Sheep Guarding Llama

I pulled myself out of bed at 5:45 this morning (quite a bit earlier than usual for me) and got ready to hit the road. Eric and I left Pittsburgh at just a little after 7:00am and headed towards Canton, OH. This trip was bound and determined to be a disaster. First, the road that we wanted to take out of Pittsburgh (i279) was closed and we had to go north out of the city and around the west side to be able to get back to the south side so that we could pick up route 30. We finally managed to get onto 30 and no sooner were we on it but it split off of the highway and became a small road without any signs announcing it so we spent a little while tooling around on route 22 before we realized it. So we had to take a number of backroads to get back to route 30. So that took as a bit out of our way. So we were happy and back on our route again. No sooner had we crossed into Ohio than route 30 turned into route 11 and the real 30 went off in a different direction without any signs – again. So we ended up driving to Youngstown and coming west to Canton from there on 224. Only – 224 was closed halfway along the route and we had to try 538 to get to another road towards Canton. We finally found 62 heading into Canton. We thought we were safe. We had directions to the hospital and everything. Seemed pretty easy. Except that 62 was closed as we got into Canton too! So, we had to just wander through the city looking for the hospital. It was totally ridiculous. A short, less that 2 hour trip ended up taking us four hours! And then our meetings went awful.

After our bad meetings we headed back to Ithaca. We arrived in town around 8:00pm. It had been a really long day after all of that. I was glad to be home. Eric had to drive home from my house and so probably didn’t get back until almost 10:30pm.

Not an incredibly exciting day – Eric arrived at the Llama House around 7:15am (he had hit the road around 5:00am) and we packed the car and managed to be on our way to Pittsburgh by a quarter to eight. It is a long drive but not too bad. We managed to get to Shadyside Hospital at exactly the perfect time to stop for a quick bite at Taco Bell right across the street and the to hustle right on it to our meeting – which went very well. Then we headed over to the Holiday Inn where we always stay and got ourselves a room. We ate dinner at the hotel and pretty much went straight to bed. We just aren’t as young as we used to be! Driving all day does wear you out. And we need to be up early in the morning so it is probably best.

And for the month of October…

THE LLAMA OF THE MONTH IS LEANNE DODGE

Leanne wins the LotM competition by naming the Llama mascot. The llama was supposed to be named for September but I got behind in choosing a name from those submitted. A number of people tried to submit after the dealine because they were lazy but they weren’t considered since most of them don’t read the site often enough to have submitted the name on time. Shame on you. There were a number of entries so don’t feel bad if yours wasn’t picked. I know that everyone thinks that they were the only one to write in but that just isn’t the case.

The Llama Mascot of Sheep Guarding Llama is RAUL.

Expect to see pictures of Raul appearing in our pages in the near future. I was extremely busy today and just couldn’t get to it. And my scanner is broken so there are a lot of other pictures that you almost got to see but didn’t. I will be home on Friday.

I knew that I was going to be busy today. Eric and I are leaving for Pittsburgh first thing in the morning tomorrow so today is my last day to get prepared for the trip. By 10:30 this morning, I had already added two meeting in Canton, Ohio on Thursday to the agenda. So this is going to be a very busy and very productive trip indeed.

In addition to all of the work that I got done today, I also managed to copy a lot of CDs into my Ogg Vorbis radio system. I have been using the system almost continuously for weeks now and I really love it. It isn’t playing while I am writing this because I am using its station to install the Beta of Windows .NET Server so that I can try that out. I haven’t had a lot of time to look at .NET Server yet but so far it is pretty nice compared to a lot of past MS products. It is most similar to Windows XP but it is definitely a different animal under the hood.

Dominica is knitting like a fiend again today. She is trying to see if she can make a sweater in just two days. She just might make it. She has quite a bit of it done already.

Eric and I are heading out early in the morning. Eric is dropping his car off here at the Llama House at 7:30am and then we are heading straight to Pittsburgh. It is a long day but not all that long. Our meeting is at 2:30 so we will have some room for error there. We will be staying at the Holiday Inn in Oakland as usual tomorrow night. Then we will be heading to Canton, Ohio (where my family is from) first thing in the morning to make an early meeting with Mercy Hospital and then an afternoon meeting with Aultman Hospital. It will be a very busy day indeed.

There will most likely not be an update tomorrow – or not much of one at least – as I will be out of town.

I slept in pretty late today (for obvious reasons.) Today is a relaxing day. No guests (as far as I know.) Dominica made lunch for Loopy and I and then we went out to Borders and Tops to get a few things. I picked up a book on Flash MX so that I could start playing around with that new software. While we were there I found some books on maps of the ancient world so I had to get those too. Many of you know that I am an ancient history buff.

Very little happened today. I am writing today’s update while I am busy printing out the crap loads of information pertaining to the job that I am scheduled to do tomorrow. I am working in Senator Shumer’s office in Binghamton. It is going to be a really long day – I am sure. Altogether, I have about 200 pages of paperwork to deal with for working on two computers tomorrow. I just know that it is really going to suck. But, at least the money is good for once and it is only for a day. And the biggest deal is that I get to work for the US Senate which whill most likely look pretty decent on my resume. After this, I will have a number of pretty good names on my resume like HP, Compaq, IBM, US Senate and the US Department of Defense. Sooner or later, all of this experience is bound to get me a good job.

Today, I went to scan something for Loopy on my scanner and it dies. I am not impressed by the life span of this HP Scanner. I have had both an HP Scanner and a printer die long before their times. HP doesn’t really put much effort into building their products to last, it doesn’t seem. They are nice products the first time you use them but I have only ever scanned a maximum of 50 pictures on this scanner. That isn’t very impressive even when you consider the good price I got it for. In fact, it is downright pathetic.

Dominica is knitting a new sweater now. It is coming along pretty quickly.

I am way behind on keeping the site up to date with things that people send me but at least I got one more page added to the funnies today. I will be slowly updating all of the funny stuff to the new look for the site. It will take a long time though so hang on. Not that everyone hasn’t read that stuff already but for the new comers to the site…