Sheep Guarding Llama

I am feeling much better now that I have had a couple of days to sleep in and do some catchup.  Nothing exciting happened today.  At least not during the day.  Work, of course.  Just the usual.  We didn’t go anywhere, do anything, receive any shipments, etc.  I was quite busy in the office most of the day and by the time that I finished up and was able to pop upstairs Dominica was already in a hurry to get out of the door to get to the movies with Katie.  I had forgotten that they were going to movies tonight – even though I had been the one arranging it during the day.

Dominica had bought the tickets online this morning for the eight thirty showing this evening out in Mohegan Lake at the plaza with the Best Buy, Walmart, Old Navy, etc.  It is the theatre that has the Cold Stone Creamery in the front of it where we often go.

I got a chance to talk to Danielle for about half an hour today.  The presidential elections in the Republic of the Congo are today and they are finally free to move about Impfondo again.  So she is back at the hospital with better Internet access and trying to catch up now.  A new update was posted as well.

Katie’s bus ended up being forty-five minutes late and Dominica had to leave without her to be able to make it to the movie.  Katie saw it last night so being a little late for her is not a big deal.  So Dominica left at eight to run over to the theatre and Katie stopped by the house about ten minutes later to pick up her ticket and get directions on how to get over there.  It turns out that they were unable to make connections once Katie got there and they ended up not sitting together.  That sucked but at least there were there together and in spirit.

I stayed home watching Liesl and Oreo.  It has been a while since I was left home alone as the babysitter for an extended period of time.  Oreo, of course, needed to go out moments after Dominica left.  Liesl was in a mostly good mood the whole time that Dominica was gone.  We watched Fireball 500 with Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello and Fabian.  Liesl fell asleep while we were watching that.

Liesl slept in her crib for me for most of the night without any problems at all.  She did really well staying home with her daddy.  Once she was asleep I watched Fabian and Annette sans Frankie in Thunder Alley. I was just a few sentences from the end of the film when Dominica and Katie returned from watching Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (HP6.)  Dominica liked it but was unhappy with the amount of cutting that they have done with the storyline.  Huge plot pieces are missing and there is only one film left to go.  I will see it when it releases on BluRay probably around Christmas.  I feel no need to see anything in the movie theatre.  I skipped Star Trek so I can pretty much skip everything else.

Katie only stayed for about fifteen minuets.  It was quite late, almost midnight, when she left and she has to get up to go to work tomorrow.  We were off to bed ourselves pretty quickly.  Good progress on SGL updates tonight.  Almost completely caught up for once.

I am practically caught back up on SGL updates.  W00t!  It’s been a tough summer thus far but I think, I hope, that once I get caught up that I will be able to keep the blog up to date.  That is, of course, until I go to Houston in less than two weeks because once I do that there is going to be another week lag that will take me another week to overcome.  So maybe it is hopeless.

Work today.  Nothing to report there.

Dominica felt a little under the weather today so for dinner we ordered in from Forno’s which is always a happy thing.  We were burned out on bikini beach movies and went back to the Gilmore Girls tonight.  We finished season six and are on to season seven now.  The final season.

Dominica has watched all of The Gilmore Girls previously but I never watched most of it the first time around but did see the final two seasons.  Now I am going through the series from beginning to end so that I actually understand what is going on in the final seasons.  I did not realize the first time around that I was watching all of the final two seasons.  Now that I am seeing them officially one right after another I am aware of the fact that I know everything that is happening.

SpiceWorks went down tonight for several hours for new updates to the online system to be posted.  The big change is to the way that points are accumulated in the system which pretty much locks the two of us who are the point leaders and are far ahead of everyone else in the system in our slots as being dramatically ahead of everyone else and now there is no real way for anyone to catch up because there is no way to easily accumulate points like we used to.  I don’t think that people are going to be all that happy about the new system.  Too much change and not in most people’s favours.

The new Harry Potter movie opens tonight.  Katie is going and Dominica is very sad that she does not get to see HP opening tonight.  So Katie promised to take Dominica to the movies tomorrow night after work and I said that I would stay home with Liesl and Oreo so that Dominica could go out.  So tomorrow night I am the baby sitter while the girls go out for a girls night out on the town.

Off to bed somewhat early again.  No real early but a little.  I am still feeling really tired from all of the travel and getting some real sleep is the only thing that really helps.  Although getting caught up on things definitely helps a lot as well and I am really thankful that SGL is finally back on track and that most of my photos have been posted to Flickr as well.  My daily hits on Flickr are way up from before.  I am seeing some quite impressive daily statistics.

