June 18, 2009: Ramona Leaves Us

I got up around eight this morning.  Ramona got up and joined us around nine but was on the phone earlier.  Liesl got up with me and came down to the basement to hang out while I worked as has become pretty common for us.  She just loves hanging out with me while I work and I really enjoy getting to spend that early morning time with her because she is somach zehnder modulator happy first thing in the morning.  Happy and content to just sit on my lap and hang out.

Ramona poked her head into the basement and said good morning.  Things were slow so Liesl and I went upstairs and hung out for a while.  Liesl had a great morning playing on Ramona’s bed.  She was in a really great mood.  It was nice that Liesl and Ramona got quite a bit of good bonding time this week as they will not see each other for a really long time now.  Probably around eleven months, I would guess.

Oreo came in and discovered that a bed was set up for him in Liesl’s room and that it already had blankets on it so he curled up and went back to sleep.  He is so happy when we have a bed set up in there.

Dominica got up around ten or so and then came in to hang out with us.  Then I went back to work so that I would be caught up and able to go to lunch with everyone when lunch time rolled around.

In addition to normal work, I was able to build several new servers today. That went really well.

At noon I was able to go up and join the girls.  Ramona was surfing the web on her laptop getting her flights booked to China – she leaves in early July.  Dominica was reading on her Kindle.

It was about half past noon when we got out the door.  We decided to go to Grandma’s for lunch as it was on Crompond on Ramona’s way out of town towards Maine.  It was an awesome lunch.  I got the bagel and lox platter again as it was so good last time.  Amazing tomatoes.  I don’t know what they do to get such good tomatoes but they are just delicious.  Ramona was very excited about the pie selection.  We all got pie for dessert.  Ramona got two pieces but her eyes were bigger than her stomach and she took a good portion of her meal and most of one piece of pie to go to eat on the drive north.

It was around two when we said our goodbyes to Ramona.  It is sad that we will not see her for so long.  A whole year on the other side of the world.  Although, really, when you think about it, we have a lot of friends who live pretty close that we easily go that long without seeing so it really is not that bad.  Several people reading SGL right now will probably note that we have not seen them in a year or possibly a few.  It sounds like a really long time but when you get into your thirties, like me, it is easy to have a few years fly by and have only spoken via email, FaceBook, SGL or phone.

It was back to work for me as soon as we returned to the house.  It was a busy afternoon and I was working hard until seven.  Then I came upstairs to be with Liesl until she went to bed.  I was so full from lunch that I just skipped dinner entirely tonight.  I had a snack of rice crackers and spice tunafish salad later on but that was all.

Liesl went to bed around eight thirty.  Then it was back down to the basement to work for me.  I put in another hour or two.  Then Dominica buckled down and got started on her Perl scripting and programming class and I hung out upstairs so that I could help her with it.  It was really late when she started and we were both pretty frustrated with how tired we were.  She went to bed a little before midnight and, like always, I returned to the basement to get back to work.

I really wanted to get caught up on SGL tonight in addition to completing some important tasks for the office and getting my email mailbox cleared down so that I could work in the morning.  That is a task that can only be done at night or on the weekend.  So I stayed up taking care of those things until well after two thirty in the morning.

Tomorrow Dominica is getting her hair done at a new salon that she is going to try.  Then in the afternoon we have to pick up my suit and the drycleaning in Yorktown Heights.  Dominica will spend much of the day packing.  As soon as my office work is done tomorrow we are hoping in the car and driving up to Frankfort.  Saturday is Dominica’s cousin Stephanie’s wedding.  I am scheduled to work Saturday morning at eight.  It is going to be a long day without a lot of sleep the night before.

Also on Saturday, Francesca and the girls along with Joe and Brit are going to be arriving from Texas just in time to make it to the wedding.  They are going to be exhausted.  So we are going to spend the week visiting with them.  Later in the week I am going to go to dad’s house for a few days as I have SpiceCorp Upstate New York next Saturday in Rochester.  It is going to be a busy week.

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