Sheep Guarding Llama

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

Humdog the Pencil Freak on Native Pencils.

I was really exhausted this morning. It was after two thirty when I finally got to sleep last night and I had to be up and right back in this morning to the office. Ugh. I was dragging pretty badly.

Today was busy and a blur. All kinds of stuff going on. It was an extremely busy day both from a work and from a “what’s going on with our lives” kind of day. Unfortunately I can’t talk about everything here but we have a lot of questions right now including where we will be living after October. If we are staying in the New York Metro area then the plan is to remain at 1180 Raymond because even though we have had our problems there it has been good enough overall that we would like to remain and most everything has improved significantly so that it isn’t so bad at this point. But we don’t know if we are going to be staying in the metro area so there is a lot to figure out.

Tonight was mostly phone calls and emails and planning (as much as possible.) We won’t know anything much until tomorrow at the earliest. Me being totally exhausted is not helping things though.

Weight Lost So Far: 28.5 lbs

Today is another start early day for me. I woke up on my own at five this morning after going to bed at eleven but stayed in bed until a little after five thirty. What can I say, Oreo is snuggly.

A few weeks ago Dominica sent me a video of the cutest pig ever and I didn’t get a chance to watch it until today. This is babe the pig from Australia. It is hard for me to see pigs because it makes me so sad like knowing that lots of people eat them when they are so intelligent and friendly. Just like knowing that people eat dogs and cats.

Dad sent me a link to this YouTube video of Kodak’s Building 23 being imploded. This is the office building that my dad used to work in. I have seen this building many times as I used to go up to Building 28 “Theater on the Ridge” because that is where the Kodak Camera Club (KCC) used to be located down in the basement.

Dominica tells me that Drew ToothPaste is really funny but I haven’t been able to watch it yet so watch at your own risk – like eating black bean cake.

I was in to the office just a little before a quarter after seven. It was extremely warm in the office and I definitely can’t arrive any earlier than that during the summer or I have to spend the entire time figuring out how not to sweat.

Apple’s iPhone has been caught at Duke University performing MAC level denial of service attacks on the university’s wireless network. How is that for a reason not to buy an iPhone? Now that it has been publicized a wireless network owner can reasonably sue an iPhone user who brings down their network as a hacker and prosecute them under some pretty harrowing US laws (or lack thereof) that include long term imprisonment without trial. That is a pretty serious level of danger that Apple has placed, quite literally, into the hands of its generally extremely technically unsavy user base. While it is unlikely that such a situation would occur – now that everyone knows this is a great tool for causing some serious damage to companies and universities or your neighbour and just claim that you are a mindless Apple drone.

There is a new review of 1180 Raymond Blvd. today online and they mention the endless fire alarms and no, it wasn’t me! At first I was the only person upset by the fire alarms but now I have heard about it from a lot of people so I don’t feel so bad anymore.

I was expecting it but today turned out to be another very long day for me as well. It is going to be a very long week. My work from home day on Thursday has been canceled too. 🙁 Oreo will be very tired by this weekend. As, apparently, will I.

I ended up staying at work extremely late working on a major project that is not going well. It went from staying a little late into staying practically forever. It put me right back in DC working at Washington Hospital Center in the little Nicklin Associates office there. I would often get stuck working late into the night in that warm office with no one around just waiting to see data come in from the workstation in the autoclave area.

It has been a long time since I worked through the night all alone in “the office” whether it be here in Warren on down in DC or wherever. It has happened but it has become increasingly rare these past few years. It feels rather strange to be doing it now and yet so familiar. Late nights in the office, all alone, have been such a significant part of my adult life that if feels completely natural no matter how long it has been since the last time that I did it.

Since I had so much time sitting in the office just waiting for stuff I put in some time updating and adding labels, categories, tags and titles to my Flickr feed. My Flickr pics have been viewed well over four thousand times so far not counting me.

I ended up working until well after one in the morning!  It has been a long time since I pulled a double and this definitely qualifies.  It was an eighteen hours day!

Today is my first day of being on the regular early morning shift. Nothing like starting the early morning on the first day after having driven twelve hours after a day of all family activities after a day of working twelve hours before driving for six. I was understandably a little tired when I work up at five this morning.

I was in the office at a quarter after seven which is, I think, a pretty good time to get started on the day.  It is early enough that I am able to avoid most of the traffic which speeds my commute significantly and normally I will be able to leave at a reasonable time to get home.  The office is still pretty quiet at that time and it is easy to get caught up on a lot of stuff that otherwise you can’t get to once everyone gets busy.  I am looking forward to the new schedule for the most part.

My day today ended up being really crazy and totally exhausting.  I didn’t get a minute for lunch or a snack or a break or anything.  Ugh.  Not only was my day busy but it was quite long too.  I ended up getting stuck at work until close to seven in the evening!  So much for getting to take off early.

I called Dominica from work and we decided that we needed to just order a pizza for dinner so that things would be quick and easy.  So she called Papa John’s to order us a spinach alfredo pizza (yum!) before I left the office.  The spinach alfredo definitely is not up to par with DiSalvo’s pizza but it will have to do.

I have decided that I will be exhausted tonight and am not going to spend time working on SGL once I get home so I am going to go ahead and post and call it a day.

Today was a very serious driving day for us. Dad, Dominica and I were all up around eight and we were ready to head out not long after nine. Not quite as early as we had hoped but not too much later.

We started by heading west from Warsaw on NY 20A and traveling through Wyoming County and entering the Buffalo region through East Aurora. 20A continues on from East Aurora to Orchard Park and then into Hamburg.

Dominica really like Orchard Park and East Aurora. My dad hadn’t been through that area in a long time and was always driving so he had never really looked at the homes before and was surprised by what a really nice area that is.

From there we continued on to Route 5 and Lakeshore Drive along Lake Erie starting from about Angola on the Lake and heading up to the city itself. We had no idea that that lake shore zone was so beautiful! I have been a fan of Lake Erie ever since I worked for that one week in Erie, Pennsylvania where I got a chance to really see the lake. The eastern shore is awesome because it has such wonderful views at sunset. And this area has the most amazing views of the city of Buffalo, Fort Erie in Ontario, etc. It is really something to see. We were amazed. This is definitely the place to be in the Buffalo area.

We drove through downtown on the skyway and up to Amherst. We drove around Amherst and Williamsville a bit before grabbing a quick bite at Burger King and then heading back towards home. We had left dad’s place just a little after nine and we were back to his place some time after two so it was about a five to six hour trip pretty much driving the entire time. It was a lot of fun though but quite exhausting.

We packed up the car and we all drove down to Sharon and Leo’s house in Leicester but everyone had left because we were running so late. They all had to get back to Ohio.  It worked out for the best though because it was getting late and we really needed to get on the road to Newark.  It had been a long day of driving and we hadn’t even started our real driving yet.

The trip home was largely uneventful.  We were tired by the time that we got back but we were doing okay.  We were really glad to get out of the car after twelve hours of driving just today and six hours on Friday though!