Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Min and I got to sleep in a little bit this morning but we were awfully exhausted at 9:00 when everyone got up to start beginning the Christmas festivities. Once they begin, it goes all day. Christmas is no little thing at the Tocco’s. Breakfast, coffee and other preparation activities took until around 11:00. We started opening presents at 11:00. The gifts were everywhere. Every spare inch of the living room and dining room were used to house the presents. Present opening continued until around 4:00 when we had to scramble to get ready and get over to the grandparent’s house for Christmas dinner. There were well over 250 presents in all not including the completely stuffed stockings and the two gifts for Min and Francesca that weren’t wrapped. Tons and tons of stuff. Min and my major present was a thirty bottle wine cooler that we have really been wanting. We are very excited. Finally we will be able to put all of our white wine somewhere so that we can just drink it whenever we want instead of having to chill one bottle ahead of time. And now they won’t have to get so cold in the refridgerator. All of the boys got Zip Zaps. They are really cool little tiny remote controlled cars. We had a lot of fun putting those together and driving them around. Simple things. Min gave me the fingerless computer gloves that she made for me out of alpacca wool that she has been working on for a year.

After dinner, we all played Scene It, the hot, relatively new game about the movies that Bennie and Francesca got for Christmas. We played a couple games of that and then Min and I turned in early because we were exhausted.

Min had to work last night so she spent the morning sleeping. I got up late and played a few rounds of Bob’s Call of Duty. What an awesome game that is. Then I watched Mr. Nice Guy, one of the weird second generation Jackie Chan flicks. It is a cute action flick, I like it. His second generation films are the best because he was no longer doing the silly, crappy, poorly dubbed stuff and got a real budget but was still doing wacky Hong Kong flavored stuff and was at the height of his game. His more recent films are taking on a different feel as he matures as an actor and is no longer able to do all of the stunts of his youth. The funniest thing about this movie is that the bad guy is played by Richard Norton, from Raiders of the Sun. How funny is that? I have decided that I think that I am going to start writing movie reviews. Now that I have well over 750 movies here, I think it is time to start writing about them. I hope to someday teach a cinema class – I think that that would be a lot of fun.

We managed to get out of the house and hit the road eastward around 11:00. That means that we rolled into Min’s parent’s house at 2:00. We were very tired. But, we have a new futon to sleep on there so that made our night to look forward to a whole lot better.