Sheep Guarding Llama

Min and I are going down to Annapolis today. We got up and had a lot of stuff that needed to be done before we were able to leave so we spent the first few hours of the day working frantically trying to get things more or less caught up so that we could leave. We ended up being able to hit the road around 11:00 and head south. The trip went really well. The roads were completely clear so we managed to miss all of that heavy snow. So that worked out really well. We stopped just outside Harrisburg and got some lunch at a diner.

We arrived in Annapolis around 5:00 and went to the hotel where we are staying, the Comfort Inn Bay Dale, and checked in. Then we headed on over to John and Michelle’s house to see the baby (and the cats.) The baby is only awake for fifteen minutes at a time so we didn’t get to spend much time with her. Min did hold her for a while though. We hung out at the house this eveing. John and I just had to run out down the street to check on the thermostat for our friends Rob and Trish. Rob and Trish just moved to Jacksonville, Fl. They both found new jobs down there and are very excited. They are also expecting! Seems like everyone is expecting these days. Must be something in the water.

We got pizza for dinner and we watched 28 Days Later… and 2 Fast 2 Furious. 28 Days Later… was much better than I expected. I actually really enjoyed it. It is a horror flick but it really focuses on the suspense and action and not on the gore. 2 Fast 2 Furious was positively dreadful. Luckily it was just on television so it didn’t cost anything. I recommend really avoiding that movie. It might even be worse than Paul Walker’s last huge flop, Meet the Deedles.

Min and I had breakfast at our local hangout, the Omega Grill, and then we did some shopping at Walmart. Min wanted to get some new decorations for the tree and I did some hunting for bargain films. Walmart has added new bargain selections for the holidays so there is a lot to go check out. We found a ton of really good stuff including Dave, Last of the Red Hot Lovers, Wuthering Heights, Lost in Space and National Lampoon’s European Vacation. We made out like bandits. Cheap movies rule.

Min and I were originally planning on driving to Annapolis this afternoon but with the weather being bad we decided to wait until the morning. So tomorrow morning, first thing, Min and I will be road-tripping south to Maryland (where they have a ton more snow than we do here.) It will be nice because neither of us has been down there in quite a while. This may be the longest stretch of me not being there since I started living there in the summer of 2000. Min really wants to see John and Michelle’s new baby Francis Nicole. So we will be down south until Wednesday evening.

We watched some movies this afternoon. With so much new good stuff beckoning us, how could we resist. I don’t think I have ever seen all of European Vacation before so we watched that. What a great film. I am not sure that it is as good as the original but it is awfully good. It is funny how much I love the Vacation movies but I am not really a fan of anything else that National Lampoon has done (especially Class Reunion, that was the worst.) After that, we watched Dave with Kevin Klein and Sigourney Weaver which is an incredible movie. I haven’t seen it since it was in theatres in 1993 and Min really likes it too so we watched that.

Dad came over after evening church and we drove up to Avon to get some food at Tom Wahl’s.

Min decided not to sleep today so she just came home and got me up to take Jeremy back home and then we headed out to pick up a Christmas Tree. I wasn’t so keen to get a tree because I know what a hassle that they can be but Min really wanted one since this is our first Christmas together that we have been married so she talked me into it. There is a tree farm just up the street from us on Lima Rd. that Eric had been to and said that it was good so we went up there and just brought the tree back on the roof of Min’s Mazda. We got a small tree that is about Min’s height and we set it up in the dining room right in from of the sink.

When we got home from getting the tree, Eric and Amanda followed us into the driveway and invited us to go to Comix Cafe with them this evening. So we thought that that sounded good. We saw our new neighbour Louie unloading his groceries so we walked over to say “Hi.” He invited us in and we got to see another one of the ranch style homes in the circle. His is really nice. He has all oak finishings and he has a really nice view of the pond out his back door. He also has a really neat setup with a halfwall for his stairway and a single hallway that has his bathroom and both bedrooms in it. He lives there alone so he designed everything around that and it turned out really nice. He combined his two bathrooms into one, which is easy to do because they are against each other and are the exact same size as each other, and it turned out really nice. So he has a 2 bedroom 1 bath. Each house seems to be a bit different here so it is neat to get to see each of them.

