Sheep Guarding Llama

Back to work today.  Not that I don’t work on the weekend or holidays but it definitely feels quite a bit different on an official work day.  Yesterday was very slow at the office and it really was almost completely a holiday.  Good enough for me.  The last thing that I want to do is not to sign in for an entire day and wonder what disaster has befallen everyone while I wasn’t looking.

Today was a big windfall in finding old friends on FaceBook.  I am old enough now that “old” friends is starting to be a reasonable saying.  I tracked down almost everyone that lived on my street (Peoria Road) with whom I used to ride the schoolbus when we were little.  I only rode the schoolbus on that route between first grade and the middle of seventh grade, if I remember correctly.

In Kindergarten we rode a short bus that drove just five of us around – Janet, Sandra Sue, Jody, Brian and I.  We were the only five Pavilion district kids who attended Pavilion Baptist School in the class of 1994 and since only PBS had a half day Kindergarten we had to have a bus all to ourselves.  It was a painfully long busride because we lived scattered all over the place.  Janet lived in Pearl Creek.  Jody on route 246 near Perry Center.  Sandra Sue on route 63 getting close to Batavia.  Brian lived on Old State Road not all that far from me and somewhat between Jody and I but not quite and I lived on the north end of Peoria Road making me the last one off of the bus.  So every day in Kindergarten I got a full tour of the towns of Pavilion and Covington who both fall in the Pavilion school district.

Just now as I describe the route that we took it has occurred to me that four of us lived in the town of Covington in Wyoming County and only Sandra Sue lived in Pavilion in Genesee County.  She, unfortunately, lived at the far northwestern extent while I was all the way to the east and Jody was all the way to the south.  There really was hardly a patch of the two towns that we didn’t have to cross to get all of us home.  It made getting out of school early only so much of a big deal.

After Kindergarten I rode the Pavilion school district’s elementary bus home because it was the later bus.  The high school kids from the public school went home before we did, if I remember correctly, so I always rode the elementary bus which meant that when kids on the bus got to either sixth or seventh grade, depending on the year because they changed their definition of high school a few times while I was there, the kids would switch to the high school bus and I would never see them again.  When I was young it wasn’t bad but as I got older it was awkward to be the older, private school kid who rode the bus with the younger public school kids.

Due to the location where we lived I was either the last or nearly the last person off of the school bus.  My rides in the evening were very, very long.  My ride home began by getting out of school at PBS and waiting for about forty five minutes while all of the other kids got picked up by their school districts and carted off home.  Many of them reached home before I even left school.  Those of us from the Pavilion district, even though we were the local district, had to wait outside of the school all alone every day.  It was very depressing as a child to have the freedom of evening ebb away just standing around outside of the school waiting to be picked up.

Once we were picked up we were driven over to Pavilion Elementary which is across the street from the high school.  If I remember correctly, the high school would go home just too early to be able to take us because once in a while high school kids would stay late at school (sports, detention, whatever) and then would ride the elementary bus home.  Then I would have to stand at Pavilion Elementary for ten or fifteen minutes on a good day just waiting for the bus that took me home to arrive.  In bad weather we could wait inside of the school’s foyer but that always felt awkward as a kid standing inside of a school that you did not attend.  So I almost always braved the weather and just stood out waiting for my bus.

Then the bus ride home itself from Pavilion Elementary to my home on Peoria Road took just forever.  This was so much worse than a long bus ride for normal people because I was riding the bus with people with whom I did not go to school (not a single PBS student rode my bus after Brian Hendrickson left PBS after first grade) and because I was forced to wear both uncomfortable and embarrassingly unfashionable clothes so that I felt even more out of place than was necessary on this long, lonely bus ride home.

The ride home took around an hour after I was finally onto the late bus.  I don’t remember exactly how long it took but it seems like it must have been more than an hour.  In either case, the entire time from school letting out until I got home was well more than two hours.  It may have been three when you consider how long I had to stand at PBS waiting to be picked up by the first bus.