Liesl is in her crib again.  Third night in a row.  I guess that she is used to it now.  She does not appear to be having any bad reactions to it.  She is not extra upset or anything.  The one problem is that she seems to bang her head against the wood back rather a bit.  She is used to have all of the sides be soft.

Back to the grind.  It is so nice to have a day that does not involve any type of travel or driving whatsoever.  I just want to sit all day and do nothing.

Today Liesl’s new protective barrier system arrived from Amazon.  It is a fold out plastic cage system that we can use to either keep Liesl away from all of the stereo equipment and the fireplace or to keep her away from the basement stairs in case we need to leave that door open.  Originally Dominica thought that we were going to need to spend almost two hundred dollars on a system like this but found a great on one Amazon for only about sixty which was very nice.

Liesl is really mobile now.  She gets around the house like nobody’s business.  She just crawls wherever she wants.  If Dominica goes into the kitchen then Liesl will just crawl after her.

There was plenty of work to keep me quite busy today.  Lots of catchup from the weekend.

This evening we continued watching bad sixties “B” movies with Muscle Beach Party and Ski Party. Really, really bad but still funny.

It was another early-ish night for us.  Liesl is in her crib again.  It worked well last night.  She seemed to be pretty happy.  It definitely makes it al ot easier for us that we do not have to worry about waking her up every time that we move or that Oreo decides to get out of bed to scratch.

I was up at six this morning. Ugh. Joe had come in to say goodbye to Dominica around five and I had only barely woken up when he did that. I am going to see him for several days very soon so he did not wake me up before leaving.

I had the car packed and pretty much ready to go before waking Dominica up close to seven.  She was really exhausted and Liesl had not woken up yet, but we were out of time and really had to be getting on to the road.

We were out the door around seven thirty and in Amsterdam, New York but ten after eight (according to my Twitter feed) where we got breakfast at the Mohawk rest stop McDonald’s on the New York Thruway.  We got gas there and ate in the car as we drove which we are trying to do as much as possible these days to minimize the length of our trips.  Having Liesl means that any time that we go into a rest stop, even just to grab a quick bite, that it will be almost an hour if not more.  It really cuts the trip down if we eat in the car.

We got home at a good time.  It is nice to be home knowing that we don’t have to travel for almost two weeks.  Much longer for Dominica.  We have been missing our home these last few weeks with all of the traveling that we have been doing.

I worked all day and did what I could to get caught up.  I managed to get a lot of photos posted to Flickr today.  I have a lot of pictures from this weekend to edit and post so expect to see them coming for the next few days.  I had a lot of email to get caught up on today as well.  I have been “off the grid” pretty significantly this weekend.

Once work was wrapped up for the day Dominica made some BLTs for dinner and we decided to just spend the evening relaxing and watching some Franky and Annette classics: Beach Blanket Bingo and How to Stuff a Wild Bikini. Both were incredibly weak but there is always something entertaining about classic, 1960s “B” movies.  They are fun even though they are horrible.

We went to bed on the early side tonight.  The whole family was really tired and we were all very much looking forward to the opportunity to sleep in our own bed.

Tonight we decided that it was time for Liesl to switch to sleeping in her own bedroom.  She has slept there a little before but never really spent any significant time in that room.  Tonight she is in her crib, all by herself.  It is a bit sad moving her out of our room.  It’s been seven months of always having her somewhere nearby so that we could hear her sigh, moan, cough, sneeze, etc.  She is only just down the hall and we leave the doors open so it’s not like she isn’t still audible from our room but it is not the same.

Finally a chance to really sleep.  Boy did I feel better this morning.  The Comfort Inn in Alliance is quite nice and we always sleep really well here.  I would sleep better if I had my Oreo though.  It is tough sleeping when I know that he is somewhere else.

I slept a lot but was up about every two hours all through the night.  Probably just over-exhaustion forcing me to get up and move around from time to time.

Dominica and I got breakfast down from the continental breakfast buffet in the hotel.  Then she, dad and Liesl drove out to my grandparents’ house with my grandmother leaving me in the hotel to work on my own for several hours.  It was around nine thirty when they left.

I worked in the hotel room with my laptop until noon.  It was a mad scramble to attempt to get everything done that needed to be done before I needed to check out of the hotel room.  It was just minutes before noon when I was able to turn off my laptop and pack up the hotel room so that I could check out.

