Sheep Guarding Llama

I woke up plenty early this morning all on my own which is surprising considering how tired Dominica and I (and Oreo) have been the last few nights. It has been a long and exhausting week for us. Lots of overtime and “up in the air” stuff and just things going on. We were really happy to just get some time to just relax and drive with Oreo in the BMW yesterday.

I got a couple of good pictures from our trip yesterday. It was really bright while we were out so it was tough. We sent a copy of one of the pictures of Oreo hanging out in the back of the convertible to the Doggle company to show them how happy Oreo is wearing his Doggles.

It is raining in the city again today. Tons of rain. I am sure that it will be flooding again. My friend on Long Island say that it is really coming down hard out there as well.

Dad called to let me know that there was a problem with a part that we had gotten for the RX7 so the car is not going to be ready as soon as we had hoped. It could easily be several weeks before we are able to even make an attempt at putting it onto the road.

Today was so busy all morning that it was one in the afternoon before I even realized that time was passing. I got a lot done though. I like days when I am busy but not because I am thrashing but when I am able to really be productive and get lots of good work done.

This is a little old but in Australia the fastest Morse Code operator vs. the fastest mobile “texter” went head to head with the ninety year old Morse Code operator winning! This really goes to show what a pathetic interface to text messages the mobile phone keypad is. What is really dumb, though, is that people like me have TXT interfaces with full thumb keypads on my mobile device and regular keyboards from my computer so using the numerical keypad is an artificial limitation that doesn’t really have any application.

I am going to be working the very early hours on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday this week. That is, going in to the office at six thirty or so in the morning. I know that it is impossible to keep track of when I am working and when I am home. On Wednesday I will be taking Dominica’s car up to Spring Valley, NY to get its inspection taken care of and then I plan to work from home for the rest of that day.

It ended up raining all day. It was raining early this morning before I left for work and maybe all night for all that I know. It rained hard for what seemed like all day. The forecast says rain until midnight! That is a lot of water coming down out there. I can only imagine that we are going to be flooding horribly again and traffic tonight will be awful.

Rain, rain, rain. I grabbed you a pic of rain from Flickr.

I was all ready to go home when I found out that one of my teams needed me to stay late. So much for the plan of coming in early and leaving early. All last week it turned into me having to work extra hours and that is continuing into today.

I was hoping to have been able to have escaped early today just to beat the worst of the flood traffic but that was not to be. Jersey is so bad in the rain. Everyone drives like idiots. Actually, that happens even without the rain. But the rain exacerbates the problem. And then a lot of the roads actually are under water which really makes it all a disaster.

I got to leave work at six thirty which was only eleven hours and not nearly as bad as it seemed.  The drive home was quite good as well.  I guess everyone left work early to avoid the traffic leaving the roads clear by the time that I headed home just a little bit on the late side.

Dominica did some grocery shopping on her way home and was just unloading her car when I pulled up to 1180.  So I helped her carry up the groceries and then we walked right over to Food for Life to get ourselves some dinner.

We came home and I spent the evening either doing dishes and cleaning in the kitchen or scanning more old photographs in for my Flickr feed.  I have uploaded a set of the York Central School Swim Team from the winter of 1993.  I have tons more scanned but I upload them in groups to make the tagging process easier so the 1996 York Central School vs. Perry Central School Girls Soccer pictures will be coming in a few days.

We watched more Full House while I worked and Dominica relaxed with Oreo.  Oreo is still quite exhausted from his fun trip to the beach this weekend.

It was off to bed early as I need to be up just a little after five tomorrow morning.

Dominica and I slept in a little late this morning and then got up and decided that we had nothing on the schedule for today so it would the perfect time to take our annual drive down to the Jersey Shore in the BMW 330. We had wanted to go two weeks ago but thought that traffic would have been so bad at that point to have made the trip not worth it and last week we were in Pavilion. It was almost exactly one year ago this week that we last drove down the Jersey Shore to celebrate having just purchased the BMW.

It took us a while to get out of the house as we were being very leisurely. We started by heading towards the Oranges and getting the BMW washed at the hand car wash up by UMDNJ. It has been a while since we last got a car wash.

