Sheep Guarding Llama

Well, today is the big day. The day you have all been waiting for. Can you believe it is finally today?

Nate, Josh and I started off the day at Nate’s parent’s house in Perry. We had hoped that all of the guys would be able to get together this morning to play some golf before heading over for the wedding but the weather ended up not being too agreeable so that had to be cancelled. John had a rough morning over at Hillside where he is staying and wasn’t able to make it over to join everyone before the wedding. Andy ran errands around Geneseo and also couldn’t make it. Eric came over a little bit later in the morning so the four of us got ready together. We went out to breakfast at the Hole in the Wall out on Main Street. The waitress thought that the fact that we were wearing kilts to the wedding was just the most amazing thing. The entire restaurant was talking about it by the time that we left there. They were all very excited about it. After breakfast, we went back to Nate’s parent’s house to get ready and to put our kilts on. We did a pretty good job of getting ourselves all dressed up. We looked really sexy in our kilts.

We headed over to Hillside Inn around 1:00. The girls had been there all morning getting things ready for the ceremony. Min and I are staying there tonight so the girls are all using the Bridal Suite to get dressed and to do the hair and all of that stuff. Nate and I arrived at John’s cottage at Hillside and found him with his kilt backwards. So we had to get that straightened out. Andy arrived just seconds after Nate and I. Eric and Josh ran down into Warsaw to pick up some Grand Marnier before the service. They made it up about twenty minutes later.

We discovered quickly that they had decided to move the ceremony indoors. It was probably for the best but we heard that Min was really upset and we were having a heck of a time trying to figure out all of the logistics because everything was drastically different from what we had done in rehearsal and there wasn’t enough room for everyone to make it down the aisle and there wasn’t enough room to stand up front and chairs were blocking the path and then, as we started to seat people, we realized that there weren’t enough seats by quite a number for everyone to have a place to sit. So we had to start bringing in more chairs at the last second. So I had little time to get nervous before the wedding since so many things were going on at the last second. Plus there were so many people to say hello to as they were coming in. All the while, our bagpiper was playing away out in front of the inn. That was a really nice touch.

Nate and I finally made it up to the front of the ceremony so that we could wait for Min and her entourage to come down. We ended up going forward prematurely as Min wasn’t ready yet but because we had to way to communicate with her, we had no idea when she was planning on coming down.

The girls finally came down from upstairs and it was a beautiful service. Min and I really missed most of it. There is just so much going on and so many people there that everything really flies by very quickly. After the officially ceremony we went out to the back and did the official pictures. We hired a friend of Min’s from Advion to take our pictures so that we would get to actually own them and not just have license for viewing them at home. We didn’t do a lot of formal pictures because neither of us really like formal pics. We much prefer informal ones done at the reception. So we tried to keep the time doing the pics to a minimum. It was hectic enough as it was with what we did. After the pictures it was on to the reception. The bridal party entered and then Min and I entered to “Soul Bossa Nova”, the theme from Austin Powers. It went over really well and the place really got into the mood. I think it was important to not let everyone think that it was going to be really formal since the ceremony itself had been very traditional and formal. We wanted the party to be just that, a party. So we started it off right. We ate almost immediately. It was a buffet of chicken cordon bleu, some kind of beef (hey, I am a vegetarian, I didn’t pay much attention) and vegetarian lasagna. I was really surprised by how good dinner was. It was the best wedding food I have ever had.

At the reception we had dancing and karaoke. The selection of songs for karaoke was pretty bad but it was okay. We made due. Nate and I sang three songs together. And a lot of people sang to us which was really nice. I was really happy with how many of my friends were able to make it. It was really nice to get to see everyone all together. We had a really great time. My cousin Jeremy had a blast. I think that he might have spent more time out on the dance floor than anyone else at the party. Everyone really got a kick out of him. Oh, to be 14 again.

After the reception, at 9:30, we gathered up all of the real partiers and headed on down to the Cannonball Run Pub down the street at the bottom of the hill in Wyoming. John called them and let them know that we were coming and they agreed to stay open for us. That was really great. It was nice to have somewhere to go to wind down after the reception. We hung out there for a couple of hours. Most everyone started to head home from there. After we were done there, John, Michelle, Mary, Jocelyn, Josh, JoAnne, Min and I went out to get some pizza in Warsaw. So this was the after-after-party.

After pizza was over, we headed back to the Inn to begin our married life together. We had the bridal suite which is a huge room. But the funny thing was, in such a huge room, there was only a double bed. And it was so high off of the floor that we had to have a step stool to get up to it!

What an awesome day. It couldn’t have turned out any better than it did. We had a really wonderful time sharing our wedding with all of you. I am so glad that so many of you were able to make it and so sorry that so many were unable to be there. Thank you all for coming or at least trying to come. And the kilts really turned out awesome too. They looked really good and they made it a lot more interesting. I think that they managed to both add to the formality and traditionalism of the ceremony but made for a great crowd pleaser at the reception. Everyone thought that we were really hilarious dancing around in our skirts.

