Then she did some dress shopping and I went over to Barnes and Nobles. I wasn’t able to get the work done in Greece so I will have to return tomorrow.

I am glad to be back home. It is nice to be here for a change. I get to be here for a week or two at least. Last week, I took an undeveloped roll of film that I had found in my camera bag over to Wegmans to get them developed. I found a great picture of Andy on that roll from many years ago. The roll was about seven or eight years old. There wasn’t much good on the roll.

I thought that it would be great to have some of the gang’s portraits on the site. I thought that it would really add something to the site. Especially since it will allow us to find ourselves when searching online better.

The word of the day is RAIN. The hurricane has brought a ton of rain our way and it is just dumping it all over here. It has been raining all day.

I spent the day doing some work around the house and doing homework. I have tons of homework that I need to get done right away so I am going to be around Geneseo for the next few weeks getting back on track.

Don’t forget, there is a big game this Friday night!

Min and I are driving north back up to Geneseo today. We slept in a little and then tried to drive up to Baltimore to meet John for lunch. We didn’t end up making it to meet him, though, because we got lost in Baltimore (bad directions.) So we lost a lot of time trying to find the restaurant.

We spent the rest of the day driving. Nothing much to report today. We arrived home safely. Min had to rush right out to work as soon as we arrived home.