May 22, 2006: Wesley Crusher Returns to Starfleet

Last night when I went to go to bed I discovered that the trip had been hard on my CPAP and the facemask had broken. Dominica helped me and we managed to tape it back together with packing tape enough to hold the pressure in for the night and let me sleep. That sucks. The facemask alone on those things costs close to two hundred dollars! I guess that I need to call the CPAP company and see what we can do. It will be really awful if it gets any worse and we can’t continue to fix it and keep it working. But my facemask is a full nine or ten months past its normal end of life so I really can’t complain much.

I slept in a little this morning and got into work just after nine. It was a slow morning at the office which was great because Mondays are always tough – although my weekend was so busy that I don’t feel like I stopped working at all. Today is my last day with my “partner” at work for two weeks. He is going to the UK for a conference and then training. So I am being left alone to tend to the shop all by myself. That is pretty scary. I am supposed to be at training myself next week but it looks like that is going to be cancelled. I don’t know for sure yet but there is a very good chance because I will be the only one left around. I should know later today.

Dominica got an offer from FujiFilm Edison today. Or, rather, she received her welcome kit without ever having been contacted to see if she would even want the position! I am not sure if that was a mistake or what but we were a little surprised. We have no idea why they thought that she would want to take the position when it has terrible hours and the exact same pay in New Jersey as it did in Rochester which is the equivalent of much, much less. She knew during her interview that she really wasn’t interested in the position. I mean we are appreciative of the fact that the company really wanted to keep her and was willing to hire her down here even when there have been so many layoffs there but it seems a little cheeky to just send out a welcome packet given the situation. We had decided that it would be better for her not to work at all than to have that job. We would see each other less with her living in New Jersey than we had with her living in New York only down here Oreo would have to go to doggie daycare every day instead of going to dad’s house which would cost even more than the gas had cost driving to and from Rochester every weekend.

My afternoon ended up being even more uneventful than my morning was. My cubicle was completely silent all day. It gave me a chance to do some reading, catch up on the news, catch up on the SGL Dailies, do a bunch of email, etc.

I called to get some new CPAP equipment like a new facemask, tubing and filters today. That was when I discovered that Dominica’s health insurance had been cancelled in April! Oops. So I called her and she called the HR department at her last job to find out what was going on. We paid for the health insurace. We paid through May or maybe June. She didn’t leave her job until May so even if we had decided to cancel it shouldn’t have cancelled yet. Hopefully she will be able to get that straightened out today so that I can get a new facemask quickly. It is not going to be long before sleeping is pretty tough. And it takes extra time to do anything because I have to have the stuff shipped to my dad’s house and pick it up on some weekend when I am in the area.

We did discover that because we are now AAA members (since both of our cars are now out of warranty – Min’s turned 76,000 miles on the way to Ohio) that we get a 10% discount on Amtrak travel. So it is really inexpensive now. Only $45 to go from Penn Station in Manhattan all the way to Rochester. That is a lot less than the price of gas. Only $65 to go to Alliance, Ohio.

Dad got home this afternoon from Ohio. He had a good time on Sunday visiting with everyone but I am sure that he was ready to get back home. His classes in Castile wrapped up on Friday so this is his chance to actually just sit back and relax a little – no classes to teach, nowhere to travel to and no dog to dog sit. Now he can go out and enjoy is ten acre frisbee golf course.

Wil managed to come up with a shot from the cut scene for Star Trek X: Nemesis where he plays Wesley Crusher returning to Star Fleet after many years away. Here you can see this rare photograph of Former Acting Captain Wesley Crusher (the original image link appears to have gone stale, even though it is on Wil’s own site, so here is another link to the same picture.) in the latest Star Fleet uniform. Oh yeah. Geek power: activate!

My afternoon continued into the vortex of uneventfulness. Just absolutely nothing happened. Funny how days get to be like this. Like the whole world just forgot about me and I am able to just sit quietly in my cubicle isolated from outside influences.

I did some database design work on paper. That was kind of exciting. Not for work, just for me. Since there was no work to do at all. I managed to get to page 78 of the AJAX book that I was reading before leaving for the day. If tomorrow is anything like today I might even manage to finish it. I decided to leave work at 6:00. if no one has needed me up until 6:00 it is very unlikely that they are going to need me after 6:00. Maybe no one knows that I am here today. Maybe I smell funny.

No rain today. This is the first day in some time that I have really noticed that there was no rain at all. I was enjoying the rain. I like it to be dark out most of the time.

I got home and Dominica was waiting outside so that she could hop right into the car. We went right over to the Omega Diner for some dinner. It isn’t bad going out to eat as long as we can do it like that. If I have to park the car, go into the house, wait around until she is ready to go and then head back out again I have gotten tired and don’t want to leave again but if we do it quickly I am willing to go out on a work night.

We came home and watched That 70′s Show. I tried to do some work on the computer but found that I was kind of out of it and mostly just sat starring at the screen. That was a waste of time.

We went to bed around 11:00. Before falling asleep I read an issue of Windows IT Pro. It is a constant challenge to keep up with my magazines.