Min took a nap and I played some AoE2 this afternoon. I always like to play on Saturday because I am still so hyped up from the night before. Eric and Amanda got to the house around 9:20 and we headed up to the city. We got dinner at the show. Overall, the show was weak. It was okay but nothing awesome. We had a good time. We didn’t end up getting home until after 1:00.

For those of you who have been following SGL all these years, you will notice that this season marks our third anniversary of the web site. We first started up in late 2000 to announce the house New Year’s Party for the Millenium. And here we are announcing this year’s.

It is the Friday Night Frag at the Llama house tonight. We had to take off last night but other than that, this is 2-3 months of continuous Friday night gaming. Jeremy is coming over at 8:30 and Phil said that he would be over as soon as he got out of work. It has been a long week so I am really looking forward to the game tonight. Josh can’t make it because he was out in Rhode Island today and he has to cook a turkey this evening. I am not sure why he has to cook a turkey tonight but he does.

Min decided that she wanted to go to the Omega Grill this evening instead of eating at home. So, while she was getting ready to go out, I started watching Jackie Chan’s Killer Meteors from 1976. He isn’t actually the star in this one, this is one of his less common roles as a villian.

When we were at Omega I decided that I would try fish again. I got the fish fry and boy was that good. I didn’t end up getting too terribly sick. So I guess I might start trying to eat fish again. When I first went vegetarian (over two years ago now) I had planned on eating fish but I ended up not being able to digest it. It will be good for me, makes it easier to get protein and Omega-3 fatty acids. And I really miss the taste of fish more than other meats. So it might help me stay on the wagon. But I have been awfully good for two years and don’t crave meat so I should be okay.

Phil made it over for our gaming night. He played some tutorial rounds of AoE2 while Art and Jeremy tried to take me on. They didn’t fare so well though. Phil managed to join us for two games because he and Art had to take off to get home. Phil and I were teamed and won both of our games. After the games, Art, Jeremy and I went to Belladessa’s on Main St. and got some late night pizza. We ended up hitting the bar crowd and all of Main St. was packed. Jeremy and I went back and played one last round before hitting the hay around 4:30.

I was doing well this morning, running on time and everything, about to head out the door to pick up Danielle to head out to Warsaw to do some sales when Min called from the hotel to say that she had locked herself out of her car and that I needed to drive over to Lakeville to let her in. She wasn’t aware that the PR5 will not let the remote door lock work if the car is running. So she had started the car to warm it up and had locked it and had gone back inside. So when she went to unlock it, she discovered that she was not able to get back into the car. So I drove over to Lakeville before heading off to Warsaw.

Danielle and I were pretty productive today, managing to complete our sales in Warsaw, Attica and Pavilion. Right at the end of the day, we ran into a couple of really rude people in Pavilion. I was really surprised; I had expected people in the same mailing address as our company to be, at least superficially, polite to us. But I guess that that is just asking too much. We did manage to run into Brandon Zeches in Warsaw. Brandon went to elementary school with Eric and I years and years ago. I don’t think that I have seen Brandon since fifth grade when he left Pavilion Baptist to go to Warsaw. It was really good to see him again. In some ways, he looks just like he did all those years ago. It is always strange running into people from you childhood like that. It is especially strange, I think, for those of us who went to PBS together because being in a class of just 18 or less students a year means that you necessarily are very close with everyone that was in your class and most likely lots of people not in your class. So running into people you haven’t seen in 17 years is really weird.

I had a major set-back on my college studies today. My last two classes (which I never really started) got marked as incomplete. Which is sort of okay because I really did push them off forever and not do anything with them. However, I think that it was relatively unfair to go back and give me an incomplete applicable in January 2003 when I was only beginning to work on the class in April, 2003. The Ithaca office also told me to transfer to the Rochester office. Which is probably for the best. But now I have to get the Rochester office to accept me. Not that I have any particular reason why they shouldn’t but it has been a long day and it is bound to end up being a problem. It always is. And I was so close to being able to finish up – or so I thought.

