Sheep Guarding Llama

Min and I hung out with my parents until mid afternoon and then headed back to Ithaca. It is good to be back. With all of my travelling to Washington and the holidays, I have barely been home at all.

Min and I went to my parent’s today because they were celebrating Thanksgiving a day late. We had dinner at my aunt and uncle’s house and then went back to my parent’s for dessert. After Thanksgiving dinner, Min and I decided to stay since the weather wasn’t the best and we were tired.

Happy Turkey Day!

Min and I spent Thanksgiving Day at her parent’s house in Frankfort before heading on out to Rochester to meet the gang for our annual Turkey Day dinner at Nick Tahou’s at 10:00 pm. Eleven of us made it in all which seems to be our magic number. We were discussing and trying to figure out how long we have had this tradition and I think we finally decided on 1997 being out first year and this being our sixth time at Tahou’s but it is hard to say.

Eric and I have a busy day today, getting everything wrapped up in DC before hitting the road and heading back to New York for the holiday. We worked all morning giving a tour at the hospital and then we jumped in the car and headed off. We made it till just over the Pennsylvania border before we hit the traffic. We were at mile marker 4 at 3:30 pm. We had been doing well and expected to be home early. Early enough that Min was trying to convince me to pick her up and drive on to Frankfort tonight. But then traffic stopped completely. Eric and I creeped forward 4 miles in the next three hours and ended up managing to get off of the next exit (Exit 8) at 6:30. Traffic was backed up there as well so we headed off on a side road in the opposite direction figuring it was better to get away from the traffic than to be stuck in it. We managed to get into the outskirts of York, PA and settled into a dinner for a little while to kill some time. We had diner (it was pretty good) and talked to some locals about the accident that shut down route 83 (some Neon driver cut off a semi that then jumped into the outcoming lanes across the median.) All of Rte. 83 North and South had been closed in York County for four hours. At 7:30, the road opened again and we continued home. Ten hours instead of 5 1/2. What a pain that was. We were really tired by the time we got home.

Eric and I worked at the hospital center today. Not a whole lot of excitement going on. We dealt with some basic issues and got a little bit of new stuff up and running that had not been being used in the past at that site. Mostly it was just a work day. After work we got home around 8:00 pm and had some pizza and then worked with John on some business issues from 9:00 pm until about 2:00 am. After that we played some Hydro Thunder on the Playstation (yes, an original) and headed off to bed at about 4:00 am.

Last night while I was sleeping, there was some extremely loud pounding on the outside wall of my bedroom. I woke up and realized that it was the middle of the night and I thought that someone was trying to break into the house. So I got up to investigate. I found two young racoons on the front porch eating the cat’s food and fighting. It was really funny to see. It isn’t often that you get to see any wild animals up this close and personal. So I sat down on the front mat just inside the door and watched them out through the glass windows that were right at their level. They were so cute. They would through the dry cat good all over the place and then pick it up with their paws and eat it. They weren’t scared of me at all. I even put my finger up to a window to see what they would do and one of them actually walked over and put its nose up to the glass as if to sniff my finger. I don’t think they had the slightest bit of apprehension about me sitting there. I decided that it was best to not go outside and try to scare them aware and kept a very frightened Nila by my side to make sure that she didn’t venture outside while they were there.

The Canadian contingency have emailed me a picture to put up for everyone just so that we wouldn’t forget that we had Canadians in the audience.