Sheep Guarding Llama

Wow, I am seriously behind on some site updates. I have to apollogize, I have been so busy the last two weeks that I just haven’t gotten around to working on the site. I have been very lazy. Tomorrow is the annual end of year Llama Blow Out party (Llama Rama Luau – I believe it has been dubbed) and it is looking like we are going to be having a good turn out. Loopy is in Rochester right now bringing our Canadian contingency down for the shindig. They will be here for the week to add to the festivities (oh yeah, we go ALL WEEK!) Yesterday and today were the big cleaning days as everyone’s rooms and the house at large have had a serious going over. Very little is left for tomorrow.

Since I have been so far behind in keeping up with the site there are a couple of announcements to make…

THE NOVEMBER LLAMA OF THE MONTH (SELF PROCLAIMED BECAUSE NO OTHER WAS NAMED) IS LEANNE DODGE

THE DECEMBER LLAMA OF THE MONTH IS JOSH RELYEA

Josh wins our December LOTM Award (albeit, almost at the end of the month) because he is the one that has bugged me the most about not keeping up with the site. So congratulations to our “two new” Llama of the Months. Everyone can see Josh and his girlfriend (the “First Lady” Llama of the Month, if you will) tomorrow night at the Luau.

Thank you, everyone, for putting up with the lack of updates, I will be sure to be back on track as soon as the new year hits and the cleaning after the party is over.

The Canadians have arrived! We are heading out to the State Street Diner for some food.

Today is my only real day to relax after the past couple of weeks of having been away from home and then being sick. I am feeling much better today (I slept for twenty straight hours) and hope to get a bit done. I still have a headache but overall I am feeling pretty good. I got my two new video games installed (Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Max Payne) and have tried them out a little. They are pretty cool. Eric and John both have Wolfenstein and it is multi-player so we will have to check that out sometime.

Dominica has been playing her new GameBoy Advance a lot and is really liking Zelda: A Link to the Past and Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets. She has been playing Harry Potter most of the day.

I woke up at 4:00 am with the flu and couldn’t get back to sleep. I went and got Dominica at 8:00 am and had her pack what we had left into the car so that we could get back to Ithaca and not everyone else sick at her parent’s house. The flu has been going around and it is pretty nasty. This is the first that I have caught the flu in ten years so I figure that I had it coming. I feel awful, though.

(Updated in June, 2006: There is a funny anecdote from this day that I cannot believe didn’t get put in when I originally wrote this daily. I can’t imagine how it was missed. On the way from Frankfort back to Ithaca Dominica had to drive because I was feeling so ill. I didn’t even bother to really get dressed but was just wearing pajamas that I had received for Christmas to be more comfortable in the car. Just as we were getting onto the Thruway in Utica heading west I made Dominica pull over so that I could be sick. I got out of the car but there was nowhere really to go so I had to lean into a snowbank. It was really cold and I was leaning into snow for several minutes and I got really cold. Later some of Dominica’s coworkers commented on me being sick on the side of the highway. It turns out that they were passing the Utica exit just as I was being sick on the side of the road and they managed to recognize me, in my pajamas, being sick, on the side of the Thruway! Utica is over two hours away from Ithaca so one would think that you would be safe from being randomly identified that far away but you are never safe.)

We made it back to Ithaca around 11:00 am and I went straight to bed. That is the end of me today.

Today is Dominica’s Mom’s Birthday. So a big Llama Happy Birthday to Mrs. Tocco!

Today was mostly a recover from Christmas day. Min, Francesca and I did a little shopping today while Bennie continued tackling the kitchen overhaul. Later in the afternoon, Min and I packed most of our stuff into the car as the task of packing is quite an enormous one – especially after Christmas.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE! Christmas is finally here and Dominica and I are REALLY happy that we decided to drive out to Frankfort last night instead of waiting until today… 30 inches of snow fell this morning and nothing is moving anywhere. We won’t be leaving this neck of the woods for a while. Good thing we brought all of our laundry with us! 🙂

The presents were laid out under the tree with care (sounds like the beginning of a poem.) I have never witnessed anything like it. It sure blew me away. So many presents. I always thought that Christmas was a big deal in my family but it was never anything like this! And so much candy too! It is all more than I can take.

A short recap of some of the Christmas loot (so everyone doesn’t have to ask me later – this is just the big items from today, there is a lot that I haven’t cataloged yet! Min got a Game Boy Advance with Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, Yoshi’s Island, Rayman and Harry Potter: The Chamber of Secrets. She also got a new Uniden 2.4GHz Dual Handset phone (just like John has) and a new wool blanket with a ton of international flags on it that her mom knit for her that she has wanted for a while. She also got a lot of knitting supplies including some books and a “Needle Master” which is a “pro” set of needles that give her a huge variety so that she can knit almost anything now (although we will see how long it takes for her to make me those fingerless typing gloves…) I got Lord of the Rings RISK (Josh and Bob are going to be SO jealous), a TON of clothes, Smart Mass (again, Thinkgeek), Linux Pilsner glasses and a four person wine and cheese picnic backpack that I have wanted for a long time. We both got WAY more candy than any human can eat (but we are trying.)