Sheep Guarding Llama

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…

We all slept in really late this morning. Eric, Amanda, Loopy and I all stayed up until 2:00 in the morning drinking. That may not sound so late to you youngsters but some of us are getting older and we are built for this anymore. We all got up around noon and decided to head out for some brunch (nothing as much fun as eating in Ithaca!)

Loopy was in pretty rough shape this morning – in fact he was still in pretty rough shape in the afternoon. He is definitely not able to drink the way that he used to! He only had six drinks and he was gone. Eric was pretty funny as well.

First thing this morning, Min, Eric, Amanda and I ran down to Bistro Q and had some brunch. They have a really amazing brunch there. Eric and Min had the Huevos Rancheros, Amanda had the eggs benedict and I had the eggs florentine. It was all delicious. After brunch we all went yarn shopping up on East Hill and then took off to hit the Cayuga Lake East Wine Trail. There are only three wineries on the east side of Cayuga so it is perfect for going out later in the afternoon. We started at Six Mile Creek because they are right in Ithaca. This was Eric and Amanda’s first time at a winery. After Six Mile Creek we headed out to Treleaven Winery in King Ferry. Treleaven was awesome and Amanda and Min started getting a little giggly. Eric and Amanda like sweeter (especially not oaky) wines and Treleaven had more to their liking. After Treleaven we headed to Aurora to Long Point Winery. Long Point was Min and my favorite. They had so much good stuff – we had a terrible time deciding what we wanted. Min and I ended up buying a case of wine (total from all three wineries) and Eric and Amanda bought almost a half a case.

After the wine tour we returned to the llama house and ordered some pizza from the Nines (we tried to order from Mama Theresa’s but they were being difficult.) This weekend is homecoming so town is a little bit busy. The pizza arrived a couple of hours later and a bunch of Dominica’s friends from work came over to hang out. Jessica, Gibran, Jamie and Dave all came over. So, we tore through about six or seven bottles of wine while they were all here. Loopy declined to have anything to drink, however.

We ended up staying up pretty late – I don’t think that I got to bed until 4:00am! Eric and Amanda are heading back to Groveland early in the morning because Amanda has homework that she needs to get done for Monday.

Today is a busy day. Min and I had to clean much of the day to prepare for Eric and Amanda who are visiting us this evening. Eric is at the house all of the time but this will be the first time that Amanda has made it to the new house. There is a lot of cleaning to be done so we will be getting as much done as possible.

I drove out to my parent’s house this afternoon because my cousins Bill and Carol were in from Ohio to visit. I managed to spend a couple of hours out there and pick up my copy of the new Macromedia Studio MX including the newest version of Dreamweaver. However, I am still editing this page in HTML-Kit because Dreamweaver just isn’t as powerful for code editing (how sad is that – Chami HTML-Kit is free and Dreamweaver is $400 and HTML-Kit is FAR better for regular coding that Dreamweaver!) Dreamweaver does look like it is going to be really good for a lot of things, though. I am going to have to spend some serious time getting used to it. Plus there are all those other parts of the studio that I need to learn how to work with like Flash and Fireworks. I am pretty excited, the new MX Studio looks to be worlds beyond the old version 4 that I have been working with.

Eric and Amanda met Min and I out at the Lost Dog Cafe for dinner at 9:45. They have the most amazing Sundried Tomato Dip and there Caprese croissant is awesome. Dinner was really good. It was amazing how busy they were that late at night. We actually had to wait a little while for a table and we weren’t able to sit at the bar because it was so busy. They are making a killing down there, I am sure.

After dinner we came back to the house and did some drinking. It has been a while since we have had a chance to all sit down and drink together so that was nice. Min didn’t join us, though, because it was late and she was so tired. So she just went to bed.

Bob went up to Syracuse this evening as he is expected to become an uncle tonight.