Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica and I hit the road early this morning and headed out to Herkimer. We managed to get there about 9:45 and I practiced with the trombone choir for a little bit before the wedding. I am sounding surprisingly not bad after all of this time not having been playing. The choir sounded pretty good. We had three tenor and two bass trombones. It has been a long time since I had the chance to play in a trombone group like that.

After the wedding, Min and I went to her parent’s house, just five minutes up the road. We did a bunch of laundry and watched a lot of television. It is about the only time that I see tv is when I am out there. So we watched the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet all day.

Loopy stayed at home today waiting for the cable technician to come out to our house to see what was wrong with the cable. They did actually come out this time and the girl managed to discover some problems with the line between our house and the outside cable connection at the road. Of course, she played with our lines in the house and took away one of our splitters and did some rewiring so now we have to Road Runner Hish Speed Onlin OR cable television. But, she said that we would be getting reimbursed for the days that we were without service and since no one is home that watches any television anyway, it isn’t all that bad (although we are REALLY missing the Internet connection considering how long we have been without it.)

Loopy took the opportunity to play some Age of Empires 2 and has managed to beat it on hard. That makes three of us now that are all around the same level. Min started playing moderate today (the level above standard) so she is getting a bit better now too. Pretty soon, they will be able to beat me again.

I spent some time on the phone with Time-Warner again today and finally got them to agree to come out (and I made them promise to call this time to be sure that they couldn’t say that we weren’t home again) and so they scheduled a visit for tomorrow. Of course, I can’t be here tomorrow so Loopy is going to have to get up early to deal with them.

The guys (Nate, Bob and Zach) all took off today and I have no idea where they have gone. They all have Monday off (Columbus Day, the world’s dumbest holiday) and so have probably gone to visit people for the weekend. Nate is probably in Perry and Bob is probably in Long Island. Zach could be anywhere – but wherever he is, he doesn’t have his car. It is still here.

I had to drive out to Herkimer today to practice for Captain Dan (Waltermire)’s wedding. He is getting married tomorrow at the Reform Church in Herkimer and I am playing in the trombone choir for his wedding. Dan and I spent some time going to school at Roberts Wesleyan together back in ’95 – ’96 (along with Joe Howlett and Bob Crissman – aka Montana Bob.) We all played in the Roberts Concert Band together (that was the only class that I took there.) Bob isn’t playing at the wedding because he is in the wedding party. Josh can’t make it to the wedding because he has to run rehearsal for Bob’s marching band down in Binghamton.

Time – Warner managed to mess up their network, again, and so we have no Internet access today. So I don’t know how long this will last. It has alread been a few hours now that I am writing this and will probably take a lot longer than that.

I have my good trombone out after a very long time (years) of having only played my cheap marching horn. It is nice to have a chance to play my good horn again. I haven’t had much call to pull it out since I left MCC back in 1998! It is possible that I haven’t had the horn out since that time but that might be stretching it a bit. I know that I didn’t play at all in 1998 or 1999 on it because of my appendix. So it is possible to have been that long. Wow, that is a long time. I used to play it everyday. It is like an old friend that I haven’t had an opportunity to visit in a really long time (ok, Leanne, I know, I know! 🙂

So Eric has been playing AoE2 as well and he has also managed to defeat the computer on hard. Now the race is on! Eric will be in Ithaca tomorrow as we have some paperwork to look at. After that, it will be time for an AoE2 Rematch (this will be our third game against each other.) Currently, Eric and I are tied at one win each with Eric having won the more recent game. So tomorrow will be a big day.

We are into the final week of Oktoberfest. Make sure you get out and drink some beer before the 15th when it is all over.

I learned some new strategies for AoE2 today. I found a number of things that I was doing wrong and I have improved dramatically (I think, at least.) I am able to develope more powerfully now and not just quickly.

I think that I may have gotten more phone calls from John today than I have ever gotten in a single day before. He woke me up in the morning and has been calling every 30-60 minutes all day long. The contract that Eric and I have been waiting for in Rochester has finally been delivered which makes us very happy.

Loopy and I actually cooked dinner last night. It was a scary experience.

Loopy, Min and I went out to State Street for dinner and then Min and I went to the mall and picked up the latest expansion pack for the Sims, The Simes Unleashed. This is the fifth expansion pack that she has gotten (yes, that means that six total packages have been purchased!!) and the seventh pack is due out in just a couple of weeks (Sims Online.) There is also the unofficial face program for taking pictures of real people and adding them into the game. Whoever came up with the idea for the Sims really knew what he was doing. What an addictive game that just keeps you expanding and expanding. Each of the packs really adds a lot of functionality to the game. This newest pack (Unleashed) adds pets to the game plus adds tons of new items and just expands on the overall workings of the game. The Sims has been out for years and they just released a new boxed set of it that includes the first expansion pack. If you haven’t checked out the Sims, it might be worth taking a look. It is a really strange but involved video game.