Sheep Guarding Llama

Well, 2006 is coming to a close. Another year of SGL completed. Another year older. It has been a big year for us. Dominica got her second real IT job this year. I took the job in New Jersey. We moved (at separate times) down to North Brunswick. Then we moved to Newark. We decided to sell our house in Geneseo. Then to keep it when we didn’t buy in New Jersey but rented instead. Then to sell it anyway. The Ralstons decided to move to New Guinea. It has been a crazy year. We have seen our friends less this year than we ever have before. This has been probably our busiest year ever with more “moving” packed into a shorter period, new places that we have never been before, more work than we are used to and everything else. It is hard to believe that we made it through the year and that we are about to start a new one!

Dominica and I slept in until ten this morning which was about eight hours of sleep really. Before going to bed last night she played a bit of Cooking Mama on the Nintendo DS and I set up my HP D325 workstation in the upstairs office so that I would have a stable, solid machine to work from when I am here in Geneseo. Which we need whether or not we are selling the house but if we do sell it then I will be here quite a lot over the next few months (the target is to close in four months) as we attempt to pack and ship the entire contents of the house over to dad’s house. That is going to be a very large project. And I only have a total of sixteen weekends in which to do it. I will probably take a week off of work at some point to really get it done when we get down to the very end but we will have to wait and see.

Our big job for this morning is to clean out the armoir in the living room as the plan is to get it moved to Frankfort sometime in the next two weeks. It was my mother’s armoir that she used as her computer desk in the basement of my parents’ house and then when she died it came here to Geneseo and we used it in the living room as our computer desk there. That is where I had the Mac desktop that we used for our living room DVD player. A lot of times people would use it when they were here visiting and needed to set up a computer real quickly. The armoir has a “filing cabinet” in it and it is full of Dominica’s paperwork and so she has a ton of that to go through before the armoir gets moved and we have a number of small items in there that need to be moved as well. All stuff that can be packed and sent to dad’s or to Newark. It is really cool that Dominica’s father decided that he wanted an armoir just like the one that mom used to have (he wasn’t aware that we were not going to keep this one when he told Dominica that he wanted one just like that) so that we are able to keep mom’s armoir in the family instead of just giving it away or something. But neither dad nor us have any practical use for it and we would just be keeping it for the sake of keeping a piece of mom’s furniture around and that is not really very smart. So this is the best possible solution and we are all really happy about it. It is a really nice piece of furniture too but we just don’t have space for spare furniture. As it is everything we own is just going into storage until we figure out what we can do with it all.

Our appointment with the real estate agent for the sale of the house is at one this afternoon in Geneseo. Nothing is final or official yet but everyone thinks that this is the final counter-offer and that everyone has met the needs of the other party and that everyone is going to be happy with the situation. I am very sad to be leaving the house that we love but we are both incredibly relieved to be moving out of a situation where we cannot rent the house and the next door neighbour is just so mean that we are always uncomfortable being in our own home (she also spies in the windows sometimes!) It is really just too much. We want a place that we will be happy with and that will be comfortable and practical. Geneseo was very practical once upon a time but now really is not at all. We chose this location because of the special services that we were able to get here from ChoiceOne and almost immediately after moving in they went bankrupt and broke their service agreement with us and left us high and dry. Not something that you expect from your phone company. So we lost the advantage, almost immediately, that we had purchased the house to get. It ended up raising the cost of the house by almost $200 per month after that and kept it from being the value that it was supposed to be. Time to move on I guess. Sad but we will be much happier with something else in the long run and really, we will almost never want to come back to Geneseo except to eat at the Omega.

The appointment went really well this afternoon and the bottom line is, the house is sold! It is not official yet, obviously, but everyone has agreed and everything is moving along quickly at this point. The paperwork is going to the lawyers on Tuesday and everything should be ready by the end of the week. It will be several months before we close and there is plenty of time for things to go wrong but basically we are as sold as it gets until we actually close. We are very much excited and relieved although we are very sad to be selling our first house. There are a lot of memories here in this house and the house itself has been so good to us but we just can’t justify keeping it anymore.