I do remember that when I got to middle school and could get detention that getting detention was actually a reward because they would have you do your homework until a few minutes after the Pavilion bus left and then would have your parents take you home.  (Read that carefully – the punishment was to make us wait the length of time that we, the Pavilion kids, had to wait everyday.  So OTHER people got punished by being treated like us.  Nice.)  Then, after detention was over and homework was complete, my mom would pick me up and have me home an hour or two sooner than normal without the awkward bus ride.  Then I would have an extra long evening without any homework.  Downside?

When I was in eighth grade, sometimes in nice weather, I would ride my bike to and from school.  This was a bit of a pain because I had to ride in full private school dress clothes which chaffed, were generally uncomfortable, were way too warm and were likely to get covered in grease from the bike.  Luckily going towards school was almost entirely downhill – the total decent being a few hundred feet – so you did not get all sweaty on the way to school.  But going home meant a steep incline to bike up the whole way home – and carrying loads of books.  But it was nice because even when I wasn’t strong enough to climb the hills and had to walk up them pushing the bike it still got me home about two hours early since I actually lived very near to the school.

I stopped riding the bus primarily in seventh grade when I was twelve years old.  On the ride home one day I was sitting, looking out the window to my left while still sitting at Pavilion Elementary waiting for the bus to fill up.  I was resting my head on my hand like “The Thinker”.  A kid from PBS who was riding the bus that day called my name and I turned to see what he wanted.  I did not move my hand.  He was holding himself above me holding on to each side of the seat backs and then then, when I looked, he dropped on me bringing his knee down directly onto the back of my hand that was braced by the elbow against my leg.  His whole weight came down on that knee pushing my hand flush down against my wrist breaking my wrist.

After that I almost never rode the schoolbus.  And, in 1990 when I was fourteen and entering ninth grade, I transferred from PBS to York Central School which was the neighbouring district to Pavilion.  Because I was officially outside of the York district I did not have to ride the school bus and mom drove me to and from school until I was old enough to get my driver’s license and drive myself to and from when I was sixteen.  I was the last student allowed to go to York without living in the district.  Two of us that had ridden my school bus at Pavilion did that – both from the class of 1994.  I being from PBS and she was from Holy Family in Batavia previously.  York was ranked the third best public school in New York State when I attended there so there was good reasons for picking it over my local district.  York tied with Avon my junior year in high school for third in state and sat one spot behind Livonia.  Three schools in the top four all in one county – and a very rural county at that.

During my days of riding the Pavilion schoolbus I did manage to make a number of friends – almost exclusively with those kids who lived on Peoria Road because we spent so much more time together than we did with everyone else since the kids who got off of the bus early tended to sit in the front and knew each other from their long morning bus rides.  My morning bus rides were short, thankfully, but they still required the bus transfer at the elementary school and did not deliver me to my school until about halfway through the first class of the day which caused obvious problems.  This was especially problematic in Kindergarten when it was a large percentage of the halfday and anything that made you obviously different from everyone else did not aid in making school a comfortable experience.

So there were a handful of friends from my school bus days that I have wanted to track down and I was able to find several of them on FaceBook today.  I now have contact again with pretty much everyone who grew up around my age on my street.  Only a few of us but we can all reach each other again.  I was by far the oldest.  Most of them are about three to four years younger than me.  Anyone whom I haven’t found yet on FaceBook is a sibling of someone who is so I have some means of reaching everyone these days.  Funny how technology has brought so many people back together after so long.  Some of these kids (ha ha, kids, they are all like thirty now) I haven’t seen in nineteen or twenty years!  Unbelievable  It is things like this that really make me feel old.

Dominica got up this morning and got Liesl ready for travel as quickly as she could.  They left Peekskill around eleven thirty to drive down to Totowa, New Jersey to spend the afternoon at her old job (she officially gave up the position on February 2nd) visiting with everyone, delivering her work laptop back to them and introducing everyone to Liesl.  This was Liesl’s second longest car ride ever and her very first time ever going out in her stroller.  The weather was perfect for a drive to New Jersey.  That really worked out well.

Dominica and Liesl had a good time.  Oreo and I stayed home as I needed to work and he did not want to spend the afternoon alone in the car.  It gave me a bit more time to get stuff done that I needed to do which ended up being pretty important today.

