Sheep Guarding Llama

Today I got up and headed straight off to Frankfort to pick up Dominica who has been out there all this time. I arrived at her parent’s house around 1:00 in the afternoon. We had some lunch, pizza from Ilion, and then hung out at the house and watched some movies all afternoon. Min’s parents were at work today. Bennie was working hard putting in a new staircase for them. Francesca had a very stressful trip to a lumber yard to keep her busy.

Min and I hung out until fairly late. We had wanted to leave earlier but Francesca was copying CDs to listen to in the car during her drive back to Texas and that took a lot longer than we had expected. So we didn’t end up leaving until very late.

Today is my day off. Today is my day to relax. To really relax. Nothing to do today. I have the entire day off to do nothing at all. So I took advantage of it and just hung out at the house playing video games and watching movies.

Andy and I went to Wegman’s tonight and I found (Andy told me that he had found it there) DVD’s of the Canadian television show Once Upon A Hamster which is based on the older Tales of the Riverbank that I loved as a child. When my family used to go on vacations to Canada or New England, I used to watch this show whenever I could. It is really cute and adorable. Perfect for young children. So when I heard that the DVDs were there, I had to go get them. So I picked up all six DVDs of the show. It is live footage of critters like Hammy the Hamster who are filmed with voices dubbed over them. It is hilarious. In the US, it looks like they are marketing the shows as Hammy the Hamster even though that isn’t the show’s real name.

Min is staying out in Frankfort but I am heading back to Geneseo this morning. I was supposed to have a meeting with Steve Lucente this morning but that got cancelled but at least I managed to get out of bed at a reasonable time and get the drive over with. It was nice to get to spend the day at home just relaxing. Phil called and had the day off so he came down to play some AoE2. We got a lot of training in and then Leanne and Jen came over and watched a full game of Andy and Phil vs. me. That went on plenty long enough for everyone. Leanne took off after the game. Jen decided to stay and take advantage of the projector to see October Sky.

I have been working on the updates while I am out of town but I don’t have a reasonable way to upload so you are all currently waiting to see what is going on here. Sorry about that, not too much that I can do.

Today is Dominica’s mother’s birthday. Happy Birthday Mom!

Today was a relaxing day – not too much going on around here. I spent most of the day reading my new book “The Battle That Stopped Rome”, it is really good so far and I am already halfway through reading it already and we are still early in the day as I am writing this. I am writing and posting early today because I have the chance before we open presents and go out for dinner because Eric and Dad noticed that there is a problem with the email server and so I am looking into it trying to determine what is wrong. So while I am waiting for it to do something, I am updating today.

Francesca has taken up knitting now making her an official member of the family. She wants her own collection of hand knit socks and she isn’t going to get them if she doesn’t make them herself so she is learning.

It only took a couple of minutes to get the mail system working again. Must have been something that happened during the move. So if anyone hasn’t been getting mail from me for a little while (read: Bob), that is why. It takes about 3-5 days before we get notification that the mail wasn’t going through so we had no idea that no one was getting out mail. One of the joys of running a mail server and being away for days. I do have my cell phone on now too so I can be reached.

I have stuff going on tomorrow so I will be back home, probably before I post again. I expect to be heading out first thing in the morning, that way I get to sleep with my wife for one more night before I have to miss her for a few more days. Dad and I will probably be coming out for the day on the 30th to pick Min back up again.

For anyone that hasn’t heard yet, and everyone acts like they haven’t, the New Year’s Eve Party is at Min, Andy and my house this year. We had originally expected that it would be at Nate’s this year but many people from out East couldn’t make it this year and there are tons of people coming from our area so it works better to do it out our way this year. So, 7:30 on December 31st at the Llama House in Geneseo. Be there or just be a big fat looser. Your choice.

The morning after. Min and I slept in until around 11:00 and boy we needed it. We got up and got ready to go out. The family went out to see Eddie Murphy in The Haunted Mansion. As we expected, that was a really weak film. It had nothing special about it and it was highly predictable and overdone. It was also very short. I am pretty sure that we were only sitting in the theatre for about 78 minutes. But it is good that it was so short because they didn’t even have enough material to fill what they had.

Min and I went shopping for a while after the movie. We hit some of the sales but didn’t really manage to find anything good. Believe it or not, we didn’t even find any DVDs that we wanted to buy. Min did find tons of yarn that she wanted at really good prices and we went to Barnes and Noble and I found lots of history books that I wanted including “The Battle That Stopped Rome” which is about the Massacre of Teutoberg Forest which I am always studying as much as possible. It is nice to have a new work on the subject, this one is written in 2003, since the major archielogical evidence has been coming out over the last few years. The site of the massacre was only positvely identified by an English soldier in 1987 (the massacre occured in 9 AD so this is a major site to be able to elude scholars and researchers for so many years.) I am very excited to get more in depth into the battle. And the book is also partially written as a narative which makes it a lot more interesting to read.

After we got back from shopping, everyone played some more Scene It. Min and Mom got a huge lead and made it all the way to the end of the game while Francesca and I were still at half way and in last place. But we managed to come back while they were still working on their winning round and we managed to win at the last second. So overall, that is two wins for me between last night and today making Francesca and I the only two players in the house to have won two games. We rocked. After that, most everyone called it a night and the married kids (read: Min, Francesca, Bennie and I) watched The Medallion. I am hoping that I will enjoy it more this time than I did last time. At least we are getting another view out of this movie which will always be a struggle to get watched because it was so bad. There are so many Chan flicks to choose from out there (that we have) that this one isn’t likely to come up on a regular basis. Some of his recent stuff like Shanghai Noon and Rush Hour have been amazing and some of his best work but then The Tuxedo and The Medallion have been so bad to offset them. I think that cinemagraphers will look back at his third generation (3G) films as being a very hot/cold era of his career with the 1G being extrememly silly and cold and the 2G being very enjoyable – still silly – but reliably fun to watch.