July 14, 2003

Ah Monday. Today is my first and last day to be at home again for a very long time, maybe forever. Tomorrow, I have to go to Rochester all day and then Min and I are going straight to DC for the better part of the week. So, very little time to be at home. Today is also Min’s first day not working at Advion. So she is free to go to DC and Rochester with me now.

July 10, 2003

Thursday. Another long day in Washington. Actually, today is supposed to be broken up pretty well. I got to sleep in this morning. That alone is enough to get my day off to a happy start. I have been desperately in need of some sleep. So I feel much better. I didn’t have to rush right into the office first thing this morning. I actually got to start the day by going down to John’s house to see his new fishing boat. Unfortunately, I slipped headed down the dock and landed on a muddy, algae covered walkway. So I spent the rest of the day with a muddy butt. After looking at his new boat, we headed to Deep Creek and got some lunch. I had a Philly Cheesesteak with mushrooms instead of steak. Boy was that good. After lunch, it was time to go to the office.

I was especially happy to discover that I wouldn’t have to stay super late at the office tonight either. I worked at the office until around 8:00 pm and then drove out to Annapolis to actually do a little relaxing in my hotel. I have been craving a Domino’s Pizza all week, thin crust with onion and green peppers.

Good news on the house today. I talked to the builder, Kevin, and he and I came to a mutual agreement on what we would do to get the house finished up the way that we wanted it and everyone appears to be happy. We are getting the largest deck with the railing upgrade that there was a lot of confusion about. You can see my new house on the web too, which is pretty cool, it isn’t a house LIKE mine, it is actually my house on their web site. You can see the builder’s site itself at Sloane Contruction. My house is in the middle picture on the left. In that picture, there are three garages attached to townhomes. My new garage is the one on the right. That is 44 Hawthorn Circle in Geneseo. Or, you can just go to My House and see a better picture of it. It is the same photo but much larger. It doesn’t look like much in the pictures because the garages really obscure the house itself. But that is kind of nice. The house has a really secluded feel to it. We are all really happy that everything is finally moving forward with the house. We even managed to order the SDSL line for the house yesterday. SDSL normally takes 2-3 weeks minimum to get installed so we are really glad that it is going in already. It is costing more than $300 to get it installed but the low cost overall will make it worth it.

To relax this evening, I am watching Lawrence of Arabia and I ordered in some Domino’s Pizza. The movie is really good so far, very slow in that 1950’s epic Bible story style a la Ten Commandments. The pizza came about half an hour into the movie. The pizza was awesome as always and I tried some of the “Domino’s Dots” that they have now, the cheesy ones. Those were really good. You should try them. I ended up watching only about half of the movie, to the entreact, because it is just so long. 3.5 hours long! I needed to get to bed so I called it a day there. Maybe I will get to finish it over the weekend.

Tomorrow I have to go shopping with John in the morning and then I have to go into the office and set up at least one computer before I get to head back to Ithaca. Saturday, Min and I are going to Rochester to deliver another load to my parent’s house and to pick up our new car. Then back to Ithaca to continue to pack and take care of things there.

Tomorrow is Dominica’s last day working at Advion.

July 9, 2003: Unknown Days To Go

Another long day at the hospital for me. I was hoping to sleep in this morning but I was out of luck. The phone was ringing by 7:40 with people who were looking for me. So up I got.

I spent most of the day working at the hospital. I also worked for a little while over at Children’s National Med Center. I put in an extra long day at the hospital today. I didn’t get a chance to leave the hospital until almost 1:00 am. Boy was I tired after that.

We are not going to be closing on the house when we had hoped. We might be able to close in the next two weeks but we don’t know yet. All kinds of last minute problems keep cropping up. I will be picking up my new Mazda6 this coming Saturday morning, though, which will be fun. Min has finally decided that she wants to learn to drive a 5-speed better.

After getting back to the hotel I decided I needed to wind down some so I watched America’s Sweethearts which is one of Min’s movies. There is a ton of really amazing people in this movie. I can’t believe the cast. Seth Green, John Cusack, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, Alan Arkin, Hank Azaria and Christopher Walken. It was a really good movie. I enjoyed it. And Julia Roberts even knits in this movie, so Min must really like it. Julia Roberts has really improved over the last few years. She has really become an amazing actress. I think that she really broke out with Notting Hill.

So, after watching the movie, it was 3:00 am, I hit the hay and got some shut eye. See you all tomorrow.