Sheep Guarding Llama

Not much happened today. I worked around the house this morning while Min slept. Min, Andy, Miranda and I went up to Jay’s for dinner this evening. We all decided to get the garbage plates there but the mac salad there was awful and I couldn’t even manage eating much of it. So since we didn’t much edible for dinner, we decided that we should go to Phillip’s European for some dessert. They have the best desserts around. That was really fun.

Friday finally. The end of the week. The first real business week of the year is finally over. I spent most of the day working on getting our new firewall up and running. Our email is now coming form behind the new machine. So if anyone noticed a little blip in the service today, that is why.

Min and I went to the Omega Grill for our regular Friday night Fish Fry. Then we decided to stay in and just watch some DVDs. Miranda got Andy BBC’s The Office and Min has been dying to watch it so we watching about five episodes before she had to head off to work. Normally the game is on tonight but it was a bad week for everybody so we decided against it. Next week, Min is hoping that we play on Thursday night instead of Friday. After Min left, I watched the classic Batteries Not Included while Andy and Miranda played the new Simpsons computer game.

After that, I went back to work. We now have our email being hosted from behind a new firewall. I finally got that all set late tonight. And now it works great. I also moved tons of wedding pics up to the server tonight. I don’t have any references to them yet but that is the next step. I uploaded about 200 pics or so at really high quality so they take forever to download. I will try to get thumbnail pages put together sooner than later but we will see. We all know how lazy I am. I also moved the rest of December to the archives and have finished up the 2003 archives. Another year finished up and packed away.

Nothing much happening today. Min slept most of the day after working last night and I just worked in the basement. In the evening, we watched more of The Family Guy. What a great show. Right up there with The Simpsons. Someone told me that recently but I couldn’t believe it. I had only ever seen one episode of this show and it wasn’t a very good one so I was surprised but how good the show was.

Art came over this evening and we played two or three games of AoE2. We wanted some practice at being rushed so I kicked his butt a couple of times. We played until about 2:30am.

After Art took off I went to Dunkin Donuts and got some bagels and coffee to take to Dominica at work. It was about 3:30 when I got into the hotel. Min was very happy to see me. I hung out there until about 5:00 and then headed back home to get some sleep.

Min had her interview at York first thing this morning. Just after she got back I had to take off to Batavia to get my foot checked up on. The weather was absolutely dreadful and I ended up stopping at dad’s house because I couldn’t keep driving. The wind was so bad that there were white outs and horrible drifts. I finally made it around on back roads and up to my appointment. Everything was fine and they looked at my foot for about thirty seconds. So it was a lot of driving for not much being there.

I spent the day working in the basement. I got a lot done. A good productive day.

I decided that our Canadian content has been running too thin so, in celebration of Miranda being with us this week, we are making today Canadian day. Which I thought of after noticing Miranda reading the book, “How To Be A Canadian”. So I decided that we all needed to learn a bit more about Canada (especially since the book tell us that the number one reason that Canadians hate Americans is because Americans know so little about Canada but in my experience, Americans are often annoyed by Canadians who don’t know much about Canada 😉 So we will start with a simply geography question. We all know the easy ones like the US and Canada share the world’s longest undefended border (running the incredible distance from Washington to Maine and then again all along Alaska.) And we all know that Canada is the second largest country in the world by land mass coming in just after Russia. So here is the first question: What is Canada’s second nearest neighour? This is an easy starting question. The second closest country to Canada is Denmark since Greenland is the largest land mass of Denmark. This, of course, discounts the very tiny area annexed by Holland in Ottawa but that would be just silly to include here. Okay, question number two, what are the five largest cities in Canada? Toronto is obviously the largest, then Montreal (although Montreal is more densely populated), then Vancouver (recently declared the second best city in the world to live and work in losing to Zurich and tying with Vienna), then Ottawa and finally Calgary. The really interesting part is that these rankings are by metropolitan area and if you were to include American cities, Rochester would just edge out Ottawa and Buffalo would come in just behind. Ok, number three: What year did Canada become a self governing dominion (called the Dominion of Canada – the name was changed later)? This was 1867, 91 years after the US declared total independence from England. Instead of using July 4 like us, Canada decided to be wildly different and go with July 1 and called it Canada Day instead of Independence Day since they didn’t actually get to be independent. Canada recently renamed itself Canada. So it is really easy to remember. Canada’s Chief of State is still Queen Elizabeth II. You can look up most of this information yourself from the highly reliable and official government source, the CIA World Factbook, just in case anyone was thinking that I wasn’t accurate. Lastly, Canada is still a Commonwealth – part of the British Empire. Zimbabwe just declared itself independent in December from the Empire. You can learn all about the Commonwealth at www.TheCommonwealth.org. Isn’t it cool what you can learn on SGL?

Min and I watched The Apple Dumpling Gang, the 1975 Disney classic and then we watched Raiders of the Lost Ark which we both watched recently but Min didn’t get to see on the big screen yet. Does anyone out there (Nate you MUST remember watching this with me years ago) remember Disney’s Gun Shy television series based on the Apple Dumpling Gang? Only six episodes ever aired but my dad recorded them the one time that they were on and these must have been the most watched recordings in our entire VHS collection which I was young. The short lived series aired in 1983, so I was just seven years old and the Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again had been released just four years before. If anyone knows how to find some digital copies of these six episodes, I would really like to find them. They would be great to have. I doubt that Disney will ever release this series on DVD. It would make a great single disc buy thought.

I ended up staying up really late tonight and working on certifications. I didn’t go to bed until 6:30 am. I got a ton done though.

My task today is to get the dining room chairs from the store. We ordered them in October and they came in in late November but we didn’t get around to picking them up until today. Min and I drove up to Rochester and met Phil for some lunch at Friendlys. Then Min went clothing shopping with her Christmas gift money while Phil and I took care of the chairs. When Phil and I got down to the house, we played a couple of rounds of AoE2. Later on, Andy joined us for a game and then Min joined us for two four player games. Min and I finally got a chance to play on a team again. It has been years. We had a really good time. During the afternoon, Min watched The Godfather III. She didn’t quite get a chance to finish it yet. She got hooked on the series yesterday and is obsessed with finishing it now.

We decided that today would be a fairly relaxing day. Andy took everyone (except Phil) out to dinner at Belladessa’s down the street. Then we came home and watched some Father Ted. Miranda say FT for the first time last night.

Min has an interview in the morning so wish her good luck. I am going to the foot doctor again midday tomorrow. I think it is just for a checkup but I am not really sure. I don’t pay very close attention to these things. I am posting early tonight because I am being lazy.