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Meeting in the morning. Hit the show floor one last time before they rolled up the carpet. Met up with the enum.at people before we left.

One of the things I was looking for from a personal perspective was a cordless IP phone. There were several vendors there selling phones based on the new DECT standard. It looks like a good idea so far, 1.9ghz is outside the normal bands most current stuff is running in.

Got out of Boston, stopped back home quick, and met up with the Vanakens for dinner. Made it home around 1am.

weeee

Had breakfast and headed to the show. Spent time between the company meeting room and vendor meetings. Met one of the product people who i’ve been working a problem with and had a really decent discussion. Another vendor meeting about conferencing hardware capped out the day at the convention center.

Spent some of the late afternoon catching up on email, then went out to dinner downtown. Has an excellent steak. Skipped out on the conference party to hang back and discuss content distribution and some other things with people from dinner.

Pretended to sleep for a few hours, eff people with horns.

Got to see more of Boston then I expected today :). After taking the approx 325 hour bus ride to the convention center, and another hr checking in we met up for our first vendor meeting. The meeting went well, the walk to the second of the day didn’t ;). It ended up being at a conference center out at the end of a dock. The smell of rotting fish made the walk less then pleasant, but the center was ok.It was probabl  about a mile walk to it once you calculate in the lost factor. Good meeting anyway. Headed back to the show floor, watched my boss give his talk with minimal heckling then headed back to the hotel.

Met the vendor from the afternoon for dinner at Legal Seafood, had the haddock cajun style, jalepeno palenta(sp?) , and a red that pucked my toenails (bleh). Did some work, read a bit and tried to sleep.
My feet hurt ;p, down with concrete.

So today is Sept. 11th. Not one of the best days in America history. Glad I didn’t fly.

Went up to the execusupersecret29thfloor lounge and had some breakfast. Banannannanna and some cranberry juice. Was yummy =).

Met Adam for some status updates, and then dicked around till 1 or so. Then went downstairs to meet with My bosses boss, and then some vendors. Sometime around 3 , i met the last of my team Maureen. Was good all around.

I left the group around 6pm, since they went out to dinner at some schwanky place that wouldn’t have appreciated my inability to wear pants. No big loss as far as I’m concerned ;). For a few minutes we had made plans to remove the tartan patterned lounge curtains and craft a kilt, however nobody had remember to pack a sewing kit. I had some almonds and a granola bar. Which was all I was really hungry for anyway.
Met up with the team and vendors at a bar about a block from the hotel. Still no damn octoberfest, so settled for regular sam adams instead. Had a few jaeger shots, and ice water (yah , i’m an animal ;p).

Not to bar designers… putting the bathroom down 2 flights of stairs and down a dark hallway is kinda creepy.

Off to bed, show starts tommorow. I have a full day of vendor luvin in store.

Woke up kind of early, probably having something do with Huxley the evil cat staring at me. Which is much preferred after the “jump on you all night” response that I was expecting. To gives him some “me” time I went upstairs and sat on the couch for a bit, giving him time to get in some purring and rubbing on the back of my head ;).

After Bob got his lazy ass out of bed, we dicked around for a bit, and had some Mexican for lunch. Tried the wings, which had excellent flavor, they didn’t live up to their “nuclear” tag, but who wants hot that taste crappy anyway. I had the chunk of chicken bone quesadilla, quite yummy.

Went back to rtn.house and messed with Eve online a bit, also did some more drooling on his massive lego collection. I’m seriously jealous of the star wars bits in particular. Magnetic mini figs, and some light up light saber ones were the coolest,  but it’s hard to put down the death star as the top lego. I’m sorta relieved that he has the same lego+pet=CRASH problem that I have, so he can’t play with them either. It lowers the jealously level a bit ;).

I tried to temp Bob to do some yard work but he wasn’t having it. We watched “the league of extraordinary gentleman” instead. It was still shrink wrapped in his DVD case, and certainly needed to be inflicted on someone before it exploded. Bob spent a great deal of the time in the kitchen cooking up some cornish game hens and wild mushroom risotto. Brian came over, and we made quick work of it when it was done.

Left CT a bit late, and made it to Boston around 9:30/10:00. I don’t remember exactly when. How come no matter where I’m going downtown, i end up going around the block 5 times trying to find the one street that goes by the parking garage? ;p

Met up with Adam in the baaar, and met Gary Miller one of my team mates for the first time. Had a beer or two, and resisted the urge of the evil “smartinies”. Something to do with watermelon liquor and smarties candies (sugarbomb dot com). Also met up with my bosses bosses boss… ;).
Downloaded email, and went to bed.