Emily told us at the wedding that Craig had had a car accident on Thursday, October 2nd, and had been trying, right up to the last minute, to come to the wedding but he felt really bad and decided that he couldn’t make it. We really wish that he could have been there. Apparenlty he is fine… just really soar from the accident. I will let you know more when I hear something.

Min did change her name so she is now officially, Dominica Anne Miller.

The final day before the wedding! It is nice to have Andy home if just for a few days. Min and I slept in a little bit this morning and then got up and went out for breakfast with Andy at the Geneseo Family Restaurant. BTW, if you Google “Geneseo Family Restaurant”, you will find SGL listed at the bottom of the second page. How funny is that. I wonder home many people and businesses that look for themselves on the web find themselves at SGL just because we mention everything.

Last night, Min and I watched Steve Martin’s A Simple Twist of Fate which was a much sadder movie than I was expecting but it was very good. We also did a tremedous amount of cleaning after everyone had left. The house is really coming along. We had been hoping that we would have had a chance to get the new CD and DVD racks put together and in the basement so that the book shelves could have moved down as well but we just didn’t manage to get around to that. My arm seems to be getting steadily better but in very small steps. It is really hard to tell exactly what is going on and I am starting to get the dull throbbing of taking Ibuprofin all of the time. I am also beginning to forget what my hand should feel like so it is really hard to notice whether or not it is getting back to normal.

Jeremy ended up not coming into town last night because he was too tired. So he slept in northern Virginia. Jenn Generoso got into Geneseo at noon. John and Michelle flew into Rochester at noon.

John and Michelle made it down to the house in the middle of the afternoon just as Jeremy, Andy and I were heading out to lunch. So John tagged along up to Tom Wahl’s for a quick bite. John and Michelle hung out for a little bit and got to see the house before they headed on over to Hillside where they are staying.

At 5:30, everyone headed over to the Hillside Inn in Wyoming for the wedding rehearsal. Most everyone was able to make it there. Francesca and family were still 120 miles from Buffalo so they were not able to make it to practice for the wedding. The rehearsal went ok. With the matron of honor, a reader and both flower girls missing, though, there was a lot left out of the practice run. After we rehearsed, we all drove in a big convoy over to Perry to the Charcoal Corral (hey, if Emily and Craig can do it than so can we) for the rehearsal dinner. The dinner went really well. My mom couldn’t make it because she wanted to be sure not to be exhausted for the wedding but since lots of my family from Ohio was in town, she was able to stay home with them and dad went to dinner. Dinner went really well. Everyone really enjoyed being able to wander around the entire restuarant and choose from food at the pizza place, ice cream or the char-pit. It was a really nice way to do dinner. And then we all met back and ate in the back “garden room.” Min’s sister Francesca, Bennie and the girls managed to make it t the dinner. They drove like mad to be able to be there. They drove all the way from Texas in a little Saturn sedan. It was really nice that they were able to make it to dinner. They got there just as people were starting to ge their food. The girls were really tired after the long drive.

After dinner, Nate, Josh and I crashed back at Nate’s parent’s house in Perry. Min, Andy, Jeremy and JoAnne all went back to Min and my house so that they could get ready in the morning. Nate, Josh and I watched My Best Friend’s Wedding before going to bed. Long day tomorrow, we need our sleep.

I will be getting the updates in as I am able. Obviously it is going to be a very busy weekend and I won’t be able to get back to the computer until the early part of next week. I will let you all know how everything goes, though.

The final countdown has begun. Only two more days. Da da da dum….

Yesterday and today I have been working on getting our new dial in system up and running. We got it in place last evening and now it seems to be working solidly. Art and Danielle are now using our network as their Internet Service Provider and are dialing into our house. They are getting a faster connection through us than they have been getting through Frontier and they are able to get on and stay on when they call. Right now they are just dialing from their regular modems but in about a week Art is going to be setting up their new network with a dedicated dialing Linux server that will also act as a firewall and as a content caching server to speed up the connection. The new modem that they got for that supports the latest V.92 and V.44 standards that, supposedly, will make the connect time and the connection be even faster. And it might even support call waiting while on the Internet. That is pretty cool for old telephone technology.

Min and Danielle went up to the city today to deal with last minute wedding stuff and pick up some stuff that Min and I ordered last night. They spent most of the day up there while I worked out of the house. I got a lot of work done today so it was good. Niagara Telecom got their reseller’s agreement with Microtel approved today which we are very excited about. Microtel is going to give us the ability to sell very inexpensive computers for people who are looking for something a little more basic than other products that we have been selling. For most casual (read: non IT professionals and non hard-core gamers) computer users, a nice Microtel machine might be just the ticket to low cost computing at home. Microtel also offers a 64-Bit video game machine based on the Athlon 64 3200+. We are expecting Microtel to be a major part of our sales in the near future.