We got all of the information that we needed today from Toronto and were able to prep the new server, shut it down, pack it up and around five this evening dad drove over to Geneseo to get the server sent out via UPS.  We decided to just do two day shipping as it ended up saving around $240 over sending it overnight!  That is a lot of money to just throw away.

It is a massive relief to have the server out the door and onto the UPS truck.  Now there is no more fiddling or worrying and on Thursday evening it should be racked and ready and after I get home from Warren I can work on it to get it running smoothly.  Getting this server up to Toronto has been a six month long process.  This past week has really been wearing on me.  So much needing to be done.

Tonight, while watching a few episodes of Murder She Wrote‘s first season, Dominica and I managed to do the rest of the plaster work on the model railroad diorama that we have been working on.  Tonight’s effort was to plaster the outsides of the diorama for strength and protection.  We are definitely improving a lot in the way that we apply plaster.

Tomorrow we should be able to start working on more scenics aspects of the layout and less structural.  Our next step is to start adding in rock faces.

Today is President’s day and the market is closed so I have the day off from work, more or less.  My idea was that today would be a pretty big model railroading day.  I have been looking for a chance to really sit down and get some modeling done.

We slept in a lot this morning.  It was after eleven when I finally got up!  Dominica was heading out the door right as I got up to go do the grocery shopping.  Liesl had just been put down for a nap and Dominica thought that this would be her window of opportunity.  It ended up that Liesl never actually fell asleep so, as usual, with Dominica gone it was a mad scramble to keep Liesl and Oreo both happy.

Dominica was gone for almost two hours doing the grocery shopping.  While she was gone we got the call from the Treat Station in Peekskill that the model railroad layout kits that we had ordered had arrived and that we could pick them up at any time.

Dominica got home in the early afternoon and we had a late lunch, relaxed for what little but we could as we tried to watch some Netflix on demand in between me attempting to work on stuff for the office.  I ended up being busy enough that Dominica decided to make a second trip out and to go to Treat Station on her own to pick up the supplies that we needed.  We had also discovered that we needed food for Oreo so that we could cook for him today as he is going to run out of his dog food (chicken stew) tonight.  So she went to the grocery store as well.  Then, while she was out, she made a run to Home Depot to grab a few other little modeling items of which we were in need.

Altogether today I was in charge of Liesl and Oreo alone for a bit more than three hours.  Possibly as many as four but that is unlikely.

Dominica cooked Oreo food this afternoon and also got a little bit of work done on her second course in her UNIX Administration program at UofI.

It was not really until fairly late in the evening before we really had any free time in which to get to do some model railroad modeling.  We did get to do some, though, and today we got to take our first stab at applying actual plaster which is a first for both of us.  Today I did the plaster and Dominica just watched.  Working with plaster is much more fun and enjoyable than I had guessed that it would be.  I always thought that this aspect of model railroading seemed really boring and intimidating, but it is not at all.  It is really cool.

I also laid the railbed and the track, built the tunnel and did the beginning of the ballast tonight.  After the work tonight the layout diorama is really looking like a real model railroad like nothing I have ever done before.  Very encouraging.  Seeing this take shape is really making us excited about being able to do model railroading together.  This is a lot of fun and we are seeing real results very quickly which we had never imagined would happen.

Overall today was really busy and we ended up staying up incredibly late just so that we would have a chance to work on the model.  It was around two in the morning when we finally got to head off to bed.

Tomorrow I am back to work as usual – at least it is only a four day work week – and Dominica is going to attempt to drive down to Totowa, New Jersey to take her laptop back to work and to take Liesl down to introduce her to all of her coworkers.  No one has seen her since she took maternity leave in mid-November so they are all anxious to see how she has been and to meet our daughter.  So tomorrow will be a pretty busy day.

We failed to be able to ship out the email server today as we did not receive the necessary information to do so.  I have spoken to everyone involved and the hope is that we will be able to deal with this tomorrow.  It is getting down to the wire and we are going to need to do something pretty quickly if nothing happens in the morning.  I can’t wait until this server is shipped and no longer something that I need to keep working on on a regular basis.

