Sheep Guarding Llama

This morning I got out of bed super early and hit the road to head out west to Caledonia. Today is a very sad morning. Kelley’s Heroes is marching, this morning, for the funeral of our leader, Tim Kelley. Tim was electrocuted earlier this week while working on his neighbor’s plumbing. It was quite a shock. Leanne, Jen, Josh, Nate, Joe and I all made it out for the march. The band led the funeral prosession from the funeral to the cemetary.

After the funeral, Leanne, Josh and I grabbed some lunch at Daffy’s before I headed down with my car completely loaded with stuff to be dropped off at my parent’s house. I packed the car all up this morning. It is about our sixth big load being dropped off. There is a ton of stuff at my parent’s house now.

After unloading the car, I hit the road for Washington. It was a long drive down, coming from Rochester way, but it wasn’t too bad. I called Wilfort as I came through Baltimore and found out that there was no truck running so I didn’t need to go into the office. So I headed straight to the hotel in Annapolis.

Today might be my last day at home before we have to move. Not likely, but a slight possibility. That is kind of a weird feeling. It will be SO nice, though, to finally own a house and not have to rent anymore. I have been trying to buy a house longer than anyone I know and John and Michelle, Craig and Emily, Eric and Amanda, Nate and Joe all managed to beat me to it. But it looks like the time has finally come. Cross your fingers for us.

The updates are finally pouring in again. There is also a few more restaurants added to Ithaca Portal, I figured that I needed to get it as up to date as possible before leaving town.

Min and I slept in late today and so did Andy. It is still strange having the house totally to ourselves. We ordered some pizza from Sammy’s for lunch, yummy. They really do have awesome pizza. You can find them listed on Ithaca Portal now too.

In my continuing effort to make SGL show up on every web search ever. Today, we were wondering what was the difference between brass and bronze. I had to know this for my metalurgy and materials classes back at GMI (Kettering University) years ago but by now I have mostly forgotten that information. It just isn’t something that I use everyday. So I looked it up online and here is the scoop…

Brass is an alloy made up of copper and zinc. Bronze is an alloy made from copper and tin. Cupro-nickel is an alloy made up of copper and nickel and is the metal made famous by our coinage. Steel is a mix of iron and carbon (not a true alloy.) Maganese Steel is a mix or iron, maganese and carbon. Stainless Steel is a mix of iron, chromium, nickel and carbon. Duralumin is an alloy of aluminium, copper and magnesium. Now, you can never say that SGL isn’t an educational site.

After I posted yesterday and looked at the site to make sure that it went through ok, I noticed just how incredibly long yesterday’s update was. I have no idea how that happened. I don’t remember spending much time writing it but it is totally out of control. More packing going on today. Min is going crazy in her closet trying to get that taken care of. There is just so much to pack. We emptied all of the plastic Walmart containers at my parent’s house and brought them back with us to pack in again and so we are now filling those back up. The clothes are almost all packed up at this point. I am spending a lot of time today working on trying to get a Linux Terminal Server up and running on the Dell Optiplex that we are going to install at Washington Hospital Center. There will be three stations functioning off of this single PIII-933. It is really a good use of resources. It provides us three complete computers all for the cost of one. And even that one isn’t new. Linux is an amazing thing.

At 8:30, Bob came up to visit. We all went out to get some Red Bull for Andy and Ice Cream in Groton for Min and I.

Andy and I spent most of the evening packing and loading my car for the trip to Rochester in the morning. I have to be up early to make it out to the funeral in time. Kelley’s Heroes is going to be marching from the church to the cemetary in the morning. So I have to get out to Caledonia before driving to DC. It will be a long day of driving tomorrow, about ten hours worth. One last hurrah for me and my little yellow car 🙁 I am really going to miss that car. Andy and I also broke down and packed up the basement theatre system. So no more movies for us. That is very sad. But it will build up the excitement for when we get to set it all up again in the new house. I am taking about twenty movies with me to DC because I learned my lesson last time I was down there and now I know that I really need something to keep myself occupied with when I am in the hotel room. Too often I just need some way to relax after a long day at the office. I am also taking “One for the Money” which is a new book on CD from a new mystery author that neither Min nor I have tried out yet. She is supposed to be really good so I am excited to listen to it.

Min and I wrote our final power and rent checks this evening. That is weird. In theory (knock on wood) this will be the last rent check I ever have to write. Boy won’t that be nice. Well, it is late and I have both an early and a long day tomorrow. So I have to get to bed. We are meeting at Jen’s house at 9:30 in the morning and that is hours from here.

Sorry about the incredible delay in postings again. Now that I have been home, my laptop hasn’t been unpacked and I have been trying to catch up on everything except the dailies. And now that the wireless system has been torn down in the house, it is that much harder to get the laptop online.

Min and I started the day off with my dad having breakfast up at the Geneseo Family Restaurant in Geneseo, near to where the new house is. Today begins the ten day count down until the proposed closing date on the new house. Whoo-hoo. We are getting really close now. Min and I stopped by the house this morning to see how it was coming along but nothing has been started on it yet… no A/C, deck, carpetting or kitchen yet. But, we are trusting that they will have everything but the deck completed before next week rolls around.

