It is Monday and it is back to work for me. We woke up a little on the late side today and the sun was already up. Not too big of a deal as I worked all day yesterday. It isn’t like a Monday for normal people where they are recovering from a weekend of partying or slacking off or whatever and sleeping in late means skipping some amount of work. I work all weekend so getting a little bit of a break on Monday morning can be pretty important in keeping me functional after a long Sunday.
Apparently, though, Dominica’s mobile phone’s clock skewed rather dramatically while its battery was dead and she was under the impression that it was actually the middle of the afternoon when we got out of bed rather than just fifteen minutes later than usual in the morning. So while I was casually logging in to the office and getting ready to walk over to the office itself she was freaking out thinking that it was incredibly late and that I had already missed half of the work day!
It was not until I started trying to make lunch plans that she began to figure out that maybe the time was not what she thought that it was. LOL. I am going to guess that the change of timezones has affected her a bit more than she realized. I definitely feel the change of timezones on a daily basis. Just being off by one hour is noticeable – especially when I continue to work and function on Eastern time but everything around me is on Central time.
I walked to work once I was ready. Now, finally, the weather is really awesome. Over fifty degrees today! This is great. it is the second week of January and already I don’t need a jacket to walk over to the office. This is what living in Texas is all about.
At lunch I walked back home and Dominica and I had sandwiches. Being able to walk back and forth is amazingly cost effective! It is healthy too. Getting two round trip walks in every day is not a huge amount of exercise but it is more than i would normally get.
I returned to the office after lunch and was only there for maybe five minutes when Dominica called to tell me that the fire alarms were going off at the apartment building again and that Oreo was freaking out and that she was unable to take care of both Liesl and Oreo with the alarms going off. While we were on the phone they went off again. So I told my boss that some flooding was happening again and that I needed to get home and back home I went having not even settled in to work yet.
I talked to the fire department, who I had seen arrive as I was leaving the office, and they said that today it was not our pipes bursting from the freeze but instead it was a carpetter (anyone know the proper word there?) who accidentally knocked a sprinkler head off and caused the fire suppression system to unload onto the second floor flooding the building yet again. Great.
Luckily (for us that is) no water made it to our apartment and things are fine for us. Honestly, though, considering how little we have in our apartment it does seem as though it might not have been better if this would have happened to us. You can just imagine how the call to our insurance company might have gone:
Us: “We’ve had a flood and everything that we own is destroyed.”
Insurance Company: “Okay, so what was ruined.”
Us: “Well, our living room chair.”
Insurance Company: “We have you listed as having an inflatable arm chair in leopard print?”
Us: “That’s correct, we would like it replaced.”
Insurance Company: “Just to be sure that we are on the same page here. This is a plastic chair? Have you tried wiping it off yet?”
Us: “Oh wait, oh yeah. You can just dry it off! Nevermind.”
So I was home during the afternoon in case there was any further issue with the alarms. Oreo really can’t handle being in the apartment with alarms going off. He gets so scared. Fortunately there were no further alarms for the rest of the day.
This evening we drove out to Dominica’s aunt and uncle’s house in Arlington. They have some spare furniture for us that we are going to get to use in our incredibly empty apartment. We picked up two bar stools and a dining room chair in addition to some kitchen flatware items like plates. Thus far we have just been living off of disposable dishes and utensils that we have been washing and reusing (a la Scott & Andy in Pittsburgh circa 2000.)
We visited for about an hour but it was rather late so we could not stay for long. On the way back to Irving, which seems to take possible half an hour, we stopped at the same Waffle House that we stopped at the last time that we were there and had a very late dinner.
I discovered the joys of pecan pie heated on the grill and smothered in melted butter tonight. Holy cow is that good!
After getting home, Liesl did not feel like going to bed at all and, as she has become accustomed to doing, she kept us up until around midnight when she finally fell asleep. We are really getting exhausted because of her new schedule. The shift of timezones has not worked out in our favour at all. Liesl used to go to bed early and get up early which is pretty good for my work schedule. But now we have shifted by an hour one way and she has shifted an hour the other way and we are getting no sleep 🙁
Back to work tomorrow and hopefully no additional flooding issues at the apartment. We are excited to get to sit down now while we eat. That will make for a nice change of pace.