I did not get any sleep last night. None. Not a wink. Went to bed around eleven thirty. Oreo decided to sleep in the guest room rather than in our bedroom which never helps me to sleep as I am always wondering if he is okay or not and if he needs my attention or if he is wandering around looking for me or if he needs help. It was very warm as well which is a killer for me. Liesl was pretty restless as well so I was up very often taking care of her pacifier and stuffed animals.
Liesl has a new Fisher Price stuffed seahorse that she loves. Dominica bought it earlier this week from Amazon. Liesl fell in love with it instantly. That and her music-box giraffe are her two bed time friends. She hugs them while she sleeps. She is so adorable. The seahorse plays music for five or ten minutes slowly getting software and has a glowing tummy to help her fall asleep more easily. It works really well. She instantly throws her arms around it and snuggles with it until she is asleep.
Around three in the morning, after having tossed and turned and gotten up and down checking on Liesl, Oreo came in and needed to be taken outside for a walk. So I got up and took care of him. That took me from mostly asleep to completely awake. I laid in bed for another half an hour while Oreo jumped on and off of the bed trying to decide what he wanted to do. Finally at three thirty I couldn’t take it anymore and I got out of bed having completely given up on sleeping altogether and headed down to the basement to just start work rather than laying in bed thinking about all of the work that I was not getting done while not sleeping either. Oreo followed me down immediately and happily made himself a bed on the theatre couch and was as happy as could be.
It is not all bad. I have a lot of work to do and being able to get to it early on a Friday morning does give me quite the jump on things. My first task was clearly down my email. My inbox had skyrocketed to one hundred and fifty items in the last few days and I find it cripplying to have a full inbox. I need things cleaned out to be efficient. I also closed tons of tickets at work. Those are hard to do during the day when email requests are pouring in non-stop.
I got a lot of posting on SpiceWorks completed as well. Significant progress there.
The Ralstons are coming down tonight to visit and to prepare for their departure to the Congo. It is really weird to think that their going away party was yesterday and already they have pretty much seen everyone that they know for the last time before becoming completely isolated deep in the African jungle. They are expecting to arrive in Peekskill around ten tonight. Hopefully I will be done with work by then.
Tomorrow Art and Danielle are hanging out here and Michael is hanging out with his grandmother who is helping ship down the luggage and stuff that is going onto the plane with them. Tomorrow we also have to pick up the cargo van early in the morning. Then get it all packed and ready to go to the airport. Sunday should be a day completely off. Then most of Monday will be spent getting everyone ready and off to the airport. They have an afternoon flight and because it is international and because they have so much luggage they need to be there well ahead of time. Then Dominica and I have to return the cargo van.
Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Peekskill called today to tell us that they found a van for us. That is great. We were going to have to drive to a further location to get a van if they did not come through with one. So now we have about sixteen miles less driving that needs to be done on Saturday morning. That is important as I have a lot of work that needs to be done on Saturday morning and it was going to be tight.
Dominica realized today that we had forgotten to get our photo inspection done of the new BMW that is required for automotive insurance in New York State! Craptastic. So we were going crazy trying to get that taken care of today. We managed to get it fixed but just another thing that needed to be done on a very busy day.
Dominica and Liesl also went out grocery shopping for a bit. Since the Ralstons have had a lot of opportunity recently to be eating out they are looking forward to home cooking this weekend. So we needed to stock the kitchen so that that would be a possibility.
Today I became the top posted on SpiceWorks. The top all time poster. A pretty major achievement. The people whom I displaced to get to this point put years into getting to the levels that they are. I did not just squeak past either. I have a sizable lead that is constantly growing.
Work was really busy today and made it really hard to get ready for the Ralstons to come visit. Dominica put in a ton of time cleaning the kitchen and it really looks awesome. I did my best to take care of the floors and whatever else I could get to around the house when time allowed. There really was not very much time.
I was still vacuuming when Art and Danielle arrived around a quarter till nine. They had left Mt. Morris around three and made pretty decent time on the drive down. Michael did not come down with them but was coming down with his grandmother and her partner who were bringing a minivan full of all of the luggage that would not fit into the PR5.
So just a few minutes after arrived at our house, Art, Danielle and I piled into the BMW and drove down to the Peekskill Train Station to rescue Deb, Lisa and Michael who were stranded there due to the crazy downtown construction. Deb and Lisa are staying at the Peekskill Inn right on Main Street overlooking the river and the train station. Quite a nice location – if you can get to it.
We came back to the house and hung out until a quarter ’till midnight. We were all really exhausted. Even Liesl was up later than usual – until probably nine thirty. Art and I just sat in the basement talking while I kicked off Handbrake compression jobs to run through the night.
When it was bed time we realized that the house was still quite warm and was not cooling off enough to make it comfortable in which to sleep. So we decided that it was time to turn on the air conditioning for the first time this season. We have not yet run the air conditioning since we bought the house. We were somewhat trepidatious of doing so as we did not want to find out that it would not run. Twice we have rented homes – once to find out that the A/C was completely broken and once to find out that it was not even installed – so we get nervous about this type of stuff.
I have a lot of work that needs to be done tomorrow morning before we can get the cargo van from Enterprise at nine so it is going to be a busy day for me.