Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is my one day away from the DC office. Min and I drove up early this morning, hitting the road from Annapolis around 11:00pm last night after having dinner at Deep Creek and running out to Borders in Crofton to get a few books on CD to keep me awake while I drove. We got some good stuff like “The Map that Changed the World”, “The Sinister Pig” and “The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.” We drove up Route 15 through PA and arrived at my parent’s house around 6:00 in the morning and promptly went to bed. I have been so exhausted all week, this really didn’t help matters at all. But at least we got here. I had to get up around 10:00 and get ready because Min’s parents came out today to meet my parents. They haven’t met yet and we are getting close to the wedding.

Min’s parents arrived around 11:30 in Geneseo where Min and driven out to meet them (at the new house.) Luckily, a carpenter was there working on the house so he let them all in and they managed to go all around the new house and see it even though we didn’t have a key. That was really nice. So that worked out really well. They liked the new house in Geneseo. After touring the house, they all drove out to meet at my parent’s house in Pavilion. We sat around talking for almost an hour before driving out to Letchworth State Park to have lunch at the Glen Iris Inn there. It was a really nice lunch and the weather was just beautiful for going to the park. Mom took everyone over to the Middle Falls Pavilion where Min’s bridal shower is going to be so that her family could see where it was going to be at.

After lunch, my parents drove back home and Min and I took her family (Min’s brother Joe came out as well) and drove down to Warsaw and saw where Eric and Amanda are having their wedding on August 23rd and then headed north to Wyoming to the Hillside Inn so that her parents could see where she and I are having our wedding in October. It was quite the drive. You don’t really realize how much backroad driving you have to do to get around those town down there because there aren’t any major roads going anywhere through that region. It took a good long time to get around. After two hours or so, we got back to my parents and hung out for about another half an hour. Then Min’s parents headed back to Frankfort.

Min and I spent a little more time with my parents before running down to Leicester to pick up my new business cards and to get some stuff for the wedding and then driving out to Perry to meet Arti and Danielle at the Silver Lake Drive Inn and the Charcoal Corral. Bad Boys 2 and Charlie’s Angels 2 where both showing together so we figured it was a good time to go. Before the movies started, we got some pizza and ice cream for dinner.

Bad Boys 2 was good. Not as good as the first one but not bad. It was really gorry though and not for any good reason. It really made it a little bit uncomfortable to watch. But it will probably be the summer’s best action flick so everyone should check it out. It is not appropriate for younger children, though. The second movie provides the important answer to the question of “What do Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, MC Hammer, Crispin Glover, Bernie Mac and Demi Moore have in common?” And the answer is, “Their careers are over.” Charlie’s Angels 2 is, by far, the worst movie that I have seen since The Blair Witch Project. This movie completely derailed and I am sure that it will take each of these people’s careers with it. The original movie was mediocre but this one was horrendous. I wanted to leave and not finish watching it but I didn’t manage to convince Min because she was hopeful that the movie would improve, but it didn’t. There were a lot of good actors who put in cameos or had really small parts. There was even a really funny joke done with a cameo that you can call and ask me so I don’t spoil the only good five seconds of the entire movie for someone who might get stuck having to watch it. Cameos and short roles included Matt LeBlanc, John Cleese, Bruce Willis, Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson and others.

Today is Min and my last day in DC. I had to work in the city today so I got up normal time and drove into Washington Hospital Center. Phil and I immediately went over to Children’s National Medical Center and did a little bit of work over there. We are really busy getting CNMC ready because we have a new account there that is supposed to be online for August 1. And that is a pretty tight schedule. But we will get it done, as long as the hospital is able to get the information that we need to us by then, which hospitals are notorious for not being able to do. I put in a long day today. I was hoping to get out of the hospital early and beat the weekend traffic driving out to the shore but that didn’t happen at all. I didn’t manage to escape from the hospital until almost 6:00 pm. What a long day after having had almost no sleep all week.

I got back to the house in Annapolis around 7:00 and we decided that it would be better to get dinner before we headed out of town. So John, Michelle, Min and I went to Deep Creek for dinner and Min finally got a chance to try their amazing Artichoke and Leek Lasagna which I am always raving about.

It was really late by the time that Min and I managed to hit the road. About 10:20 pm. We decided that we needed something to listen to in the car on the way so we drove west out to Crofton to hit Borders before headed north out of town.

Min managed to get some sleep in while I was working last night. We got back to the house in Annapolis around 10:00 am. I took a shower and just layed down to sleep when all kinds of stuff went wrong with my mortgage process. So, I got back up and got dressed and headed back into Washington so that I could deal with everything. What a pain. So, no sleep for me at all.