The sun is out and it was a beautiful morning.  Dominica was feeling restless today and we decided that it would be a great day to go out for a drive with Liesl and Oreo and to see if it would be possible to find some model railroading supplies so that we could do some modeling this weekend.

It took us a while before we were able to get out the door but we did pretty well, all things considered.  We researched some local model train stores and found one in Katonah that appears to only handle Marklin stuff from Germany which is excellent stuff but only avialable in HO and Z scales so that made it useless to us.  We also found one in Cold Spring which is two towns north of us.  Garrison lies in between.

Dominica attempted to find a yarn store in the area around Cold Spring but did not find one in a quick search so we decided to just drive by a place that might exist but for which there was no phone number.  Better than nothing.

The drive up to Cold Spring was really nice.  The GPS unit took us the east way around the mountain which must be almost exactly the way that dad goes when he is driving to and from Bear Mountain Bridge.  It is not the fastest way to the bridge but it appears to be the fastest way to Garrison.

The drive was really nice.  Such a great day for a nice, relaxing drive along the Hudson Valley.

Apparently we were not the only people who had this thought on this particularlly wonderful Sunday morning.  When we made it up to Cold Spring, probably a twenty minute drive, downtown was completely packed with people and parking was impossible to find.

We finally found a spot on the side of Church Street which turned out to be perfect as it was right around the corner from the little train store to which we were heading.  It was a nice, short walk and Liesl enjoyed being outside.  Oreo stayed in the warm car enjoying the sunshine.

Cold Spring, along with Garrison, are extremely attractive little Hudson Valley towns.  John Nicklin had recommended that we look at them when we were house hunting.  We had decided that they were too expensive and too far away for daily commuting to the city via train.  We will definitely be considering those towns, though, when Dominica returns to work and we need to move for additional space.  The towns are so pleasant.

The train store was so tiny that literally only two people could be in it at once without it causing a significant problem.  They had the supplies that we needed, however, so it worked out perfectly.  We picked up a small “diorama” kit which is designed to allow us to build a small 1′ by 2′, or something like that, little sample of a layout. The purpose being to teach us how to do a lot of the basics of scenery modeling such as the foam benchwork, plastering, making our own trees, ballast (which we have done before,) etc.  We also picked up a “water modeling” learning kit.  Everything is from Woodland Scenics.  Good stuff.

We also picked up some basic rolling stock just so that we would have something work with on the little track that we have at the moment.  We got a box car from Soo Lines and a covered hopper of Corning Glass (dad would be proud.)  Both are Atlas N Scale rolling stock.  The Corning hopper is an especially attractive unit.

After our shopping we took a quick swing down Chestnut Street to see if the yarn shop was still there and we found the address but the shop was long since gone.  No luck there.  So we continued on home to Peekskill.

We managed to spend a bit of the evening actually working on the diorama.  It was really exciting.  In our very first stages we learned quite a lot about how the basics of building a modern model railroad can be done.  This was both our first times working with foam based benchwork – in this case the Woodland Scenics Subterrain system.  It only took a little work with Woodland Scenics foam products before we were sure that we would be able to buy regular foam on our own and do the same type of work.  We learned a lot right off of the bat.

We only managed to get so much done tonight but the progress was very noticeable.  By the end of the night Dominica even remarked that the diorama was already beginning to look like a real layout even after the first half day of work.  We are very pleased and quite glad that we decided to purchase the learning kits because we have already gained a lot of confidence and feel that we will be much more prepared for doing the real layout which we hope to start later in the week.

Also this evening Dominica managed to wrap up her first course in her program at the University of Illinois.  She is doing a four course sequence and the first one is all done.  She also did the introductory work on the second section so that she will be ready to get started on that right away.  She is making very good progress and really learning a lot.  We have some things about the class that we don’t think are as good as they could be but the overall approach is excellent and it is really working out well for her.  Having me as a resource along with her obvious access to all sorts of UNIX platforms and educational resources really is enhancing her learning so she is getting far more out of the class than she would get from doing the class alone.

