Sheep Guarding Llama

I didn’t manage to get out of bed until after 7:30 this morning. That is more than 14 hours of sleep for those of you who are keeping track. Boy was I tired.

Miranda has never really had a chance to go out on the wine trails around the Finger Lakes so she, Loopy, Dominica and I headed out the west side of Cayuga and hit a couple of wineries up that way. We started with Americana (Dominica’s favorite) and then hit Sheldrake Point, Lakeshore, Cayuga Ridge and a new place, The Thirsty Owl. The Owl is really new having just opened on September 13th of this year. We noticed it as we drove by so we had to stop. It was a really nice place. They are just getting going and they only have six wines so far but they expect to have more in the spring so we will have to stop by again. Lakeshore was our last stop of the day and they were just bringing out their Neavou [sp] wines (the first wine of the season) and we got to have some of that and we were also their last tasters of the day so we got to spend some time hanging out with all of the people who worked there. All in all, we had a really good time.

Eric and I managed to drive back from Washington early this morning. I got out of bed at 5am and got ready to go. I didn’t get Eric up until it was just about time to head out the door. He has been even more tired than I have been.

We got on the road early and made really good time getting back to New York. We managed to get out early enough that the Baltimore rush hour was really behind us. We arrived in Ithaca at noon and I got stuck working on the phone until almost 1pm. As soon as I was off of the phone I headed out to go over to Nolan’s house for a Lifestyle Properties party. I wasn’t able to stay there very long, though, because I was still so tired that I could barely stand up. I headed back over to the house where Eric and I continued to work on a couple of computers for about another hour or so before we decided that we were just too tired to be able to get anything done.

I laid down to go to sleep at 5:30 and that was it for me. The day was over.

Our last full day in DC. This is the only day that Eric and I actually worked during regular day hours. We worked all day at the hospital and into the late evening hours before heading out. We need to get some sleep before driving tomorrow.

After a very busy day yesterday, Eric and I were incredibly tired today. We slept in a little bit later than usual and started off the day having breakfast with John. There still is no furniture at the house so I am sleeping on Dominica’s comforter that she left there the last time that she was down to visit and Eric is sleeping on her futon matress that she left the last time that she was down. There are two chairs in the house, strangely enough, one of them is Dominica’s too! John does finally have one folding chair of his own and a television stand with a HDTV and digital satellite. He is still using my little Aiwa stereo though. 🙂

Eric and I got into the office in the early afternoon and worked all evening until very late. It is much easier to get work done when there isn’t very many people around.

Today was super busy. Eric and I jumped out of bed way too early in the morning and headed out to drive around looking for the parts that we needed to get the work done that we have come down to do. There is a lot of stuff that we need and it isn’t easy to find. We started by driving up to Baltimore and picking up things like CAT5 ethernet cabling, ethernet construction tools and similar items. It took us a long time to track down the basic things that we needed. We started around 8am and we ended up going to the Double T Diner for lunch around 11am. After lunch, we headed back to the house to get some things from John and them we headed into the city. So it was close to 12:30 by the time we got to the hospital. At that point we reassessed the parts and tools that we were going to need and started mapping out our project for later.

What we are working on is connecting our Washington Hospital Center Operations and IT Office with our processing center here which requires a total of four cables to be run from our office, through the hospital walls and into the processing area. It isn’t very complicated but the actuallity of it can be a little daunting.

After looking carefully at the tools that we had and having Phil point out that we had way too little cable (according to measurements taken by hospital engineering), Eric and I decided to head out to Alexandria, Va to get some more cable and some tools that could not be located in the office. The drive out to Virginia (since rush hour was rapidly approaching) took a total of two hours. Luckily we were able to find almost everything that we needed at the CompUSA in Alexandria. We were able to run across the street to Sears and get the last tool necessary. We ate dinner at Ruby Tuesdays (on the company card, of course) and then faced traffic again and drove back to the hospital. By this time it was late – probably around 7:30 or 8:00 pm. Now the real work begins. Eric and I spent the rest of the night running the cabling from one room to the other and making a huge mess in the process. It took 4-5 hours but we eventually got the cables run into the other room, equipment moved in the main office and cables run through its ceiling. By the end of the night, all of the cables for networking were in place and working properly and the office was a lot easier to move around in with all of the wires that had previously been strewn across the floor now running through the ceiling.

By the time that we managed to get back out to the house in Annapolis, we were both totally exhausted.