Sheep Guarding Llama

Wow, Christmas is almost upon us. Today is the last day of Autumn. I got to bed pretty late last night, about 5:30, and slept in till 11:00 this morning when Jeremy’s dad came to get him. I spent most of the day downstairs on the computer. Min is heading out to Frankfort today with her sister. She is going to be hanging out with her family until Tuesday. So we went out to get lunch and do some quick Christmas shopping this afternoon. We didn’t get very much done, though, because Min had to meet Francesca and crew in Rochester and they ended up running early so she had to take off quickly.

Andy and I watched Freaky Friday and then went out for dinner and to do some more shopping. It was a cute movie. Both Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan do great jobs. We got back to the house and watched Agent Cody Banks. It is a cute movie but really, really silly. The movie is very poorly thought out. In fact, a lot of the problems were in dialogue. Like the important dialogue that explained the plot of the movie (these “nanobots” can eat anything that is carbon or silicon based) and then proceed throughout the entire movie to have the nanobots specifically eat anything that ISN’T carbon or silicon based. In fact, the only the to contain the nanobots is water (ice) or glass (umm… glass is made of silicon.) And they use common props for some pretty silly things. Their “lock braking” hardware is an Apple iPod and their nanobot remote control is a Sharp Zaurus (yes, identical to mine.) But, if you don’t take it too seriously, it is okay. I hate when they go through the effort of explaining things but don’t bother to explain them the way that they need to for the movie to make sense (sound like Quiditch in Harry Potter 1? – even Andy who never read the books figured out that the movie got the rules of the game wrong just because they didn’t make any sense at all.)

After that, I moved on to watching Two Weeks Notice with Sandra Bullock and Hugh Grant. I am not a big Bullock fan but I am a phenominal fan of Grant. He has been rocking hard ever since Impromptu in 1991 but even moreso after Four Weddings and a Funeral in 1994 (which coincidentally also starred another character also from Two Weeks Notice but I will let you figure out who it is since I don’t know his real name.)

I stayed up incredibly late working on a computer, watching movies and doing “house maintenance.” I got tons of cleaning and even laundry done and some caring of the hamster. I started watching Adaptation which is a very strange movie. It is a fictitious story about and by the writer of Being John Malkovich – Charlie Kaufman.

I spent most of the morning sleeping today since I was still working until 7:30 this morning. A full twenty-four hour day. I got up this afternoon just in time to run up to the city to do some shoe shopping. I got a new pair of New Balance sneakers and Min got some semi-dress shoes. I ran over to Hollywood Video to take back a movie that we had bought that didn’t play all the way through and while I was there I also picked up Agent Cody Banks and Adaptation. Then we headed back to get ready for the Friday Night Frag. While we were gone, Andy’s new Shuttle XPC arrived.

Art and Jeremy arrived at 9:00. We played four games of AoE2. We quit at 4:30 am. I won all four games tonight. Whoo-hoo. Andy only made it in for the final game.

I got up this morning with terrible heartburn and seconds later the phone rang. DC had some problem this morning with a computer that wasn’t one of hours. That got me up and running early this morning. Immediately thereafter we discovered that our SDSL line in DC had gone again. The last time the line went down, the technician in Canada looked at their network and determined that the problem was theirs. But the next morning when their customer service called to say the network was FINALLY fixed, they just blamed us for it. So that was it. We took the opportunity this morning with their service already going down to drive to Washington and pull all of our equipment out and relocate it up to New York where we have a more reliable network, faster network, less expensive network and where we have access to our equipment all of the time. So, Eric and I jumped in the Mazda and hit the long road to DC. We drove straight down to the office. We got there around 4:00. We spent a couple of hours loading all of the servers and other equipment into the car, spent a little time talking to everyone there (read: avoiding getting back in the car.) We got back in the car and drove to New York at 7:00. We got in around 3:00 am. Eric headed for home and I started working getting the servers back up and running. Some of you probably noticed that we were down for about 24 hours there. I worked until 7:30 am and then hit the hay. I really needed it. After a very long day, we are finally back online. And now the high stress move from DC to NY is finally over and all of equipment is located where we can get at it. So, although this was a really long day and very stressful, we are very relieved that the move is over and isn’t hanging over us for sometime in the future. This move has been a long time coming.

The Return of the King released today. Whoo-hoo! Very nice to have it finally out. We are still waiting for the extended edition but that will be quite some time yet. Min got up this morning and started watching the Extended Version of Episode One. She was planning on watching both of the movies before we went out to see the third one but she didn’t end up having enough time.

Dad came over early this afternoon and delivered Min’s new computer desk system. It was mom’s system that had been in the basement at my parent’s house. It is a really nice dark wood desk system that folds up into an armoir looking cabinet so it is perfect for our bedroom because it conceals all of Min’s computer stuff but folds out into a much larger desk than what she had before. It took a lot of the afternoon to get the desk moved into the house and to get it assembled. Dad did all the work because he knew how to put everything together. It really turned out nice. I think that it will really make a difference in our bedroom. It adds space and it looks a lot better.

Andy and I ran some errands this afternoon. We had to get over to dad’s to get an air compressor because Andy’s car has a flat. Andy’s new processor arrived today for his new computer that should be arriving on Friday.

This evening, Min, Andy and I went out to the Omega Grill for some dinner and then we headed over to the Geneseo movie theatre to see Lord of the Rings III. We got tickets three hours before show time and they almost sold out. I ran into my eleventh grade English teacher who was in line just behind me. I haven’t seen him since I graduated many, many years ago. We had to get to the theatre very early to be able to get decent seats together. We arrived much more than an hour early and still didn’t get the most incredible seats. But we did get to sit together. The seats were not very comfortable and were built for midgets. The movie was awesome. We all really liked it. Boy is it long.

Andy is actually coming home today. After missing his flight yesterday, we didn’t know when he would be arriving. Danielle and I went to LeRoy to do sales this morning. I think that the day went really well. It felt like we were really productive.

This evening is Phil and Kate’s Christmas Party. Min and I had some errands to run first so we spent most of the afternoon zipping here and there. Dad is giving us a new desk for our bedroom. I went down to Art and Danielle’s and borrowed the station wagon so that I could move the large part of the desk. After all of our errands, we ran up to the city to go to the party. There was a really good turn out. Tons of people made it. We had a really good time. I had to run out in the middle of the party to pick Andy up at the airport.