February 2, 2006: Happy Anniversary to the Ralstons

Art and Danielle have been married for TWELVE YEARS today! Now doesn’t that make all of us that are the same age as them feel really old? I mean really, really old.

Well, today did not go as planned. I had originally thought that I would get up and spend a leisurely day cleaning around the house to get ready for our visit from The Surfing IT Wizard this weekend. But that is not how my day went.

At 10:30 this morning I got a call from Craig asking if I could come downtown and pick him up. Downtown Geneseo, that is, not Rochester. He lives in Greece so I was surprised to hear from him in Geneseo. Turns out that had been driving down to Dansville to work today and ended up getting pulled over for talking on his cell phone out on 390 as it comes through Geneseo. When they pulled him over they had one of those “DMV lost your paperwork three years ago and suspended your license without notice” deals and so they hauled him in. That means that almost everyone that I know has had their license suspended by the NY DMZ without notice of any kind. Is this just how the DMV works to keep our costs down, by saving on stamps?

That was around 9:20 and Craig had called to see if I could go out to 390 and pick up his car but I was in the shower and didn’t get his call until 10:30 when he had posted bail and was out on the street with nowhere to go. He was right downtown so I ran down there and picked him up. We had coffee at the Bagel Cafe downtown and then drove down to Leicester to get his car out of the impound. For some reason they have the impound in a different town than where the court, police and the infraction occurred. Great planning, Geneseo.

It didn’t take too long to get the car released to us but the logistics of moving a person and a car when the person doesn’t have a drivers license is a bit of a problem. Especially when you are stuck out in the middle of the boonies in the middle of a weekday. So I called my Aunt Sharon and we drove Craig’s car up to her house so that we could at least leave it in a driveway where we knew that we could come back and get it from. Then she drove us back down to Jimmy’s in Leicester where Oreo was waiting in my car so that we could pick up that vehicle. Now we had to find someone that was able to take off in the middle of the day to be able to drive Craig’s car around.

Andy was available so Craig and I drove up to Brighton to pick him up so that we could take him back down to Leicester with us. Before heading back down we all went to the India Palace in the plaza right next to Andy’s apartment for some lunch since none of us had eaten all day. It was okay. Nothing like the Pakistan House. I think the drive across town is probably worth it. But the food was fine and they did have Tofu Saag which was really good. We all just got the buffet so that we could get moving quickly. There was a lot to be done today.

We drove down to Leicester and picked up the car from my aunt’s house. Andy followed Craig and I as we drove up to the city again. Lots of miles being put on today. We got up to Greece and got to Craig’s house. We took a little break there and hung out for about an hour or a little less. Craig’s wife came home shortly after we got there with the new baby (just twelve weeks old) so we finally got to meet him as well. Then Andy and I left Craig to try to figure out how he is going to be getting to work over the next few days or weeks until he gets his license situation straightened out.

I took Andy back to his apartment in Brighton and then drove back home myself. Originally the plan had been to spend the day cleaning and working on a machine that needed to be installed early next week but, obviously, that wasn’t happening today. Once I got home I did what cleaning I could but there was a lot of installation work that had to take precedence on my time. I didn’t manage to finish either as I had been hoping. I have a busy day tomorrow so it will be hard to get anything additional done then either. It is amazing how quickly my days off become awfully full of stuff.

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