From there we drove down the Garden State Parkway and cruised along the Jersey Shore for a while. Oreo just loves cruising in the BMW with the top down. He loves when we go slow along the ocean because he climbs onto the side of the car and hangs as far out as he can and catches all of the smells. It makes him very happy.

We tried going to a public beach area that allows dogs but the parking was completely crazy and there were just tons and tons of people so we decided to head father south and keep exploring. We went past a Charlie Brown’s Steakhouse which I have enjoyed eating at in New Jersey in the past (I used to eat at the Charlie Brown’s on Route 1 when I was consulting for Wegman’s because the restaurant was located inside of the Clarion hotel that I always stayed at) so we stopped there to eat. Min had never eaten at a Charlie Brown’s before. It was quite good. Dominica enjoyed it and said that we can go there again 🙂

We kept driving south until we ended up at Island Beach State Park. That was a really nice drive along a preserved stretch of intercoastal sanddunes. We took Oreo for a walk down to the ocean and he played along the water but wasn’t too happy with the water caught him by surprise. It was extremely warm once we got out of the car, however, and we were all exhausted after our very short walk and very warm. We had wanted to have continued walking but decided that we couldn’t handle it and that we should just head for home. We wanted to keep the day as relaxing as possible.

On the way north from the park we stopped at Beaches and Cream and got some ice cream before getting onto the parkway to head back home to Newark.

All three of us were quite exhausted by the time that we got home and we decided to just take it easy all night. I uploaded our photos from the (as you can see) and we watched several episodes of Full House. It was a lazy night and Oreo just passed out as soon as we got home. All he did was eat his dinner and sleep. But he had a really good day and was very happy by the end of the day.

I am still on the early schedule (from now on but that was my segue in case you forgot) at the office so I need to be up very early tomorrow.  So it was off to bed early for all of us.

Today turned out to be a busy food based Saturday. I was up pretty early this morning – a bit before eight. I worked out in the living room until Dominica got up sometime after nine.

I went through my paperwork that arrived from RIT this week while I had some time to myself. Did I mention last week that I was finally officially accepted to the Masters of Science in Information Technology degree program at RIT? Today I found out that I have been granted their top Merit Scholarship which is very encouraging as well! I have never received a scholarship before so I am very happy to finally have gotten that recognition now.

Around eleven Dominica and I met up with some friends that live in our building and we walked through downtown Newark looking for some place to get lunch. We didn’t have much luck though. We went to several places that we wanted to try but everything was closed. And I mean everything. Restaurant and restaurant wasn’t open at a little after noon on a bright and sunny Saturday afternoon! How is Newark ever going to recover if there isn’t anyone doing business here?

We finally found an Irish pub that was “open” but open in this case only meant that the door was unlocked and that there were people inside. They turned us and the party ahead of us away as they weren’t serving and apparently had forgotten to lock the doors. That was about eight patrons that they gave up in the few seconds that we tried to eat there. They must have given up fifty or more customers just during the noon lunch period if not hundreds who would have eaten there if they had been actually open! Crazy.

We ended up eating at a diner across from the pub that said that it was open seven days a week. The food was fine and it was nice to find a decent diner close to our apartment. We need to find more restaurants as eating in Newark is nearly impossible with any variety. It just seems that no one wants to do business here (understandably.)

We had a really nice time at lunch and hung out there until a little after three when Dominica and I got a call from Jeffrey and his girlfriend who were meeting us to hang out for the afternoon. So we walked back to 1180 and met Jeffrey over at the PSE&G fountain. We hung out for fifteen minutes or so and then walked over to Food for Life for an early dinner. Luckily the food took a while as we were not very hungry yet. We managed to stretch the time between lunch and dinner to about four hours which isn’t too bad between meals but is still pretty close – at least for us.

We hung out until around six and then went back to our apartment to relax for the evening. We watched some DVDs until eight when I was supposed to work for a while. I logged on to the office network and did a little work while we continued to watch Full House. I “worked” for three hours but nothing really happened. After I was done with that Dominica and I played a little Rogue Galaxy on the PS2 although we were both so tired that we couldn’t play very much. From a first look, though, the graphics are totally amazing! I can’t wait to get a chance to get into that game.

I am really liking the site a lot more now that I am putting in little pictures from the SGL Flickr archives (and a few other random sources so don’t just totally assume that every random pic is necessarily from my collection – they are normally linked so you can follow them if you need to find out more.)