My arm is feeling a little bit better today, I think. It is really hard to tell but there seems to be some subtle improvement. I shaved my head today in preparation for Saturday. Min wants it to grow in a little before the wedding so I am trying to give it a little time to grow. I got halfway through cutting it and my razor died and wouldn’t cut anymore. I had to send Min out to Walmart to buy a more heavy duty trimmer to be able to cut through the rest of it.

Art, Michael and Danielle came over this evening so that Art could work on some projects around the house that we had for him. He put up a bunch of bathroom hardware in Andy’s bathroom that has been needing to go up for quite some time. His bathroom looks a lot nicer now which is good timing since many people are going to be staying here over the weekend. And Art helped carry a lot of heavy stuff down into the basement. That really helped us get the living room in some kind of decent order. We want the house to look halfway decent before everyone comes out to see it over the weekend. Michael played some Playstation while we worked. It is a good think that I didn’t end up getting rid of that thing years ago. I almost never used it. Unfortunately, I don’t really have any good games for it. I have Final Fantasy VII which was only so-so at the time and was mostly a showcase for modern game graphics and it has aged badly. I also have Parasite Eve, ditto on that one. The only really good games that I have are Suikoden and Chrono Cross and neither of those are really good for a six year old. About the only thing I have is Ridge Racer 4 and that wears out pretty quickly.

I worked on getting a computer together for Michael today too. One of the PII’s that Eric has scrounged up for me will make a perfect first computer for him. It only had 32MB in it when I first started working on it. I decided that that wouldn’t work at all so I managed to find 32MB more sitting in the living room (no really.) I got Windows 2000 Pro loaded up on it and got all of the updates done. Art picked up Age of Empires I Gold Edition today because it is old enough that it actually will run on a PII 233. Michael is very excited about learning to play it. It should be a little easier than AoE2 as well. A little bit less going on all at once and less that you have to learn to be able to play. I really wish that they would just get around to making AoE3 but it will probably never happen. What they should probably really do is make another expansion pack for AoE2 that ads a lot of the features that people keep looking for in newer games. Like a couple new Civs, maybe an extra few techs. Scouts that scout all by themselves without you having to babysit them. It wouldn’t take too much tweaking to really get AoE2 to be an even better game.

Andy is coming into town tonight. His flight gets into Buffalo around 10:00 pm or so (that is about an hour from now.) He has been gone for a week. Jeremy (Dominica’s friend from high school) is getting in around 3:00 am. I am assuming that he is driving but I don’t know for sure. Nicklin and Michelle are getting into town around noon tomorrow. I expect that they are coming down to see the house early in the afternoon.

Well, I have done my part to get October off to a big start with a big update. This weekend will probably be weak on updates since, you know, there is stuff going on. I will do my best to keep things rolling in while all the activity is in motion.

Another day of sales. Danielle and I went to Nunda and Dalton today. Our sales actually went very well. The people down there were very receptive and seemed very happy to talk to us. We had originally been planning on taking the day to hit a ton of towns along the south of Livingston and Wyoming Counties but we ended up barely being able to get done what we needed to in Nunda! So we felt that the day was very successful.

Min and I had to go to Rochester this evening to take care of more wedding stuff. We had dinner with Josh and JoAnne at Bazil in Brighton. That was really good and we got way more than we could actually eat. Then we did our shopping at the mall. That took most of the evening. By the time we got home we were ready to crash.

Josh got his kilt tonight and we haven’t heard that there has been any problems with the fitting so it looks like we are in good shape.

Danielle and I started the day doing a walking sales tour of Caledonia. The town didn’t seem to be very pleased to have us there and we decided that the day was more or less a failure from that standpoint. After making the rounds in Caledonia, we headed up to Chili to visit Art at P Tool and Die. We had lunch there and then went downtown Rochester to see what we could do with Pilato Entertainment where I used to work. We managed to just miss Bruce whom I haven’t seen in years. I have been calling him for weeks but can’t get him to call me back. Hmmm…

After work, Arti and Danielle came over so that Art could work on hanging some bathroom fixtures for us. Danielle helped Min work on her hair for the wedding. The kilts arrived today as did the final bridesmaid’s dress. So Eric and Amanda stopped by so that Eric could see how he fit into the kilt. So far, Eric and I have kilts that fit so we are in good shape for the wedding.

After everyone took off, Min and I headed up to the city to see if we could find the last five seasons of Are You Being Served? which released on DVD today. We didn’t have any luck, though, after running all over the city looking for the shows. We did manage to find some good book deals at Borders and we did end up getting the first DVD of Hamtaro. So we came back home and watched an episode of Hamtaro before going to bed.