Sheep Guarding Llama

Happy Birthday to my niece Emily!! She is three today!

It is strange waking up in Varna again. Min and I slept in this morning until she had to get ready to go to work. I went in a few minutes after her and spent the day working in the Lifestyles office getting work done for college. I have tons of work to do, there is really no end to it. Although, I only have two classes left to take next semester and I will be done. I am sure something will go wrong because just the thought of me having graduated from college is just too weird.

I did manage to get a lot done today. After work, Min and I drove up to Cortland to meet John Stephens – the Surfing IT Wizard – at Garcia’s, the area’s most amazing Mexican restaurant. Min and I were so happy to get to go eat there because we haven’t had a chance to eat there since we moved away a year ago. We have really missed it. We were happy to discover that Garcia’s has opened two new locations, one in Elmira Heights and one in Corning. That means that there is one just an hour away from home and on the way home from Ithaca and on the way to and from Washington, DC. And one near where Eric works at Arnot-Ogden Hospital. Dinner was amazing, as expected. John had never eaten there before and thought that the place was really amazing. He plans on eating there more often now that he knows about it. He goes to Cortland all of the time but has never stopped to try that place out. After dinner we went over to Walmart because Min needs more fans in the little apartment. There is no air conditioning and it is just way too warm and humid. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything to be done about the humidity.

The Surfing IT Wizard came back to hang out at the apartment for a while. He finally managed to pick up the box of Gordon’s guts that have been kicking around our house for the year or more since he bought Gordon from us. He has been waiting forever for those and just never remembered to get them whenever he was in town. That is one less box of things in the basement at least.

Min and I watched Intollerable Cruelty with Catherine Zeta Jone and George Clooney. It is the latest film from the Coen brothers who did movies like Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O’ Brother Where Art Thou? and The Hudsucker Proxy. It was pretty good. We enjoyed it.

Min got up early as usual on a Saturday morning and headed south to Ithaca. I slept in a little bit and spent the day getting work done so that I can spend the next four days in Ithaca with Dominica.

Dad came over to drop off mail and other deliveries that had been going on since I had been out of town and we went out to the Omega Grill for lunch. It is dad’s only chance to see me for a week on either side so we have to take our opportunities where they are.

I left Geneseo at 3:00 and arrived in Varna just after 5:00. Min worked until 6:00 so I hung out at the office. We went out to the State Street Diner for dinner. I had shrimp, I am trying to eat some seafood again so that we can go to New England later this year, but the shrimp ended up making me a little sick. Not too bad though.

After dinner we did some grocery shopping at Wegmans. We found some new soy based live yogurt culture foods that looked really interesting. Then we headed home and watching Guarding Tess. I have never seen that movie before, it was quite surprising. I really enjoyed it.

Tomorrow we are going to be meeting up with John Stephens, the Surfing IT Wizard, ’cause we never get a chance to see him.

This morning I got up and discovered that the hotel had not managed to get their IT consultants to come in and fix their Internet access problems so, not having faith in companies to show up when they are supposed to, I checked out of the hotel and hit the long road north to New York. Min was very happy when I arrived home in time for dinner. We went out to Omega for a fish fry. It was an early night for us, though, because we are both driving down to Ithaca tomorrow.

Josh called me while I was driving today to let me know that he and Joanne had closed on their new home between Canadaigua and Farmington. But they apparently have two months left on their apartment so they aren’t in any big hurry to get moved.

The ultimate catastrophy has befallen me tonight… my Internet access is out and they aren’t bothering to send someone out to fix it until tomorrow! So I am stuck in the hotel without any decent means of communications. So, I am writting tonight’s update while watching Tom Hanks in The Burbs. You can’t go wrong with classic Tom Hanks. I haven’t seen this movie in forever. I can barely remember it. I had a great haul at Walmart tonight, they added a new bargain section for just $7.50 and I managed to get The Burbs, Guarding Tess and one of my favorites, The Age of Innocence with Daniel Day-Lewis, Wynona Rider and Michelle Pfeiffer.

I got to sleep in a little bit tonight. A whole six hours of sleep, I think that that is the most that I have managed to sleep since I got down to DC.

I had an early afternoon meeting at the hospital center so I had to get up and moving and get out there. I ended up working almost all afternoon. After the meeting, John and I headed out to Annapolis for a meeting that went until evening. So it ended up being a long day. Without Internet access, I don’t have a ton of work that I can get done. But they are supposed to be fixing the server that is down first thing in the morning so if I get to bed early maybe I will be able to get up and moving in the morning.

Today was an extra long day. I worked at the hospital last night until really late. I was working on a project at the hospital center that needed to run for like fourteen hours so I went back to the hotel and tried to get some sleep. I got tons of calls all through the night so I never manager to get more than two hours of sleep at a stretch. It didn’t do much for making me feel wide awake all day long. I headed back to the hospital mid-morning. I ended up working there for longer than I had intended and didn’t back until mid-afternoon. I did some light work around the hotel before heading back to the hospital at night. I put in about four more hours at the hotel through the night. It made for a long day and night. I didn’t manage to get back to the hotel and get to bed until around 4:30 am.