May 10, 2004

It is a warm day today. Mid 80’s!! It is like a heat wave. Only in New York can it be so cold for so long and then so hot all of a sudden.

I worked around the house most of the day and so did Min. There is almost no chance of substitute being needed for the rest of the teaching year so she is likely to be home Mondays and Tuesdays now.

Andy got in from Canada this afternoon. We were pretty surprised to see him, we didn’t think that would be seeing him until at least tomorrow.

This afternoon we decided that we really needed to get a new deck furniture set. The bar that we have had out there is great but it just doesn’t suit our needs. It is way to large is the biggest problem. The deck is pretty small and just doesn’t have room for something like that. We had been wanting to replace it for a while but the robins built a nest in it a few weeks ago and we had been waiting for the eggs to hatch and the babies to grow up and leave before we moved it. But this morning, Min went out to check on the nest and found that some animal had gotten into it and destroyed it and eaten the eggs. That was sad but at least it meant that we got to move the bar into the garage finally. So then we went to Walmart and found the deck set that we liked and picked it up. The matching umbrella was nowhere to be found so I had to drive out to Batavia to get it. While I was out, Min assembled the set so that it was ready for me.

Ok, no sooner do I mention Min not subbing than we get a call for her to sub for tomorrow. So she is going to Keshequa tomorrow. Good deal.

So we got the deck furniture put together and now I am sitting out on the deck at almost 1:00 am in the almost total darkness (since the insane New York wind keeps blowing out the torches) writing the SGL updates. But boy is it cool. I wish that I could do something about the wind though. You don’t realize how used to the wind you are until you think that it is a really calm night and the torches blow out continuously. In Maryland, this would be considered a tropical storm or something.

Speaking of Maryland, the plan is that I am going to be heading down south a week from today to work in DC. I will be in and out of DC for around a month or more. It should be pretty crazy but with all of the school work that I need to get done, it should work out pretty well. I will be forced to sit in either the office or in a hotel room without a whole heck of a lot to do other than to do my homework and to get the SGL updates taken care of. Normally when I am in DC, I am out of touch in the hotel but I have ordered my new Verizon wireless broadband Internet access now so I should have it in the middle of this week. I am very excited. I will be online ALL of the time while I am out of town now. I will be able to get unprecedented amounts of work done. I will never have to watch crappy television in a hotel room again just because I am bored but can’t handle being in the office any longer. I am very excited.

May 9, 2004: Happy Mother’s Day

All of these updates. You guys just don’t know what to do with yourselves, I am sure. Even bigger news than that I am starting to keep the site up to date again is that updates from Anne are coming in again. She has actually been waiting for me to get my butt into gear to get the pages in place for a ridiculously long time but they are finally up now so you can work you way through the Bios page and over to see all of her updates, there are quite a few. She is working her way back to having a major portion of our content in her section. She is living in Senegal right now so you can learn all about her adventures there.

Min and I are in Frankfort today. Happy Mother’s Day to everyone to whom it applies.

May 8, 2004

Min and I are heading out to Frankfort later today. We slept in late (Min says that it is my fault for being up so late playing the game last night.) Then we hit the Omega Grill for lunch which was really dumb because today was Geneseo’s graduation and the place was totally packed. So that took a lot longer than we had hoped that it would. But we were killing some time because we needed to pick up some medicine from Wegmans that needed to be prepared. So it worked out alright.

We got to Utica around 5:30 but ended up not getting to Min’s parent’s house until more like 7:00. We did some shopping at Barnes and Nobles and I found a great new book there (Windows Server Hacks) and we also went to AC Moore because they have lots of cheap yarn for Min. Then as we were heading back we noticed a new restaurant out on Oriskany called Chips Fish Fry. Well, we couldn’t pass that up so we turned around and went back. It is in the old Arthor Treacher’s Fish and Chips building (which is very sad because I have been wanting to eat at one of those for so many years now I can’t even tell you – I used to eat at one of them all of the time when I was quite young and they still had one open in Batavia.) So we got the fish fry dinners. Now, keeping in mind that this is breaded fish and I normally only like beer battered, this was one of the best fish frys I have ever had. It was really amazing. The place is a new place owned by the guys who own Zebbs. Let me tell you, Zebbs is one of the few things that makes me miss eating meat. The Crooked Board is another (honey BBQ wings!!)

Min’s parents were at a wedding at the casino so we watched The Italian Job and Kill Bill while they were gone. Kill Bill was good but we didn’t think that it was anything really amazing. We both enjoyed it but I think that it is really over-hyped. But I did really end up liking The Italian Job, I was very happy with it. Of course, I have a thing for Mini Coopers 😉