After the meeting it was back to the Omega for a late lunch with dad. It was around one thirty when we got there. We hung out for a little while and then we had to run up to Henrietta to get dog food for Oreo as he is completely out of food. So we went straight from lunch up to the city. We hit Petco and the wine store and then decided to run up to the north part of the city to see Kate and Phil Ayers’ new house (by new we mean that they got it in February but we still have not had a chance to see it.)

We got to the Ayers’ house around four and got the whirlwind tour. They have a very nice and practical house just inside of the city of Rochester far to the north off of Culver. They are hosting the New Year’s Eve party tonight and were just about ready for it when we got there. We were able to stay and visit for about an hour but we have lots of work to do in Geneseo and have to get back to Oreo who we were not intending to leave at home on his own for very long.  The Relyeas and Jess arrived a little before we had to leave which was nice so we got a little bit of time to visit with everyone before taking off to come back to Geneseo.

We got back to Geneseo and did some quick work around the house, checked on Oreo and then ran downtown for some pizza from Pizza Paul’s for dinner (yes, that is four evening meals in a row of pizza for me!)  Oreo was happy to go for the ride and we were back at the house by have past six to work on getting stuff packed and ready to go to dad’s.

For New Year’s Eve we are going to go over to dad’s house after he gets home from dinner with the Richardsons in Geneseo.  We will hang out there and visit in front of the fire (Dominica is totally addicted to real wood fires now especially when you have pine cones that cause the fire to be pretty colours) until we get tired and then it will be back to Geneseo and time for bed.  Tomorrow we will be driving back to Newark as I have to work early on Tuesday morning even though the US markets are closed in honour of Gerald Ford’s death but because I am early morning support and the UK markets are still open I have to be there.  But the upside is that I will get a long weekend sometime soon since I am stuck going in on Tuesday which I will need to get the house ready in time.

Lots to do in Geneseo and so this morning Dominica and I have to return from Frankfort to Geneseo. Another three hours of driving and this time in our first real snow driving of the year. It was blowing snow for a bit of the journey. Ugh.

Before leaving Frankfort this morning we found out that it is very likely that our price on the house is going to be met and that we are going to sell the Geneseo house. It is kind of unreal that it is actually happening. We had just settled into the idea that the house in Geneseo was going to stay ours for a really long time and that we were not going to have to worry about selling it. We were just beginning to move stuff back into the house! We are meeting with our realtor tomorrow to get as much done as possible.

We left Frankfort around eleven and made very bad time heading west as the snow really was pretty bad considering we are still driving on our summer tires since New Jersey hasn’t seen a flake yet. When we were just a little past Waterlou we saw a small Honda Civic go shooting directly across the highway between some trucks and go flying up the embankment on the side of the road just a few cars in front of us. I couldn’t believe that they were not killed as they looked to be directly in front of a tractor trailer when it happened. They managed to cross the entire expressway without killing themselves. We were the first people who were able to see the accident and pull over so we went to make sure that they were okay. Everyone was fine and the car saw much less damage than expected and the DOT and police were there in no time and made sure that everyone was okay so we were able to head on our way. Boy was the Lord ever watching over them though. That was quite the maneuver to have made it through. It turns out that the driver lives just a five minute walk away from us in Newark!

It was mid afternoon by the time we got to Geneseo and dad came over to meet us for a late lunch at the Omega. We hung out there and then ran to Walmart and did some quick shopping and then to the house to shower and take care of a few things before going over to hang out at dad’s house in front of the fireplace.  On the way over to dad’s we stopped at the Ralstons’ and dropped off Michael’s Christmas present that we were finally able to get.  He wasn’t around when we got there which is actually good so that his parents have time to charge it before he gets home.

It was close to six by the time we finally got over to dad’s house and we stayed there until almost midnight.  We ordered pizza from Davis’ Farm Market in Pavilion.  Getting their pizza is always a little reminer of my childhood.  Pavilion is a town that I went to a lot when I was young but have only driven through since then.  Not much of a destination.  Strange to think of all of the kids who go to school there and the people who live along its quiet streets.

My life has involved an insane amount of driving since somewhere around 1999 and even before then I was doing quite a bit.  Whether it was back and forth to Michigan every several weeks, surprise trips to Chicago or Maine or whatever, I have always been up for a road trip.  But the last seven years seem to have really turned my life into a non-stop trip north and south along the US’ Eastern Seaboard that never seems to end.