It’s Friday so I got to sleep in a little. Fridays are my days for working late so I don’t bother getting up as early or getting to the office as quickly. I appreciate the break between Thursday night and Friday morning. It gets me ready for Friday’s long haul 🙂

Dominica looks pretty serious (or hopped up on Nyquil) as she rocks out to Guitar Hero II in the 1180 Media Room.

Today wasn’t too busy and I got a chance to get caught back up with the SGL dailies as I haven’t had a chance to post since Tuesday night when I was stuck in the office all night.

Next week is going to be really long for me as I am going to be alone in Newark all week. Dominica is leaving a week from today to go to Topsail Island in North Carolina for the week with her family on their summer vacation and I am staying behind in Newark so that I can work. It will give me, I hope, a chance to get caught up with a lot of the little work here and there that needs to be done that is so hard to get done normally. Dominica is taking Oreo with her to Topsail so I will be very lonely! It is going to be a very long week for me indeed.

In order to prepare for Dominica’s trip to North Carolina which is quite the long drive we have to get the BMW 330 into a New York Inspection Station which is going to be a bit of a pain but I was finally able to make an appointment today and on Wednesday morning I will be taking it up to Spring Valley BMW just over the New York border north of Newark to get that completed. What a pain that is going to be. I have to be there at eight fifteen in the morning!

Most of my day was pretty slow. Things were very slow until I was going through the SGL logs, as I often do, and discovered people doing employment searches on Eric and finding really silly pictures on SGL. That was hilarious. I had to call Eric at work to see what was going on. We were dying when we realized what they were finding when they were searching on him. I knew that the SGL logs were entertaining but this is exceptionally funny.

There is always enjoyment in Pug Bowling. But nothing is as cute as a baby piglet.

I got home a little after seven tonight. Min had gone grocery shopping and had gotten home just minutes before me. We unloaded the groceries and headed straight over to Food for Life to ourselves some dinner. We haven’t eaten there in a while before they closed down for a week and it got us out of the habit of going over there. And the weather has been very hot and they don’t really air condition that place so it is always significantly warmer inside than it is out. Sometimes by twenty degrees or more. Today was one of those days. Almost chilly outside and extremely warm inside even with the doors open.

After dinner we came home but Jeffrey called us and then stopped by after his cell phone minutes ran out and so we ended up spending most of the evening talking to him out in front of the building on Raymond. We are meeting him and his girlfriend for a late lunch tomorrow around three. It was ten o’clock by the time that we got back to the apartment and we were both ready to just go to bed. Oreo was already in bed and very snuggle.

Weight Lost So Far: 31.5 lbs

I am still quite tired today as it has been a long and stressful week already. I slept in just a tiny bit this morning and that helped some.

I have managed to get several dozen more images posted onto the SGL Flickr site. It is truly amazing how many pictures I have.  This is a pic of Mary Johnston from Art and Danielle Ralston’s wedding in February, 1994.  The wedding party (there was a reception for the immediate family following the wedding but the “friends” party was later) was held at Eric Millen’s house in Warsaw, New York.  You can see Eric sort of in the background here.

This morning I weighed in and for the first time I now weigh less than I did in June, 2001 when I first met Dominica at Phil and Kate’s wedding in Norwich, New York!  That is pretty exciting.

This morning at work was pretty hectic and stressful.  Lots of unknowns continuing.  Around eleven this morning there was finally an opportunity for the players to get together and figure out what is going on.  We didn’t exactly figure out what the final story is but at least we have a clearer picture and a path forward.  For the moment not much is changing but we will start to see some changes in about two weeks.  Stay tuned!  (Don’t actually bother to stay tuned as it isn’t very exciting. Ha ha.) 

We had to take Dominica’s car into the shop today as it has been having problems with it’s Service Engine Soon light.  We were unable to get it inspected last weekend because of the light which is supposed to only be an indicator for the gas cap (it is not the Check Engine light which is located directly next to it.)  So the 330 spent the day at Essex BMW in Newark.  They discovered a bad oxygen sensor which should fix the light and should also fix the power issues that the engine has been having at very specific speeds and loads.

Weight Loss So Far: 30.5 lbs