Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is the big day. I am heading down to Trumansburg later for the annual “Party at the Pond” and Dominica has her bridal shower at Letchworth State Park. Danielle came over early and helped get Min ready for everything today. She is driving Min over to the shower and coaching her throughout the day to keep her stress under control. Min got out the door (Danielle is driving Min over to the park) around 10:30. I did a little bit of cleaning since a number of our family members will be over to see the house for the first time later today. I hit the road for T-Burg around 11:15.

The party was really good. The crowd was small but it was all people I know which was fun. The weather was a bit chilly but not too bad. Plenty of vegetarian food… it is nice that there are more and more of us around so that it is easily to deal with. I headed back home around 5:00.

On the way home I spent some time on the phone. NTI now has a new Account Manager working from Albany. We are attempting to solidify Upstate New York.

Min had a good time at the shower but she was fast asleep by the time that I got home. Minutes after I got home, about a dozen or more members of my family stopped by to see the new house since just about no one has seen it yet. Min was too sleepy to be able to get out of bed to visit, though. Andy came out and spent time with everyone. Min gave me her engagement ring to show off to the guys since none of the men have seen it yet except for Andy.

After everyone left Andy and I went down to Main St. and got some subs from Aunt Cookies. The girls working there had, apparently, just got a huge load of onions and the air in the restaurant was so full of onion fumes that we both started to cry and ended up crying all through our meals. It was really hilarious. The subs were completely loaded with fresh onion too and we both completely reaked of onions by the time we got back

I worked on the laptop and I watched a couple of movies, Deliver Us From Eva, which was awful and The Godfather Part II which is one of the best movies ever. I am not sure if I have ever seen it. If I did, it was so long ago that I didn’t remember the exact story line. So I didn’t end up going to bed until 4:00 am.

The end of the work week. It has been a really busy week and there is no work to be done over the weekend with parties and showers and relatives. I went up to Rochester this morning to meet with my account representative at the Berry Company about putting an ad in the Rochester Metro Yellow Pages. Today is the final day to get ads submitted so I had to get it done very quickly. I decided on getting two ads, one slightly larger ad with our company emblem and a small one with just text under two different headings. So, when the pages come out in December, you can see us listed there. It is kind of excited to know that you are going to be listed in the phonebook going out to a million people. We will be putting ads in the Southern Area directories early next year when they come out. Leanne works at the Berry Company so she joined Eric and I for lunch at Jay’s Diner.

Dominica worked last night so she slept during the morning. After lunch, she drove up to Henrietta to meet Eric and I at the Gem Lab to pick up her real engagement ring. So we finally have it and she is actually wearing it now. So everyone can bug her about it, I know how all the girls are. Quick description: 18 small diamonds and 20 small sapphires set in an ornate platinum band with a round center diamond. It is a really neat 1930’s style ring. It is nice because it is very different from anything that anyone else we know has which is always a problem.

I loaded up my car with as much trash from the garage as I could fit (mostly papers and cardboard) and drove over to my parent’s house with it and burned it. The garage is a lot emptier now. What a difference that made. There is still another load that needs to go but the bulk of it has been taken care of. We still don’t have trash service at the house because we don’t know how we turn the service on. I need to talk to Linda, she knows everything. I visited with my relatives for a little while before running back over to Geneseo to get some dinner and Andy and Min at the Omega Grill (that is Min’s favorite.)

Arti went out and picked up a copy of Age of Empires after playing Age of Mythology last night. So now we have another player. That makes eight of us. Enough to play a totally maxed out game. We are really excited. There is Bob, Josh, Andy, Min, Eric, Arti, Jeremy (my cousin) and I now. The house network isn’t totally together yet, in fact, there is no way to support eight players in house yet, but we can support a few. There will be five stable video gaming stations in place soon (three basement office spaces, Andy’s room and Min’s room) and the wireless system will support a few players in the living room or out on the deck plus one or two in the future “theatre room” space. Everyone is pretty excited about the prospects of a huge gaming party.

Busy day of work. Danielle came over to work at the house today and Arti and Michael came over to hang out while we worked. Danielle and I worked on advertising and promotional materials while Michael and Arti played. Then Danielle helped Min get things ready for the bridal shower (they are wrapping chocolates) while Arti played Age of Mythology on my computer and I worked on the laptop. Arti has played turn-based strategy games and really likes them but has never played a real time strategy game before. So this is an adventure for him. He played a whole game (we took a break for dinner, the girls picked up subs from the new Wegmans sub shop around the corner) and beat it on easy.

More work around the house today. Tons of work needs to be done to get the company up and running in its new capacity. Danielle, Arti and Michael came over this afternoon to get some work done here. After they went home, Min and I drove up to Henrietta and went to the Gem Lab to look for engagement rings. We were there for a while and finally, finally found a ring that we both really liked. We ended up buying the ring and it is supposed to be ready for us on Friday afternoon. Min has had a ring for a while but it was just a temp ring waiting for us to get the house all taken care of so that we could go and get a real ring.

This morning I had to get up at a reasonable hour and drive up to Rochester to meet with the Volunteers of America in Charlotte. I have been asked to help them with their technology needs. I had volunteered to help them out some time ago, a year or more, back when Phil and Kate were still working there. After the meeting, I met with Eric and Min for lunch. After lunch, Min and I went around and looked for engagement rings. We still don’t have a real one. Min looked at a couple of places while I was at the meeting with the VOA but didn’t really find anything that she was interested in.

I had some work that we needed to do so we drove back down to Geneseo. I worked through the afternoon and then Min and I headed back up to the city to look at rings again. We found some that we liked but there was no financing at The Source even though we went there because they advertised that in the yellow pages. So no luck there. It was late by the time that we were done so we headed for home.