I got to work today and was feeling quite a bit better than I have been but I am having really sharp paines in my stomach.  Just what I need.  At least today is a super, unbelievably slow day at the office.  At lunch time ten of us ended up going out to an Italian place around the corner from work that I have never been to before and had a four bottles of wine lunch.  We had a really good time.

The afternoon went by really quickly and by four o’clock there was almost no one left in the office.  I waited until almost five and I was out of there.  I hadn’t expected to have been able to have gotten onto the road so early and I ended up making great time up to Frankfort.  It was barely after nine when I arrived!  Not bad at all.  The trip went really easily.  I finished listening to the book “Can You Keep a Secret” by Sophie Kinsella that Dominica had left in my car some time ago.  It was a good book.  Quite enjoyable and it worked well to make the time pass on my drive down and back up this week.

I arrived in Frankfort and Oreo was so happy to see me.  Almost immediatley Dominica and I ran out and I grabbed some quick pizza at Sulley’s (which has the best cheese pizza around) and then ran to Walmart for some quick supplies before coming back to the house and watching Cars with the family.  That was a much better movie than I had been anticipating.  I thought that it was going to be pretty silly but it was actually very good.  I was very happy with it.

Wired News decided to celebrate the coming new year with the 2006 Foot in Mouth awards. Well worth reading. And definitely worth the opening quote when our nation’s leader shows off his complete and utter lack of literacy. And if that isn’t bad enough, keep reading. The chair of the senate committee attempting to regulate the Internet shows, quite clearly, a total lack of understanding for the very technology he is tasked with regulating. If this is the caliber of US politicians, no wonder we are losing the intellectual arms race. Neither of these two would be able to make it out of a New York state high school with their levels of education. Luckily for them they came from backwater states and attended, obviously, the “my daddy is rich and bought be a degree” colleges – the Ivy League has become well known as the haven for the illiterate rich to buy their way out of doing any actual learning.

I didn’t go into the office until almost eleven this morning. I slept in late but felt quite a bit better after spending the entire day yesterday recovering from food poisoning. Today, though, I have a migraine that I expect is brought on through a combination of dehydration and a lack of protein. I have been drinking tons but I have a lot to make up for from the last two days.

Work was slow today which was good as I was pretty much unable to get anything done. My head hurt pretty bad for most of the day.

Dominica and I found out today that someone is very seriously looking at our house in Geneseo. It is going to be a tough decision for us as to whether to stay or not. We love our “apartment” in Geneseo. Going there always feels like going home. Giving up a home is a really tough thing to do. But we can’t hold on to the house in Geneseo forever just because we don’t want to give it up. That isn’t practical in the long run. Geneseo has become a rather impractical location to keep a house. It was perfect when we bought it but now, even though we believe that we do need to maintain a “base of operations” for ourselves, it is in a very cumbersome location far from the train and airport and not close to any potential work opportunities. If we sell the house in Geneseo we could turn right around in this good buyer’s market and attempt to get a nice, new condo in Buffalo which is likely to be vastly more valuable to us in the long run. We need property that we can rent right now. Not property that sits empty all of the time. And a townhouse is not very practical for us. A condo would be much better.

I was totally useless at work today and left on the early side so I could get home and get some rest.  Nothing much to report.  I watched some Different Strokes and did pretty much nothing all evening.  I ordered in some pizza from Dominos and hung out with the front desk for a little while.  Then it was off to sleep again.

I slept as much as I could last night being so sick which wasn’t much and I spent the entire day today either laying on the futon in the dining room and sitting on the couch in the living room.  I slowly recovered throughout the day but was in pretty bad shape all day long.  I didn’t see any real improvement until in the middle of the afternoon Oreo came out and laid next to me on the futon and we both fell asleep for two hours or so and that really helped.  Boston Terriers make everything better.

I have to be in the office tomorrow and I am not about to call in sick so I have to drive to Newark this evening.  That is not something that I am looking forward to.

I left Frankfort around six in the evening and got to Newark a little after ten.  Not too bad of a drive although I was pretty worried the whole time.  I was able to grab a small meal from McDonald’s on the way and was able to eat it which was good.  I must be improving a lot.  This was the first meal that I have kept down since a tiny breakfast yesterday.  My last realy meal of any size was Christmas dinner two days ago in the middle of the afternoon!