Sheep Guarding Llama

I finally got the third letter to the editor up on the site. It has been quite some time since we had the last one. You can thank Anne for being the first person in quite some time to actually write something in depth to us. I also managed to get some things updated in the letters section so that it looks a little bit more like the rest of the site.

For the last few weeks, we have been going to Friendlys an abnormally high amount. Why? you ask. Because we have discovered an amazing new sandwich there. We call it the Thanksgiving sandwich but it is officially the Roast Turkey and Stuffing Supermelt. But you are a vegetarian? Yes, but, we supstitute mashed potatoes for the turkey. So, the sandwich has mashed potatoes, cheese, stuffing and cranberry sauce. Yup, thats right. Doesn’t sound all that interesting, but you have to try it. Sara and Dominica first came up with it and told me about it. So I had to go and try it. They were right, it was amazing. So Loopy tried it and then Tim did too. About two nights ago, Nate and Miranda each tried some of one of our sandwiches and they both fell in love with it. So, Nate and Bob went to Friendlys to see if they preffered it with turkey or the mashed potatoes. The sandwich is so good that I even wrote to Friendlys about it to let them know that we really liked the sandwich and that they should add it to their menu as a vegetarian option.

If May keeps up like this, we may manage to outpace April. Scroll down through April while you have the chance and see how much we have written. Wow, what a busy month.

Dominica is feeling pretty good today and so we are planning on heading out to Houston tomorrow afternoon. We leave Rochester at 4:30 and will arrive late in Texas. It is expected to be VERY hot while we are down there. In the 90’s all week. We are returning on Wedneday. I won’t have a high speed connection while I am down there but I will do my best to be writting updates diligently on my laptop and updating the site when I am able to. If I can get online with AOL (yes, I have AOL on the laptop but I am not the one paying for the service or the laptop) then I might be able to keep the updates current. I am going to be spending as little time outside as I can since it will be way to hot for me to handle. We are planning on checking out the Houston Zoo and the Aquarium. I am a big zoo lover. Nate and I managed to hit the Cincinatti Zoo about two years ago and had a really good time there. Strangely enough, a girl that we saw at the zoo (just a visitor like us) wound up being our bar tender when we went out on the town with Zach that evening. We thought that that was a pretty big coincidence.

Miranda headed out today to travel back up to sunny Canada. She called a little bit ago for Loopy. I am assuming that that means that she has successfully arrived at Natalie’s house. She was planning on stopping there to break up the long drive back to North Bay.

Tim wanted to go to Friendlys tonight with Min and I which would have been twice today for us and we woudl have gone except that Min’s back is still bothering her and she can’t push it the day before flying. So, Tim and I went on our own and brought Min back some food from McDonalds. I think that Friendlys is really starting to love us.

I forgot to mention… Loopy filed his tax return this year using Turbo Tax and they completely screwed it up. First they charged him for doing State and Federal when he only wanted State since he had already done his Federal. Then they didn’t include all of his earnings because the company that he worked through was owned outside of New York. I bet one out of three people work for a company that is owned out of NY. Even big NY companies like Kodak are owned out of New Jersey just to save some money. My company is out of Delaware. Loopy works out of the Rochester office. So that really screwed him up.

Another month here at Sheep Guarding Llama. I went to Empire State today to sign up for my classes starting on the 20th. Dominica was able to go watch some TV on the couch today for about one hour. She is really hoping that she will be able to fly to Houston in two days. It is a good thing that we got a flight that leaves late in the day – it gives her almost another day to get better.

Anne Update number sixteen went up today. I even got the chance to IM with her a little bit today. It is hard to catch her with the time difference and the blocking of her IM and all.

I finished reading Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban late last night. I stayed up just to finish it. That was definitely the best book so far. I couldn’t put it down. I can’t wait to read the last book. It isn’t out in paperback for a while so I might get it on CD for now and listen to all 13 hours of it while I am in the car. I can’t believe how addicted to these books I have become. I am currently working on some David Eddings stuff – the Belgariad. That is pretty good too.

As I project, I think that I am going to start builing a full blown, in house, Llama movie collection digital library. That way, we can look up what movies we have off of a central database server. What a cool idea. I need something like that to work on to keep me focused. Right now, all of the movies are on a spreadsheet that we update by hand everytime there is a new movie added or someone watches one (yes, we keep track of how many times each movie has been watched!) Currently, there are 474 movies on Laserdisc and DVD. Those movies have been watched approximately 1080 times. We also track the cost of purchasing the movies. This allows us to determine whether or not the collection is cost effective. If it becomes cheaper to rent movies, then we have to reconsider how the movies are purchased. Currently, we are maintaining the collection right at the cost of renting. We are hovering between $5.60 and $5.90 for every time that we watch a movie. This movie goes up and down drastically around when we have a big buying spree or someone is sick and stays home and watched a lot of movies.