Fairly unexciting and uneventful, perfect.

Left the hill around 11am, got gas, realized i left my cash in the shirt I just changed (chasing chickens), so had to head back and pick it up.

Got into Albany area after 2pm, and headed for the town park to crash the Buell reunion. My original plan was to stop at the Vanakens first since they live on the edge of the park, but no one was home so I left a note on the door. Met with Penny, Herb (becauses there’s is a fucking “H” in it), and even saw Wendy and Kelly who I havn’t seen in a long while. Waiting out a thunderstorm, and headed out of the park.

I noticed a truck in the driveway at the Vanaken homestead, so I pulled in and knocked on the door in the garage. It was kinda of humorous since Bill didn’t recognize me :). “Hi I’m Bill, and you are?” lol. Chatted with him a bit, Chloe wasn’t home =/. Waited out another 2 quick rain sessions, and a decent amount of hail, and drive to the parents house.

Had dinner at the parents house, and mucked with my moms wireless a bit. Nothing to exciting. I’ll stop back in there on thursday on the way home. Got some wooden ducks, the hunters will be amused.

Next I drove out to my friend Gregs house to harrass him about his busted up knee. He seems in good spirits. Chatted with him for a bit , and installed firefox/thunderbird for him, so he could get off the evil that is IE and outlook. Sometimes it feels like i’m roaming PC support ;), whatever works though.

After I left Greg house I stopped at the local super market to buy windex and paper towels. I realized I there was some kind of funky buildup on the inside of the windows, and it had to be removed before I tried to drive at night in the rain. Hit 90 and headed to Bobs house near hartford.

CT drive was pretty uneventful other then me listening to the directions I was given ;). I case anyone else has to make that trip, there are 2 291’s ;p. One in MA and one in CT. The one in MA takes you right back to 90 after 15m or so… ;p. Some guy passed me going about 120mph on 91S. I hope Darwin meets up with him real soon.
Lisa made up a quick pizza for grub, and had a nice glass of white with it. Yummy. It goes without saying that I got to meet Lisa (Hi!), and also Bogart the dog, and his cat Huxley.

went to be really effin late.

Well, we’re down another keet. Dr. Hall called this morning to say Gilbert didn’t make it overnight. He’s going to do a necropsy to hopefully figure out what did him in. :/

So far this week has sucked. After the first dose of dewormer, Gilbert Gape (or Grape; interchangeable) lost his appetite. First his crop emptied out, then he just stopped eating. Today we took him back to the vet and he’s staying overnight after getting two shots–an antibiotic and something to get his digestive system going again. Hopefully whatever came out of his crop isn’t blocking anything.

This week has been like: get up, take care of chickens, work a couple of hours, feed dogs, drive half an hour away and do stuff, drive half an hour back, work a couple more hours, feed mom’s cat,  eat, feed dogs, work some more, go to bed. I’m exhausted. And I’m not even caught up on the whole tomato canning thing I was supposed to be doing this week. I just ordered a food strainer in the hopes of catching up.
On top of that, I also think we’ll be switching groomers. The old location closed and the other location doesn’t take credit cards, not to mention they seemed not as friendly.

Well, no sooner did we lose one that we noticed another guinea keet had a different kind of problem–looked as if it was gasping for air. This was on Saturday morning, and we pulled it out immediately in case it was contagious. Since we weren’t sure if it was bacterial and it was all we had, we started him (her?) on terramycin.

Of course. Animals always get sick at the start of a long weekend.

Googling gasping problems in poultry, we found a lot about gape worm (snail/slug larvae in the lungs/trachea). After the last keet fiasco, we were loathe to name this one, but Paul couldn’t help it. It just popped out. The bird is Gilbert Gape. Of course, if he gets well and goes back into the coop we will never be able to tell him from the others.

So Tuesday morning, I called one animal hospital with an avian vet and got an appointment immediately…only, it turned out when I got there that the vet didn’t normally deal with poultry (miscommunication with desk staff). She was very nice and said she’d take a look, anyway. She seemed to think the problem might be an impacted crop, but was about to go on vacation and was uncomfortable about doing surgery then leaving with no followup care (as was I).

So, turned around, came home, called another vet (just a few miles down the road from the last one, half an hour from here). This vet seemed more familiar with guinea fowl (even owns one)! He wanted to rule out gape worm, so we’ve got Gilbert(a) on a dewormer and will see how that goes.

In other news, Cupcake is no longer a foster but is now our permanent dog.