15 Work Days Left for Dominica; House closing scheduled in 11 days.

I was very, very exhausted this morning when the alarm on my BlackBerry went off alerting me that it was time to log into the office and get started on the day.  I am covering the early shift this morning so that I can go to Joe and Nicole’s wedding this afternoon in Rochester.

The drive from Newark to Peoria went pretty well last night.  About as good as we could hope for.  The weather was nice and there was almost no traffic once we were out of Newark itself.  We stopped at Dunkin Donuts at Exit 27 on i80 and got flatbread sandwiches for dinner.

Tonight was the first time that Dominica and I got to drive the new northern extension of Interstate 99 (running alongside US 15) connecting the rest of 99 up into New York.  What a difference the new road makes.  We have been watching them build this stretch for years; it has been a really ambitious project.  The new addition to the highway is really spectacular.  It saves us quite a bit of time and makes the drive quite a bit easier.  It shaves five minutes off at a minimum and easily ten to fifteen.  It is enough of a difference that if the GPS unit knew that the road was there it would switch the recommended route from the i81 corridor to the i99 corridor.  They are so close in time that this swings it over the edge.  As it is the GPS thinks that we are driving on an empty hillside and freaks out for quite a while.

It was six minutes past one in the morning when we pulled into dad’s driveway.  We sat up talking until two thirty or a little later.  It is so hard to get to bed right after having driven for so long.

I didn’t get to sleep in at all.  Three hours of sleep is about all that I was able to get.  I was up at six thirty and logged into the office to start my day.  Wow was I tired.  Today is going to be quite long.

Dad and Dominica went over to the Omega Grill in Geneseo for a really late breakfast and brought me back lunch.  I was so busy that there was no way that I could leave the office for any amount of time.  Also, since I am working an early shift today and knocking off on the early side I didn’t want to also disappear for lunch even if it wasn’t busy so I worked through my lunch.

My day ended up being insanely busy.  I was on the phone for much of the day.  At one point I was trapped for almost three hours trying to just get in to use the restroom!  It was a crazy day.

I worked right up until three in the afternoon.  We had to literally run out the door to get up to Greece for the wedding.  I was on the phone right up until the last second and on instant messenger telling people that I could no longer keep working.  It was just a really busy day.

We ended up arrived at Hope Lutheran Church on Vintage Lane in Greece, New York at three forty – twenty minutes early for the wedding which was far more leeway than we guessed that we would have.  We are never early to weddings so this was pretty amazing (Dominica was very late to Phil and Kate’s wedding when we met so it kind of set a precedent I guess.)

We sat with Nate, Tammy, Eric and Peggy Parker.  Jeff Simpson made it to the wedding but sat in the back on the other side so we did not know that he was there until after the service.

The wedding was very nice.  Hope Lutheran is am amazing venue for a wedding.  What a great facility.  We were surprised when Jeff found us after the service.  The five of us (Jeff, Nate, Dominica, Tammy and I) hung out at the church for about half an hour.  We had a little time to kill before the reception at six thirty (it was about four thirty at this point but there was some driving to do) and Jeff needed to drive home to pick up his wife, Danielle, before the reception.  So Nate, Tammy, Dominica and I drove to Tim Horton’s on Lake Avenue next to Kodak Park and got some coffee and visited.

The reception was at the Burgundy Basin in Pittford, New York on the east side of Rochester.  The church was in Greece just a few blocks from where Joe’s old house used to be but he and Nikki have just recently completed building a new house in Farmington much closer to where Joe works.  The Burgundy Basic is a rather famous wedding reception location in Rochester although I have never been there before.

We had a really good time at the reception.  It was really nice to get a chance to hang out with Nate and Tammy and Jeff and Danielle as we almost never get to see any of them.  Dominica and I didn’t do any dancing.  Between my back and her being so far along there was no way that we were getting up to dance.

We stayed at the wedding until around elevenish which was much later than we had anticipated on being out.  We were having a really good time and didn’t want to leave.  Instead of a DJ, they had a live band, Unlimited, who happened to be the same live band that Jeff and Danielle Simpson had at their wedding.  They were excellent – quite impressive.

4 Days to Dominica’s 30th Birthday.  (Thursday!)

I awoke at seven this morning.  I have become so accustomed to waking so early recently that it is getting hard to sleep in even when I am tired.  My CPAP facemask is starting to fall apart and it is time for me to switch to the new one that I got almost a year ago.  I have been avoiding switching to it because I don’t want to go through them any faster than is absolutely necessary since they are rather expensive and dealing with the CPAP shop has been rather traumatic thus far.

We slept in a bit today as yesterday was just exhausting.  I did some work in the living room before Dominica got up.  I was up a few hours before she was.  Oreo came out and laid in the sunlight for a while.

We got breakfast from downstairs, French toast and eggs, and attempted to watch an episode of The Love Boat. Our afternoon ended up being very short.  Before we knew it we were rushing around trying to get ready for the wedding.  It is amazing how quickly the day can vanish on you when you have some place to be at four in the afternoon.

