Sheep Guarding Llama

Tonight is the big game. Eight players, two teams and ten hours of AoE2! Whoo-hoo. The players and some of their women are getting food at the Omega Grill at 5:30 before the real games begin. It is going to be a really big night. We are borrowing fast computers from Nate and my dad so that we have enough fast computers for everyone. It should be a lot of fun. Min is able to play tonight because her boss is out of town and her schedule at work got changed so she had last night and tonight off. She is really excited about a whole week off from the Conesus Lake Hotel.

Min and I didn’t get to bed until 4:30 in the morning because Min had been up working the last several night and wasn’t tired until then. So she was up doing some knitting and I worked on a computer for Linda, our neighbor. We got to bed and just two hours later at 6:30, the phone rang. Dalton Elementary wanted Min to come in and sub for them. So she got out of bed on just two hours of sleep and got ready and headed down to Dalton. It is her very first day of subbing and she is getting to do elementary special ed on just two hours of sleep!

I caught another mouse down in the basement this morning. This mouse was smart and actually managed to hide the mouse trap on me. He moved the trap underneath a desk. It was really weird coming down to check the trap and having it missing. It took me a few minutes to figure out where it had gone to.

I did my STAR Exemption paperwork this morning and go them into the town assessor’s office. That should reduce my taxes next year by as much as $1,000. That is pretty cool. I am happy about that. I have heard a rumor that my Energy Star will get me another $500. Cory Weiss stopped by this morning and drove me around to take care of my errands and then we grabbed a quick lunch at McDonald’s. I have to keep my strength up for the game tonight. Andy was still sleeping when we got back.

Josh, Joanna, Jeremy, Min and I went out to the Omega Grill for some dinner before the game. Andy and Tony had dinner in Avon. Everyone but Art was at the house and ready to play by 8:00. We had seven players and ended up going very late, until 6:30 am!! Boy were we all exausted by the time we were done.

Today is President’s Day and there isn’t much work to be done so I am pretty much taking the day off. Min has to work tonight and for the next two days. Her schedule got changed at work just for this week.

I spent most of the day playing AoE2. It isn’t very often that I get to do that during the day so it was a nice change.

Well, I fell a couple of days behind but it is a holiday weekend (President’s Day and Valentine’s Day) so I have an excuse. I have also been waiting until we could make the official announcement…

JOSH AND JOANNA ARE ENGAGED!!!

We found out the other night while we were having dinner over at their place but not everyone had been told yet so we had been waiting until today to announce it on the site. They are planning on having the wedding in September 2005.

Phil and Kate Ayers made it down this morning to join us at church. It is nice having them come down to meet us since it pushes us to actually get ready and make it to church on time. Which we did. Quite early, actually.

After church we went down to Perry to get some lunch at the Silver Lake Family Restaurant. Ellie was working, we see her just about every week. She lives just above the restaurant there in town.

The Ayers were going up to have dinner with Josh and Joanna this evening so they took off right after lunch. Min and I went down to Leicester to visit with my grandmother. She is on oxygen now. She has lung problems that developed from being a teacher and breathing chalk dust for many years. Apparently they have recently discovered that chalk dust can be as bad as tobacco smoke for the lungs. Dad came down and visited too. He stayed for a while after we had taken off.

We came home and Min rusted us up some grub and we watched some of Gilligan’s Island while we ate and then we watched Open Range, which Dad got recently and thought was really good. He was really impressed with it because they actually made a good drama that barely needed to even be rated PG which is awfully nice for a change. There are some good people in this movie. Costner, Duvall, Benning and one of the kids, Diego Luna, from Y Tu Mama Tambien.

This is the official announcement, the game is on for this Friday. We are expecting eight again. Same eight as a few weeks ago. Art, Andy, Jeremy, Tony, Min, Phil, Josh and I. Min’s schedule is changed for this week so she is working Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday so she will be able to play all night on Friday. And Phil isn’t working in Canandaigua anymore so he is able to play the full night too. So it should be a pretty serious game. I think we are shooting to start around 5:30 and Josh is the only one that I think can’t be there until later. Maybe we will be able to convince Eric to fill in for him for a little while until he gets there since Eric isn’t allowed to stay late but he needs to get some practice in because he has yet to play a big game.