In the mail this morning, I got an offer for 0% financing for five years on a new Mazda “6”. Min and I talked about it, then we talked about it with my parents. Then Min and I drove up to John Holtz in Rochester and talked to Seth, my Mazda consultant, and we test drove a 2003 “6”. Min liked it a lot. I have driven one before and already liked them. So we bought it! Here are the details, 2003 Mazda6, 3.0l V6, 220hp, 5 speed, leather interior, Gun Metal Grey (I call in charcoal) exterior and 17″ aftermarket rims with low profiles on them. We don’t have the car in possession yet, we are waiting for things to clear up on the house before we actually take shipment of it. I am either trading in my baby, my 2002 Yellow PR5 or else someone is going to get to buy it off of me. Craig is thinking about it. Someone should buy it. It is a steal. I have babied that car for 41K miles and almost all of those miles are highway miles. It still has almost 10K miles of warranty on it too plus brand new rear brake system and just had its 30K mile overhaul. So everything is up to date on that car. It has been great and we were thinking about keeping it for a long, long time but this 0% deal actually got me a $26,000 car, a new warranty AND lowered my monthly payment considerably. It was just too sweet of a deal to pass on.

After the excitement of car shopping (Min and I have bought three brand new Mazdas there now between the 2002 and 2003 model years) we headed back down to Ithaca to relax and pack some more. Pack, pack, pack. There is so much packing to do. And now there is nothing to watch in the house either since all of the LDs are packed and the DVDs have already been shipped off to my parent’s house. Luckily, most of the computers are still here. So there is SOMETHING to do in the house other than pack. But very little.

Apparently, my cousins are already going nuts with the incredible movie collection that is now at their disposal. They have over 400 movies sitting in boxes at my parent’s house. Most of which they have never seen. So they went down there this afternoon and were watching movies with wild abandon. They are going to be so excited once Min and I move just fifteen minutes away. Our movie room will never be emtpy, someone will be riding their bike over all of the time to watch movies, I can just see it now.

I am planning on going to Tim’s funeral on Monday morning and then driving to Washington right afterwards. I will be in DC until Friday at the very earliest. I might get stuck down there over the weekend and maybe into the next week but that will be very dependant on how things go down there and on how things are going with the house. If things go well with the house, I don’t HAVE to be back until Sunday of so.

Min has been very busy whipping up honeymoon plans this evening. She is very excited. We are going to Disney World in November during the off season. It will be almost exactly one month after the wedding but it is during the slowest time for both of our jobs and when the vacation will cost the least and we will enjoy it the most.

Andy has been hard at work trying to get some downloadable video games made for a contest that he wants to enter. He has been working on them for days.

Later on, Andy and I drove downtown and visited Bob in his new apartment just above Ragman’s at 110 Aurora St. #4. It is a cozy little place. Couple of skylights with a large brick wall. It is a nice feel. Very handy location too. We headed out to Sammy’s and got some pizza and then just hung out at Bob’s place for a while. Min stayed at home cleaning up her mail. I know that that sounds weird. She went through all of her mail in the closet and filled about thirty (yes, 30) gallons of garbage bag up with it. It is totally amazing that anyone could have this much mail. It is going to be easy to move with this much less stuff. She also watched Punch-Drunk Love and said that it is incredibly awful. She said that it was so bad that it wasn’t even worth finishing after I have made it about 2/3rd’s of the way through it.

Min and I started the day by packing as much as we could into my PR5 (which is quite a bit) and then we drove to Rochester to visit with Josh and the gang for the Fourth. We got up to Rochester around 4:30 and we stopped at Parkridge Hospital to visit mom who was feeling a tiny bit better for about 45 minutes (she is in room 2109 if anyone wants to stop in and surprise her) before we headed on to Josh’s place in Greece. We got to Josh’s a little after 5:30 and he was grilling up ‘shrooms for us outside on the grill. Phil, Kate, Joanna, Josh, Courtney and James were all there as so was Courtney’s cute little Boston Terrier puppy who we played with most of the night. Dinner off the grill was awesome.

After dinner, we all drove down to Highland Hospital and parked in their parking garage and planned to watch the Rochester fireworks from there. The view was pretty good. Courtney did a great job staking out the spot. It wasn’t too crowded and it was free. The hospital opened the garage for the occasion. It was too bad, though, because some suburban white trash families stood directly in front of Courtney and were incredibly rude for the entire fireworks display. And then when the fireworks were over, one of their kids sat in one of our chairs while we were trying to leave. And the parents talked to them while they sat in the chair. And the kid took one of our soda bottles, then the parents told them not to carry other people’s stuff so the kid just through it on the ground, the DWT laughed and they all just left. Bastards.

Loopy spent the day hanging out with his family in Avon but headed back to Ithaca early. Bob moved out this morning. It is weird having only three of us living in this huge house. But it is only for a little more than a week.

After the fireworks, Min and I went down to my parent’s house and unloaded all of the stuff in the car. Min wasn’t feeling very well so we decided to spend the night there.

Today is the first major packing day. I did a bunch of work around the house today and packed all kinds of stuff. I have been packing the DVDs and Laserdiscs and checking them all off as I pack them so we know what is around. There are only a handful of movies that have not been accounted for and only one laserdisc that I can’t find. Dragonheart is missing on LD. I may have just missed it while I was packing them up, though. We will see when we get to the new house. There are quite a few out on loan right now but I think that we know where all or almost all of them are. Min got to come home early from work today at 3:00 so she got to help do a lot of packing to. We were very productive.

Eric had some computer work that had to be done today so he came down around 10:00 this morning and worked out of Nate’s old room all day. He got a lot of work done and learned how to install Windows XP.