It was not a far drive to the wedding.  It was at L’Affaire Catering on US 22 in Mountainside, New Jersey.  It took us just under twenty minutes to get over there.  We ended up having plenty of time – we were there about forty-five minutes before the service started.

They had a little panic at the wedding – something happened to the officiating minister and he was unable to make it to the ceremony!  Clarence’s father, fortunately, is a minister and was able to step in without any warning.  It really caught him by surprise – arriving at his sons wedding with no intention of “having a job to do” and suddenly having to be the officiating minister!  What a day for him.  He had just come from doing his normal Sunday morning sermon(s) and was rather hoarse.

The wedding was very nice.  I tried to take lots of pictures.  I was very prepared bring two batteries for the Kodak camera.  Both, somehow, were dead.  I managed to get approximately five shots before both batteries were dead.  What a waste.  I had considered bringing the good Nikon SLR and apparenly that would have been the better decision.  One would think that by having two batteries for the same camera that these kinds of problems would not arise so often.

We had a good crowd of residents from our apartment there to see the wedding.  Nadine is very popular around here.  It was nice to get a chance to spend some time with a number of our neighbours that we do not get to see regularly or at least not very often or for very long.

After the service there was a cocktail hour while the wedding party got their pictures taken.  JC, who used to work at our building, was one of the groom’s men as well which was nice as we have not seen him for more than a minute since he left our building to take a nice airline job.

The cocktail hour was awesome.  Not only did we have fun visiting with our neighbours but the food was spectacular.  They had tons and tons of food with all kinds of different stations plus waiters coming around with different items.  The baked brie and raspberry sauce, the mushroom pasta, the penne vodka, the salmon on puff pastry with mustard sauce, etc., etc.  It was great.  It was very, very difficult not to overeat to the point of not being able to eat dinner.

Dinner was awesome as well.  This might be the best wedding food that I have ever had.  Dominica and I both had the baked salmon, mashed potatoes and veggies for dinner.  We didn’t really dance.  Dominica, being pregnant, really was not up for it and with my foot problems we figured that it was best if it was avoided.

We stayed until nine thirty or so.  The crowd was beginning to thin.  We had a really good time and were very happy to have been able to have attended.  The newlyweds are off on a honeymoon cruise shortly for more than a week.

Oreo was so upset that we were gone all day that he didn’t even eat dinner.  He just lay on the bed with us and snuggled as close as he could while we watched a little The Love Boat before going to sleep.

Oreo had a great time at the party last night.  He had a whole yard and house in which to run around freely and two dogs to play with.  The one collie was eleven and very aged so they could not play but was very friendly and looking for attention from everyone.  It is very sad seeing a sweet dog get so old.

Dudley was there, Katie’s dog, and he and Oreo spent a lot of time running around together.  Oreo does not often get wide open space so it was a nice change for him.  They played pretty well until some kabobs were given to the dogs and some territoriality came into play.  In a surprise move, Duds, who is close to three times Oreo’s size, and a little argument with Oreo and in a flash Oreo was flipped over on his back and panicking.  We had to pull them apart pretty quickly.  That was the end of the fun night for Oreo.  After that he just wanted to be held and to relax.

We had to sleep in a bit this morning just to make up for getting in so late last night.  It was around ten thirty when we finally got out of bed.  I did a little work in the office but only a tiny bit.  Today is my last official day with a contract so I figured that I should at least do something, even if it was only symbolic.

We found out this morning that the Mazda PR5 is not going to be purchased as we had hoped.  We have been waiting for the final approval of the purchase for two weeks, or so, thinking that everything was pretty much finalized and then today, in the midst of everything else, found out that they weren’t actually interested in it.  Of course, bolstering my already hearty dislike for people’s concepts of “vacations”, we would have known this quite some time ago but people went “on vacation” and stopped communicating to the outside world – ignoring obligations because somehow some parts of society have approved the idea of a “vacation” as exempting the vacationers not only from their work obligations but from their personal ones as well.

I think that this concept is probably quite old.  When I was a child (and obviously any time before that) going on a vacation (one that involved travel, at least) meant going to a remote location where postal mail and telephones were impossible to get or unreasonably expensive for anything less than a full emergency.  But that world has past and today with the Internet, mobile phones, BlackBerries, etc. you are no less accessible while in a remote location than when sitting in your living room.  Today, having a telephone that doesn’t reach you everywhere actually costs you more, usually, than one that does not reach you everywhere.

Basically, we live in a world when the traditional concept of escapism in vacations is no longer an intrinsic feature of travel but now requires active, intentional ingnorance (in the tradition, true meaning of the word as a derivitive of the word ignore.)  You have to ignore people trying to reach you.  You have to avoid responding to people.  It is a completely different animal these days.  And this phenominon is not new.  Mobile phones have been making this shift occur since the early 1990s and the Internet has been changing it since the late 1990s.  It has been roughly eight years now, a decently long time, that there has been little to no excuse to ever be out of reach for more than half a day or less.  And now that most people use instant messaging and text messaging via mobile devices all day long any breach in ongoing communications because of a “vacation” has to be completely intentional.

