At Day 9 began, I was just getting off the plane at Newark Airport.

Almost as soon as I got into the terminal and I turned my phone on, the thing started ringing off the hook.  I had like 20 messages from Ron.  His website was down and he was having issues with the support people at his ISP.  Wanted me to help figure out what was wrong.  Of course, it took me like half an hour to listen to all the messages he'd left me over the last few hours when I had been on the plane.  By the time I was done listening to his messages, I'd gone to the luggage area and was waiting for my luggage. 

I called Ron back and talked to him about the issues he was having and diagnosed it and gave him a sort of script to tell the customer support people.  It was the same kind of issue that had happened before.  But the support people were clueless as usual.

When I was finally done with Ron, the luggage thing had stopped turning, and my bag still was not there.  I started walking around and eventually found it in the luggage office.  It had been there all along.  I had been standing there looking at the bags go around for the whole 30 minutes I was talking to Ron for no real reason.  Oh well, time to go home.

Once I had my bags it was into the monorail, to the parking, to my car, then to the turnpike, then heading south toward home.  I was tired.  I was ready to be home.  No stops.  Straight home.  Striaght home to Nacho and Brain.

Brandy had been taking care of Brain and Nacho.  They were fine.  I fed them and watered them.  I think they were happy to see me.  Maybe.

I was tired.  But sleep was not going to come right away.  I putzed around the house for a few hours.  Watched some TV.  Did some email.  Unpacked a little bit.  I needed to kill some time before I was really ready to sleep.

But eventually I crashed.  ZZZzzz...

In the morning, the process repeated itself in reverse.  I took a long time to get up and get ready.  I had to actually go back to work.  I was ready to be home from vacation, but work?  Argh!

Last thing before leaving for work, I checked out the wound I had gotten several days before when I fell off the bike.  It sure looked nasty!

Thus inspired, I headed to work.  I headed in then sat down at my desk to check my work email and see what had been going on while I was gone.

After catching up on email, it was time to do the rounds visiting the folks I worked with to find out what was going on, and what things I might need to be working on.  First up, Susan...

Then Jon...

Next I tried to visit Matt...  but his cube was empty!!

I rapidly discovered the reason for Matt's absence...  at least I think this is right...  at 15:20 UTC...  just about 19 minutes after I took the picture of Matt's empty cube above...  Matt's daughter Emma Dianne was born!!  She was 5.3 lbs, 19.5 inches.  Congratulations Matt!!!

I then headed over to Kelly's cube.  She was also gone.

I do not believe however that her reason for not being at her cube was the same as Matt's.

I did manage to catch Rose though.  Despite apperances, she was not really coming out of the Men's room.

When I got back to my desk, time was already starting to wind down on the work day.

So, this seemed like a perfect time to attack a candy egg that Susan had given me.

It was a trick egg!  With a toy inside!

On the way out, one quick pass of David's office...

And then I was done with work for the day.

Somehow during the day I had conned Jon into coming with me to my Self Storage space. 

I had just moved into my new house a few weeks before this random vacation, and there was still stuff to move.  Jon had agreed to help me carry boxes from storage to the basement of my house.

Now let me explain something.  The previous time I had moved boxes from storage from this location, I had had difficulty opening the door.  Boxes I had stacked inside the storage area had fallen against the door and jammed it.  I had ended up forcing the door up an inch or so with brute force, then using a car jack to open it to about four inches, then I had reached in and a little bit at a time pulled things out throught he whole until I could free the door and open it normally.  It had been a rel mess.

So this time, Jon and I got there.  I tried to open the door.  It would not open.  "Oh no!", I thought, "It did it again!".  So, assuming that things had fallen again, I figured I knew what to do and got out the jack.

John and I worked with the Jack for about 10 minutes.  Trying different angles.  Trying to just lift it with our hands.  Nothing worked.  It was not budging at all. 

Now, if you look CAREFULLY at the picture above, you will see the problem.  OK.  The padlock is off and on the ground.  Good.  OK, now look at the latch.  Uh huh.  It is still latched.  I had taken off the padlock, but had not remembered to pull back the latch to actually free the mechanism so that the door could move.  John and I had just spent ten minutes trying to force open a latched (but unlocked) door.

Well, once we noticed this, the door of course opened immediately and with no effort at all.

So, problem resolved, Jon and I loaded up both of our cars with boxes.  We managed to get all but a couple things from the storage space.  I'd have to come back for those later.  But we took what we had, and Jon followed me back to my house, where we could then unpack and take all the boxes to my basement.

After all the boxes were loaded, Jon wanted to check out my loft with the X1 projector showing the DirecTivo.

I asked Jon if he wanted to stay and watch a movie or anything, but he had to go...

With Jon gone, I settled in to catch up on some TV on the Tivo, and catch up on email on the the laptop, and IM a few friends that were online.

And then, as I settled in and was relaxing and getting used to being home again, Day 9 of the trip ended, and with that, since I was finally at home, the 2003 Q3 random vacation to Mackay, Idaho was also over.