Min brought me breakfast from work this morning. She discovered our little tiny mouse in the mouse cube this morning. So I let him out before we ate. He must have been very young because he wasn’t as scared as the mice normally are. I went to bed really late last night so I went back to bed after breakfast.

We got up in time to just get ready and head on up to the city to meet Josh and Joanna for dinner at Gordon’s up at the Port of Rochester. It was a really good dinner. We all had fish or seafood. It took a really long time to eat, though. We got there right as the doors opened at 4:00 and we weren’t done eating until 6:30. The people who arrived for dinner just a little bit after us didn’t end up sitting down to eat until almost the time we left. After dinner we went down to Media Play to see what was out and to do a little shopping. Min and I have been running really low on stuff to watch now that we have been cutting back on our movie spending. The cost per view and dropped dramatically and we have been borrowing more stuff than we used to but we have discovered that we really need some more BBC television shows because that is what we find ourselves watching so much of. We are hopeful because a couple of new series have released and we have exhausted everything that we have now. We picked up a couple of new things, Gilligan’s Island Complete First Season, Rescue from Gilligan’s Island and Once Upon A Time In Mexico.

We got home and watched some of Gilligan’s Island. The disc that we got has the unaired pilot episode. It is funny to watch because they decided to change half of the cast and then they reshot the pilot as episode one of the show but still used a lot of the footage from the pilot which looks really weird once you have seen where it comes from. We also noticed that in the title sequence of the film, it is the pilot cast that rides out to sea on the SS Minnow. After that we watched Once Upon A Time In Mexico. I have really been looking forward to seeing the final of the Mexican Trilogy which I have been waiting for for nine years. It was good, but not what we were expecting. Phil was right that Salma Hayek was in it way too little. And the plot was very disconnected from the earlier films. It didn’t make things any better that they used Enrique Inglesias for one of the mariachis. He is really corny under the best circumstances and is only marginally acceptable in the film. Antonia Banderas, Danny Trejo, Salma Hayek and Johnny Depp rock as usual. The film has a lot of action but it is a little weird the way that they portray it.

No game tonight. No one could make it.

We had a relaxing evening in tonight. I don’t think that I left the house all day. Having no car does that to you. Min and I watched Mystery, Alaska which we both really like. You have to love any movie with Hank Azara.

While Min was at work I went out to the garage and brought in the stair step machine. No sooner than I started using it than I noticed a little tiny mouse running across the dining room floor into the living room. I flipped on the lights and he looked pretty panicked. He took off under the door leading down to the cellar and hid. So I had to break out one of the mouse cubes and put in on the stairs. This is our mouse number sixteen! That is pretty bad. I am pretty sure that this guy must have run into the house while I was going into or out of the garage. So I will have to be more careful than that.

I had the evening to myself so I watched some of Lindsay Lohen in Disney’s Freaky Friday and I played a round of AoE2 because I was sad that we didn’t have a game this week.

So I finally got to talk to John Holtz and find out what is going on with my car that has been in there for a full two weeks today. It turns out that all four of my tires were bad on the Mazda 6 – the one had blown on its own and the other three all had bad belts. So new tires have been ordered for the car to replace the ones I have been driving on but hopefully the other ones that I have been waiting for will be in soon too because those are the ones that I want ont he car. This is getting to be a bit of a problem never having a car. I can’t believe that they still haven’t gotten me all of the stuff that I bought and paid for in mid-July. We are up to a full seven months of waiting for those wheels and tires that I bought just for winter driving. If I don’t have the wheels and tires pretty soon, I am going to be forced to contact Mazda’s credit department to explain to them that the full package that they loaned me the money for has not yet been delivered.