November 23, 2003

Sunday. Min and I actually managed to get up this morning and make it to LaGrange for church. Our first time in weeks. After church we went over to dad’s and we all went out to lunch at the diner in Texaco town. We had to drop off dad’s car at the shop in Pavilion. After lunch, we came back home to meet Art, Danielle and Michael. Art and I got to work in the basement. Art worked on the electrical in the office in the basement while I worked at rearranging the shelving units. We got them moved into more or less the positions where they will be when we finish the basement. We got the bookshelves back up so that I could start putting books onto the shelves which is really important since I have been unable to use any of my books for months since they have all been packed up into plastic totes. It is really nice to have access to them again. I forgot how many books I had.

Danielle cooked dinner and brought it over. It was nice to be able to eat at home. After Art and Danielle went home, Min and I watched Fawlty Towers that we picked up last night. I am not a huge fan of Fawlty Towers, it is okay, but not up to par with a lot of the shows that we have been watching. Min really likes it. We were surprised to learn that there were only ever twelve episodes of the show ever made. So many famous British shows were so short lived. We are used to American television shows running for years and years if they are popular. But in England, they often write a set number of shows and the show is simply done when they have exhausted the idea. It is nice because the show doesn’t linger on after it is no longer interesting.

SUSE Linux 9.0 was released for download today. I started downloading it this afternoon from the Suiss mirrors because the American ones didn’t have it yet. It is a 7 GB download so it will take a very long time.

I captured our sixteenth mouse today. It was caught in the trap on my desk in my office.

November 22, 2003

Saturday. Min, Jeremy and I all slept in quite late this morning. My Uncle Leo actually came to the house and knocked on the door and rang the door bell and none of us woke up. Min and I headed straight out to go to Frankfort to take Dexter back home. It has been really nice having Dexter here for an entire week. It was very comforting to have a little puppy in the house.

We dropped Dexter off and went out to dinner in Herkimer. After dinner, Min and I headed back to Geneseo. We stopped at Barnes and Nobles in New Hartford on the way and picked up the complete Fawlty Towers on DVD as well as some books. I got a really exciting book about the Mongol invasion of Europe in 1218 AD.

Mouse number fifteen was caught in the kitchen this morning.

November 21, 2003

Friday. Slow day today. The gang came over this evening. Josh, Art and Jeremy all came over for a long night of Age of Empires 2. Josh and Art teamed against Jeremy and I. We only managed to play one complete game. We had to stop part way through the second game because it went until almost 5:00 am and wasn’t going to be over any time soon. So we had to end the game early.

November 20, 2003

Thursday. Lord of the Rings 2: The Two Towers Extended Edition released today. So Min and I went out to Walmart (we took the puppy with us) to pick it up while it is on special. We watched about an hour through the first disc when we discovered that the disc was bad and wasn’t going to play all the way through. So we returned that DVD and got another. So we popped that one in and immediately it was bad too. So we ran back over to Walmart to return that one as well. The third one managed to play all the way through. I really appreciate the extended versions. I like them much better than the regular editions. There is so much story missing from the shorter versions. I think that it is really amazing that they are able to make the different editions with continuing story lines in each edition that continue through each of the seperate editions. We watched the movie and the documentaries. There are a ton of documentaries with the extended edition.

(Update from July, 2006: Apparently when I first wrote this post I had fallen a bit behind and had not mentioned that we were doggie-sitting the Tocco’s dog Dexter. Dexter considered us to be his second family and loved coming to stay with us.)