I am not suggesting that people never stop working and never take a break from work.  Moreso I am saying that personal responsibilities are not curtailed in any way by a claim of “vacationing” or being out of town.  People have traditional used the idea of vacationing as a way to avoid responsibilities and communications because it was a difficult claim to dispute.  No one would be able to know if you were truly stuck in a situation without communications or not.  Today that is not true and there are so many, free or nominal cost communications modes and so little change between home, office and hotel in relation to those modes that not responding to responsibilities while away is exactly the same as not responding to them when standing face to face with someone.

If you want some sympathy from me in reference to you being helplessly out of reach you had better be backpacking through Kyrgystan and even there you will likely have intermittent phone and Internet access.  There are very, very few places left on earth where you are truly out of touch and fewer and fewer people who are comfortable being in those situations.  Most people today desperately want to keep in contact via email, phone, web, etc.  Recently I even had a conversation with my friend David while he was hanging out in a cafe in Tunisia.  He was just checking up on his email, FaceBook, etc.  It’s far more interesting, I think, vacationing in places when you can still communicate to the outside world instead of just “disappearing” for a few days and then returning with some pictures.

All of that aside, we are rather happy that we are not selling the car as we think that we will most likely want to have it once the baby arrives in November.  We need a car that can haul some things and will easily fit the baby’s car seat, Oreo, both of us and the baby’s things.  The PR5 also gets good gas mileage and has amazing snow tires.  It just had a bit of work done to it and has been sitting all summer not getting any older so its value to us is probably much higher than its street value and we had been planning on selling it at rather a bargain.  So, other than a certain desperation for cash right at the moment because of the house, we would prefer to hold on to the car.

My afternoon was spent writing a very large BASH script that will take our newly built Castile Christian Academy workstations and turn them into fully ready desktops.  It has to remove all of the unnecessary and inappropriate packages, change repositories, add in needed educational packages, change system files, detect the system’s identity and do all of our standard customizations.  It is rather involved.

I got some word, finally, from the consulting firm this afternoon but it wasn’t encouraging.  Basically, they claim that their hands are tied and they have no contracts to protect them.  It would appear that doing the “right thing” is way too much effort and so instead they see me as a scape goat and are just passing the cuts on to me… including massive monetary gains for themselves.  The original cut was just 7.5% but it escalated to 15.73% by the time that it reached me.  That means that while there was a cut (which was at their discretion and they opted to take) at the beginning I am taking more of a cut than anyone and the only person losing here is me.

In fact, everyone else is making a fortune on the deal – coming completely out of my pockets.  In addition, I took the furlough earlier in the year which was an additional 3.5% or so.  So my total cut, between March and August comes to 19.5%!!  This is insane.  And they wonder why I won’t even discuss the possibility of accepting the cut.  To make things even more stressful I have a very large amount of comp time and 401K money on the line that could very easily be taken away.  At least things look promising to have my contract moved to another pass-through vendor, but who knows what all impacts there could be along the way.  I think I need ulcer medication

For dinner we ordered in Brazilian Pizza again.  It was awesome.  We ate pizza and watched two episodes of Frasier.  We are on the third season still, I think.

The weather is cooler today than it has been in a while so we decided to open the windows and let some fresh air into the apartment.  The apartment has gotten musty and stale.  The air conditioning units did not get cleaned like they are supposed to be because our bed takes up the entire room and there was no way to clear space to do the cleaning.  Or at least we imagine that that is the reason.  Nothing was said to us so we are giving the building the benefit of the doubt that the cleaning process even occurred.  It might easily have not taken place at all.

I was doing some shopping on eBay and discovered an amazing price on a high effeciency Hewlett-Packard DL145 G3 rack mount AMD Opteron based server.  It even comes with the rack mounting kit which is nice.

Andy called and we talked for an hour or so this evening.  Then it was time to walk Oreo, wrap up SGL, do a little work for the office (in the minutes running up to the end of my contract), answer emails, update Twitter and head off for bed.

No wonder it is hard for me to ever actually make it to bed!

This coming Saturday, Dominica and I have Nadine and Clarence’s wedding to attend.  So we will be gone for most of the day.  Every moment that we are not gone I am scheduled to be working – although that is obviously in some question at this point.

I drove out to Norwich from Ithaca this afternoon.  The drive really isn’t too bad at all.  Less than two hours.  An hour and a half if you do it right since I live on the east side of Ithaca and do not need to cross the city to get out here.

The drive went really well and I managed to drive straight to Kate’s parents’ house without making a single wrong turn the entire way (this was in the days before GPS or even having electronic maps on your mobile phone!)  The rehearsal went well.

Afterwards everyone else decided to stay at the Howard Johnson’s Inn in Norwich but since I lived so close, was carpooling with people and was short on cash I decided that it would be best if I drove back to Ithaca both tonight and tomorrow night.

It was quite late when I pulled back into Ithaca.  Not much sleep for me tonight.  Tomorrow will be a busy day.