The current movies reigning as the most watched are Bulletproof and Raiders of the Sun at ten times each and both on Laserdisc. This, however, does not reflect the total number of times that Thumb Wars has been watched since there are seven copies of it in the house. The next most watched movies at nine times each are Aladdin and Happy Gilmore on Laserdisc and My Blue Heaven on DVD. Chasing Amy has been watched eight times and is also on Laserdisc. Muppet Treasure Island, Liar, Liar and Jurassic Park are all on Laserdisc and have been viewed seven times along with The Truman Show on DVD. That rounds out our most popular movies. As you can see, even though a lot of our most popular movies (recently) are now on DVD, the biggest ones are still the old standby Laserdiscs which really says a lot for the movies because they are a lot more of an effort to watch, especially since everyone has a DVD player in their room and we have a lot of people who borrow the DVDs while there are only two LD players in the house and Josh is the only person who could borrow any and he never does since he used to live with us and has seen them all already.

Since we also track how much the movies cost, I can tell you that Dragon Fire, Shooting Elizabet, Raiders of the Sun and Muppet Treasure Island were our best buys of all time – each coming in at costing less than $1.00 per time watched. That is something considering three of those movies where unhead ofs when they were purchased. You will notice, however, that most of those make the WHAT! movie list. That list does a lot to help promote a movie around the house.

I finally managed to track down Mary this evening. She is now back living in Geneseo and about to start her new job at Pioneer Credit in Perry (yeah, none of us can completely escape – can we?) This makes two friends of mine who work for Pioneer Credit! How weird. Mary and Jocelyn have broken up – so Mary is officially single now. So all of you who have been waiting the last couple years for your chance, here it is. Mary has also shaved her head – I think that I will call her, Mini Me.

Josh is here today. We were hoping to be able to play some golf but we are out of luck. Josh has to get down to Binghamton by 4 o’clock to help teach his marching students so we couldn’t wait for the weather to clear up.

I managed to pick up a bunch more parts for my new computer today. I got the last hard drive I need, the DVD drive and the CD writer. I am pretty close now. Only a few more pieces. I also sent back the stuff that was bad. Hopefully I will be getting full money back on those three parts.

Dominica and Miranda watched the last six episodes of the Sakura Diaries, they are the first two to finish the series. Nate made it through Episode 7 and Bob and I made it through Episode 8. Nate even looked for some more Sakura stuff at the mall.

Josh came down this evening, he is in here the hopes of us being able to play a round of golf tomorrow. The weather isn’t looking like it is going to be good, though.

We watched some movies today. The Sakura Diaries has become the most popular show in the house. Only Loopy isn’t addicted to it. Tim, Nate, Bob, Dominica, Miranda, Josh and I are all hooked. It is really interesting. Josh, Nate, Miranda, Bob and I watched Run Lola, Run. Everyone seemed to think that it was pretty good. Josh, Miranda and I watched Fallen Angels but I fell asleep.

Boy is it nice to be home. A whole week of living in hotel rooms can really wear on you. I forgot to mention previously that I was able to get a copy of Thumbtanic and Eric and I watched it two nights ago. Everyone has really been looking forward to seeing it. From a first viewing, it isn’t as good as the other two. Dominica and I watched it last night and I think that it is a little bit better than I thought that it was the first time but it still moves too slowly compared to Thumb Wars.

Dominica is unable to walk today. She has been watching movies all day. Tomorrow she will be going into Cortland Memorial Hospital for her first MRI.

It is finally raining here in Ithaca. That wonderful early spring rain that only falls once or twice a year. This is my favorite weather of all. I got the opportunity to actually and sit and read by the window today. I have already read about half of the third Harry Potter book, The Prisoner of Azkaban. So far, it is really good. Min says that it is the best of the HP books and so far I think that she is right. This book is quite a bit longer than the previous two books. I will be through this one in now time but then I will have to wait until July for the fourth book to release in soft cover. I would be happy to buy the book in hard cover but I hate having to deal with big, bulky hard cover books. Plus it wouldn’t match my other three HP books.