Sheep Guarding Llama

Well, I am going to try my best to stay on top of the updates while I am down here in DC. I am going to be down here for a whole week so it is extra important for me not to get behind. Not to mention the fact that so few of you will have the chance to talk to me directly now so there are even more people reading the site everyday to see what is going on in Scott World.

I slept in a little this morning, I was still pretty tired from the weekend. I was hoping to be up early enough to be able to finish watching Castle in the Clouds but no such luck. I had to do some work around the house, do some packing and make sure that a computer that was shipped recently was working before I left. So I had a pretty busy morning. Then I had to type a proposal for one of my clients. At noon, I drove down to Taco Bell and met Min for a quick lunch. Before lunch, she went to Target to see if there were any copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (HP5) left there since Walmart in Cortland had sold out. There weren’t but they did have a few on CD but they were $67.50 which is a bit much for a book on CD. So, after lunch we made a quick stop over at Barnes and Noble and they had both the book and the book on CD at 50% off with my Reader’s Advantage card! So she picked up the book and I got the CDs. $37.50 is a much more reasonable price to pay for a book on CD. It is 27 hours long so it is pretty cheap by the hour compared to many other books on CD (although I am not impressed by Jim Dale who reads the books.) So I am very excited about that but we are trying to save the CDs for our really long drive down to Georgia in a month.

After lunch, I stopped by my client and dropped off those papers that I had been working on and then I hit the road to Washington. It was probably about 1:30pm by the time I actually hit the road out of Ithaca. A little later than I had hoped for but not too bad overall. I am mostly working on the “B” shift and into the night so it isn’t big deal to be down here later than usual. I will most likely be stuck riding the truck tonight and potentially throughout much of the week. So, I brought a couple of books to read while I am out with the truck. Nothing exciting, but things that I need to get read anyway. I expect that it will be a long week one way or another. I also brought three movies along with me, Jackie Chan’s Project A 2, Patton and Grave of the Fireflies. We will see if I actually manage to get to watch any of them. Last week, being down here with Eric, I watched about forty minutes of the Jackie Chan flick and that was about the end of it.

I arrived at Washington Hospital Center just after 7:30 and set up shop in the dark, cold office to wait for the truck to return to the hospital center and for the dock guys to get it unloaded.

On the trip down, I managed to listen to almost all of the remaining CDs of “Krakatoa.” I have about 45 minutes left which I should be able to listen on my way out to Annapolis later tonight.

Tonight I will be staying at a hotel. I was hoping to get to stay in Bowie, MD but that hotel is full again, so I will be staying at the Comfort Inn in Annapolis on Old Mill Bottom Rd. It just makes working these long and odd hours a little bit easier. I am about to head out on the truck so I am wrapping up the update for the night.

Another incredibly busy week. I seem to be getting into the habit of updating about once a week. But, this coming week I will probably be good with the updates because I will be spending an incredible amount of time sitting in the Washington office alone for really long hours. I am leaving for DC tomorrow and will be there for at least the week. I might be there for a while longer.

I have been listening to hours of “Krakatoa” by Simon Winchester, it is a really good book. There are twelve hours of CDs to listen to so I will be listening to it all of the way down to DC tomorrow.

Today is Dominica’s brother Joe’s graduation party at the Knight Spot in Frankfort. So I spent most of the morning playing with the kids and then Min and I walked over to the party around 2:00. We had a good time and got to see a lot of family. We headed back for home around 5:00.

On our way back to Ithaca, Min stopped at Walmart in Cortland and picked up Castle in the Sky which we have both been really wanting to see for a while. It is the other movie in the series from Ghibli Studios and released through Disney and Miramax including Spirited Away, Kiki’s Delivery Service and Princess Mononoke. We started watching it and made it most of the way through but Min got tired so we decided to save the rest of it for later. So far, though, it looks like it is going to be really good. We have been very happy with all of the other Ghibli films.

Lots of travel for me today. This morning I drove out to my parent’s house in Pavilion for my mother’s birthday (which was actually yesterday but I couldn’t go out there yesterday.) So I got to spend most of the day visiting with my parents and my mother’s parents who had come out to visit from Ohio.

On my way out to Pavilion, I stopped by Barnes and Noble in Big Flats and picked up some new audio books. I finally found the next two installments of “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams which I am very excited about. “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” and “Life, the Universe and Everything” are books two and three in the six book series. They are the two that have been almost impossible to find. I am also very excited about having found “Krakatoa” by Simon Winchester on CD (twelve hours of natural history for you science buffs out there!) I saw this book in hardback at the bookstore not long ago and had really wanted to purchase it because it looked really interesting. But I have learned my lesson and I know that I simply do not have any time to spend reading books that do not directly pertain to my job. So, when I found this new title on Audio CD, I snapped it right up.

Today is my day off and I really need it. I have plenty of running around to do today because this is my last weekday at home for potentially a very long time.

This morning, Eric and I had to get up early because we had to meet John for breakfast and then get into the hosptial in DC in time for the 8:00am employee meeting. Plus we had to pack up the hotel. So we were incredibly groggy when we finally got to the hospital.

The early morning meeting went well and Eric had some work to do while I had to go finish up my Hep B Vaccination series at the Occupational Health Center. I managed to get my third vacc shot but there was a complication and it appears that the nurse who did my second shot didn’t document it anywhere. So, now I have to return in a month to do some blood work to find out whether or not I have to start another series of shots. What a pain. This is the second time that I have attempted to get these shots. The first time was when I was first going to college in NY at MCC in Rochester. I got my first two shots from my regular doctor that I had always used. But, after the second shot, he told me that he specialized in teenagers and that he refused to finish the series. He told me to go to my family doctor to get it. So I did. But my family doctor doesn’t have the vaccination, he told me that the other doctor was responsible for finishing it because he started it. So, while they argued about it, my shots expired. So, here I am doing ther series again. And maybe I will be doing it for a third time. And people wonder why I am not impressed by medical “professionals” at all. Plus there was the time that the hospital doctor refused to treat me for appendicitus because he knew more about the type of pain I was having than I did. And then my appendix burst. Just because he had to be right, he would have let me die to make a point that I was just a dumb lay person and couldn’t understand that pains of my own body. Three strikes and you are out in my book. I have had little good ever come from a hospital experience. The only really good procedure I ever had done was in Batavia and was just work on my toe. That went really well. But even that, they wouldn’t let me do the “surgery” without pain killers but they couldn’t figure out how to give me an anesthetic that would last for the procedure. So they ended up making me take the drugs but they didn’t do any good. Kind of like when I had my wisdom teeth pulled. I didn’t want to take any pain killers after the surgery but the doctor gave me a real hassle about the prescription. So I took it but never got it filled (why would a doctor lower my degree of trust in him JUST so that he can write a prescription for pain killers? Do they get kick backs for this stuff or something?) Then, after I came back for a check up, he was amazed by how quickly I had healed. How obvious is it that my body was able to concentrate on healing my mouth because it didn’t have to work so hard pulling drugs out of my system. I think doctors may be the least well educated people I have ever met. Everyone I know has stories like this, and very few have any really good experiences.

Well, after that, Eric and I hit the road back to NY. Eric’s aunt died on Tuesday and he has to rush back home to get ready to go to the calling hours that are tonight in Oakfield. So he has a really long day. Min is going up to Syracuse this evening to pick out the counters and cabinets for the new house in Geneseo.

Eric and I got home around 4:00. Boy am I glad to be home and to get to sleep in my own bed tonight.