Since I was back at the hospital, I decided to make a day of it and in fact I didn’t manage to get back to the house again until late afternoon, after the rush hour had ended. John and Michelle ordered some Domino’s Thin Crust Pizzas and some cheesy dots and we did a simple dinner out on the deck. After that, I had to hit the hay. It was about 10:30 pm before I managed to get into bed. I don’t even remember closing my eyes, I was out in no time.

My big project while I am down here in DC is to replace all of the computers in the office here with a single Linux Terminal server that will take care of all of our computing needs. It is far from being a small project but I have been working on it for a while. This single new (and free through donation) computer will run 4-5 workstations here in DC with full, beautiful desktops. After we got the machine installed, we estimated that we have saved $8,000-$10,000 just in this office alone. Imagine the savings that could be had in a larger office where we might replace ten to twenty machines this way! In addition to the incredible cost savings, we are also providing new services to our users here and making many aspects of their work easier to do.

While I was working today, Min and Michelle went to Bed, Bath and Beyond to do the wedding registery stuff. After Target yesterday, I couldn’t handle anymore! Boy am I glad that I was at the office. They spent 3.5 hours in BB&B with a “personal shopper” who had to tell them all about everything in the store. I couldn’t have handled it at all. But they managed to find a ton of cool stuff so it worked out well. I don’t think that Min could handle much more of the shopping frenzy though. She is about shopped out (I hope.)

Min and I stayed with my parents last night and today we have a lot of miscellaneous stuff that needs done. We headed up to the city relatively early and got to John Holtz at 12:30 to pick up my car and drop Min’s off. She needed to have her rear brake pads replaced under warranty before we had to use the car to go any great distance (which we will be doing later today so the timing is pretty good.) We swapped the cars and then grabbed Seth, our Mazda consultant, and went out to check out the only RX-8 that they have on the lot. Seth hooked us up so that we could sit in it and see how it felt (no one can drive one because they are all sold already and the people who have been waiting for them wouldn’t be too happy if people where taking them out for joy rides!) The RX-8 is sweet. It is really comfortable and feels like it will be a lot of fun to drive. I am really anxious to be able to get one. Too bad they aren’t available with the 0% financing for 5 years deal or I would have held out for one. But black is not the colour for it. Silver, yellow, red and blue seem to be the best colours.

Min and I then met Eric for a late lunch at Jay’s (it’s the only place that we ever eat in Rochester.) Eric couldn’t hang out long, though, because he had to get up to Rochester General to work.

Min and my big project today was registering at Target. We went there right after lunch and shopped until we had to go pick up Min’s car. We got a ton of registration stuff taken care of and we should be able to do most of the rest of it online now that the preliminaries are taken care of. After Target, we picked up Min’s car and drove down to my parent’s house to drop off the Mazda 6. From there, around 7:00 pm, Min and I drove south on US390 heading down to Washington. This is Min’s first time seeing the new work that they are doing to get PA15 upgraded to a federal expressway (US99) and she thought that it was a really nice improvement and that it was a really nice, scenic route. The trip took a long time but we finally got to the hospital in the middle of the night. I had a lot of work that needed to be done while no one was there so I got started working and Min took a nap in Wilfort’s cubicle while I worked.

I ended up having to work all through the night which didn’t make Min very happy.

This morning I got up and hit the road fairly early in the morning to get out to Rochester to meet Eric and go to the Dell Total Business Roadshow that was going on at the Rochester Marriott Airport (which is actually in Greece and not very close to the airport.) The first part of the show was all about Dell Mobile offerings and wasn’t very interesting. But the second part of the show was about enterprise technologies and was much more interesting. The entire show was done in the back of a semi that opened up into a show room. It was really neat. It was Eric’s first technology show. It was a good one to initiate him into the world of tech shows because it was a short and more casual show than most. I was glad that we went. Dell gave away some good informational resources too.

After doing what we needed to do in the city, Min came up and met Eric and I and we grabbed a quick bite at Jay’s Diner before Min and I dropped off my new Mazda 6 at John Holtz so that they can balance the wheels first thing in the morning. Just as we were leaving the lot, we noticed a black Mazda RX-8 waiting to be delivered sitting on the lot. We didn’t go back to look at it but we will see what we can tomorrow. The car is HOT though!

We have done the final list of what movies we have and which we don’t have. And the official missing movies are the following: Serendipity, Pollock and Dragonheart.. The first two being on DVD and the last one being on Laserdisc. We could have, of course, missed one or two while we were packing them all up and that might account for some. But, we know that Pollock has been missing for a really long time and I have been unable to find it. It is the only one that has really been actively searched for for any length of time. We may just have to accept that someone took off with that one. No one borrowed it, though, it seems to have disappeared out of the closet somehow.