Everyone took the BMW earlier so I had my grandmother’s Chevy Impala to drive out to East Canton.  It was not until I was checking out of the hotel that I realized that I did not have my GPS unit anymore and that I would be driving blind.  It is amazing how quickly you become completely dependent on a GPS unit.  All of a sudden you wonder if you even know where the highway is.

I made it, safe and sound and without any wrong turns, to my grandparents’ house in East Canton at twenty past noon.  Originally we had thought that we would only stay in Ohio until around noon but obviously that did not happen.

We visited for several hours.  My aunts were there as were my cousins Monica and Gwen and my “new” cousin Mike who joined the family this week.  We have known Mike for years, though.  He and Gwen even visited me when I lived in Ithaca in the summer of 2002 so we have known Mike for a long time.  That was a full seven years ago.  Boy am I ever getting old.  That was a really big deal because Gwen was eighteen and finally old enough to drive out to visit me.

We ate lunch at my grandparents’ house and visited until after three.  Then we went out to the garden and took some pictures before we had to climb into the car and get back on the road towards New York.  Today is going to be a really long driving day.  I have already driving twelve hours this weekend and there is about nine more hours to do today and three more tomorrow morning.  Not as bad as when Francesca and I drive to Texas, though, which is twenty six hours but with two people driving.  Only me driving on this trip.

We had been hoping that we would have had time while in Ohio to stop by and visit my great aunts who live nearby but there just was not any spare time at all this weekend.

It was three thirty ish when we got onto the road from East Canton, Ohio.  We drove out to OH 225 and were thirty so we stopped by Mike’s Pretty Good Grocery, or something to that effect.  Some side of the road grocery and beverage distribution place.  A bit of a shack, really.  Low and behold, inside there were stacks and stacks of Pepsi Throwback – the new, limited time only real sugar version of Pepsi!  So we bought a flat of them.  Twenty four twenty fluid ounce bottles for just five and a half dollars.  Now is that a deal or what?  We were very excited.  Dominica and I have been looking for this for a few weeks now.

Then we drove up to Erie, PA where we decided to make a pit stop for some lunch.  Dominica was so happy with Long John Silver’s yesterday that we looked in the GPS and found one on Peach Street in Erie and decided to just eat there.  Peach Street is pretty convenient for anyone traveling through the area.

Lunch was good and cheap.  Everyone enjoyed it.  Dad and I tried the buttery lobster bites.  Not the best thing ever.  The baja fish tacos are definitely the item to get. So cheap and quite tasty.  They do have some new, grilled items that are much healthier than their traditional fare.  Dominica tried the tilapia meal and liked it.  I want to try the grilled salmon sometime.

From there we drove back to Rochester by way of the Thruway to save time even though the drive is longer and costs more.  We got to dad’s house and dropped him off.  We only stayed just for a minute.  Then it was back onto the road and over to Geneseo so that we could get coffee from Tim Horton’s before driving for another three hours.  Dominica had really wanted to cut the driving short today and stay at dad’s house rather than driving on to her parents’ house so that we could get out of the car for a while but when she thought about the fact that that would mean going to bed early (possibly not falling asleep because it would conflict with our usual schedules), not having Oreo for another day, driving just as long tomorrow and getting up at three in the morning to make this all possible she decided that it was definitely the right thing to do to press on tonight and get as much of the journey completed as possible.  I was not really drowsy yet so we needed to take advantage of the situation.

It was nine in the evening when we left dad’s house.  What a long day already.  The drive out to Frankfort went fine.  Three more hours in the car.  It was minutes until midnight when we arrived there in a serious rain storm.  There was so much water coming down that the storm drains were dumping water into the streets and the streets were like little rivers.  At one point Dominica accidentally dropped Liesl’s portable highchair out of the car and it floated down the street!

We were pretty awake when we arrived at the Toccos’ and Francesca had some work for me to do.  Because Joe is moving to Texas in the morning (he and Brittany are driving down to Houston at five in the morning) he had unhooked his wireless router at the house and the family had bought a new one that evening.  It was not working so I had to log in and get that set up.  That was pretty quick.  Just issues because of the “easy configuration” software that, of course, breaks the whole thing rather than making it simple to configure.  What could possibly be simpler than the original web interface I have no idea.  Making you install confusing software with a unique interface that doesn’t handle normal scenarios is the worst possible option.

After that I fixed the output on the AppleTV.  It was having some signal issues during darker scenes.  Works fine now.  After that we visited for just a little bit as Liesl was not yet sleepy then got to bed between one and two in the morning.