I did remember to shave my head this morning for all of you who have noticed that I have been starting to get pretty scruffy recently. I don’t think that I have shaved my head since I did it just before the wedding.

I am really looking forward to tomorrow night’s Age of Empires 2 fest. I need the break, it has just been a long week. Jeremy has been practicing a lot and is planning on being over here around 8:30. Art will be here for sure and Phil is planning on being able to make it. It will be Phil’s first time playing so he will be needing a lot of work before he is a threat. Art picked it up pretty quickly, though, so our job will be to get Phil addicted.

I talked to Andy briefly this evening. He is doing okay but it is really hot down there. We didn’t get to talk long because my phone died in the middle of our conversation. I guess that I accidentally left it off of the charger for the last several days. Oops.

I found a site that has a really good biography of Al Capone at Court TV’s web site that you should check out if you don’t know much about him. I found the bio to be really interesting. I never really knew anything about him so I learned a bit from it. The Untouchables follows a bit of the true story but many of the events are scrambled and involve different people in different places than how it really happened.

After Min headed off to the hotel, I watched A Better Tomorrow II, one of John Woo and Chow Yun Fat’s lesser known and lower budget films. The first movie was okay but this one is significatly weeker than the first one. The story line isn’t great and the dialogue is pretty poor. It never is good when translated from Mandarin to English but this one is exceptionally bad at times. But, it is a classic of Hong Kong cinema. And this is my first time watching it so it illiminates another movie from the “never been watched” list. The movie does have a really good “cop has to shoot his own brother who is also a cop” scene that does a lot to redeem the movie. The movie has some really cool shots of the NYC skyline from the 80’s. The music is just awful. Way too much like watching one of those terrible 80’s Saturday afternoon action shows like The Fall Guy or Simon and Simon. The one character’s name it Kit, probably named after the car. There is one scene where they shoot a model of a house against a fake stary sky. Only, the sky bounces around behind the house, it is really strange. They really needed an effects budget.

Min found out from work tonight that no one at the hotel works on Christmas or Christmas Eve. So that is a big relief. She didn’t know what she was going to do because we spend the holiday out in Frankfort with her family and it is her only real chance to get to see our neices all year long (although she has seen them more than usual this year.) This morning, before Min went to bed, she put up a new curtain in our bedroom on the strangly shaped window. That window has been such a problem because we couldn’t find blinds that would fit it and it lets in so much light all throughout the day. It makes it hard to keep the temperature regulated in the room and makes it practically impossible to do any work in there during the day because you can’t even see the monitor with all the light streaming onto it. The room will be a lot nicer now during the day. I will even be able to sleep in sometimes. It will affect Min tons more because she has to sleep during the day at least three days a week and it has made it really hard for her.

I have been very domestic this evening. I did the dishes (like I am supposed to do) and I even packed a PB&J sandwich for my wife to take to work for her midnight snack. I even cut it into halves like you are supposed to. I did laundry too and even cleaned Mr. Humphrey’s cage. Min will be very proud of me in the morning.

Well, I have discovered why I am unable to get the network card working in the new Windows 2003 installation. Since the time of the demo version that I had been using, they have discovered that the Microsoft signed drivers for that card were faulty and could potentially leak dangerous information out onto the network. So, it looks like they simply disables the driver instead of removing it or issuing a statement or anything. Seems like there would have been a better way to handle that. I had to really look to figure out why it wasn’t working. So, unfortunately, the only known solution to the problem that I am having is to go and install a new card to replace it. What a pain. Now I am short a card.

I went on to watch the movie that really put Ron Howard on the director map, Backdraft, even though it was his eighth movie after some greats like Parenthood and Willow. I love this film. I figured that I should watch it since I have had it in my collection for at least five years and have never watched it AND, to continue the tradition from last night, because this movie has Scott Glenn from Silverado and Robert Deniro from The Untouchables. So this movie was an awfully appropriate choice, I thought.