Today is Liesl’s very first St. Valentine’s day and also her cousin Madeline’s ninth birthday.  I am blessed with the rare situation that I do not need to work at all today.  We got a chance to sleep in a little bit this morning which is awesome for a change.

The weather is awesome today.  Not too much wind and bright sun.  Oreo is very happy.

Dominica and I decided that today was going to be model railroading day.  This past week has been so crazy that this weekend needs to be about relaxing.

We did some looking around to see what local model railroading shops are available.  It turns out that there is a model train and candy shop on North Division which is the Maple Ave extension in downtown Peekskill.  Extremely easy to get to from our house.  It is called Treat Station.

We were all going to go down to the shop but Liesl was not in the best mood and were unsure how the shop was going to be so I just ran downtown all by myself to make a quick trip.  They didn’t have too much train stuff but I was able to pick up the 2008 Walther’s catalogue and some model train books.  I also picked up some chocolate truffles, as it is Valentine’s day, to take home to Dominica.

I got home and was just beginning to look at the books when Dominica spotted the Woodland Scenic’s Mod-U-Rail system as a possible solution to our issues with doing benchwork.  Neither of us have any carpentry skills whatsoever so it is important to find a foam based solution from which to work.  So we decided that we would go back down and see if there was something that we could get.

Around seven this evening we packed up Liesl and Oreo and we took a short little trip downtown.  Oreo was very excited to be able to go for a ride in the car.  He almost never gets out these days.  He misses his car trips.  Liesl was not so excited until we got to Treat Station.

Dominica had them fire up the Lionel train display for Liesl and Liesl was very pleased to watch the trains go around for several minutes.  We talked to the store and they did not have the materials that we were seaking at the moment but were able to order them for us and are hoping to have them for us on Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

We have decided that we are going to start by doing some purely scenery based projects just to learn some techniques and then we are going to do a small, starter layout of approximately six feet by three feet on foam backing on which to see if we can model a nice, complete, working layout with running train and everything.  Then, if that goes well and we enjoy it, we can look to making a real layout that will be built to the wall by my desk.

While at the Treat Station we got root bear floats and drank them at the soda fountain that they have there.  It is small but they have an old fashion soda fountain.  Very neat.

After our little outing we had a nice, relaxing evening at home.

UNIX Time is recorded in seconds since midnight, January 1, 1970 – UTC.  This date is considered to be the beginning of the computer epoch or, more appropriately, the UNIX epoch (love live UNIX!)  At 23:31:30 UTC (that is 11:31 and 30 seconds on London time without daylight savings) the official UNIX date is 01234567890!

Funny enough, today is Friday the 13th and today is the first day that I haven’t had a major disaster with which to deal all week.  So much for superstitions.

Today is an early close for the stock market (because Monday is a US holiday, not because tonight is Friday the 13th.)  I did not realize that until almost lunch time so getting a shortened day was a nice surprise.

Our credit card bill came today.  I had been hoping that it was going to be a small one this month but, of course, there are all kinds of surprises to be had almost every month.  On this particular bill is Oreo’s multiple emergency vet visits as well as the cost of Dominica’s entire curriculum at the University of Illinois so the bill is much larger than I had been thinking that it was going to be.

Work was pretty busy all afternoon since it was a shortened day, but because we did most of our work early the evening was not nearly as long as usual – at least not for a Friday.  So instead of wrapping up really late at night we were able to wrap up more like it was a normal day.  Now we can be somewhat relaxed going into the weekend.

I was very thankful to have some extra time tonight.  I spent the evening doing the remaining setup on the new Zimbra server so that I could get it running to start collecting email.  It was around eleven tonight when I finally got it turned on and the mail started coming in again.  It has been a long week without mail and there are still a lot of kinks to iron out but at least mail is starting to come in once again.

I feel much better tonight knowing that this are mostly working.  We did not ship the server to Toronto today as we had hoped because we just were not able to get everything worked out with them quickly enough to make it possible but things are progressing and the new server should ship out on Monday or Tuesday.

Now for a nice, long, relaxing weekend.