Dominica woke me up around five this morning to take Liesl and Oreo away. Oreo was all snugly too, like he knew that he was leaving me. I gave Liesl a kiss goodbye and they were out the door to get on to the road. They have a lot of driving to do with a lot of people crammed into that vehicle. I have a lot more driving to do than they do but their mileage is much, much harder. They have to make a lot of stops with Clara being so young and neither Liesl nor Garrett is going to put up with all that much. Plus they have Oreo too – who is a very good traveler but still.
I got up just a few minutes after they left and got ready for work and headed on into the office bright and early. It is time to start being productive. I really need to take advantage of this time while they are gone so that I can get caught up on all of the stuff that I need to do. It is more rare for me to have so much time in which I have nothing to do but to work. Can’t waste it! It is going to be ten days before I see them again or maybe more. We haven’t figured out the logistics of how we are meeting once I get the Ralstons up to New York. I don’t even know where they are going to be at that point. Neither they nor I have a car once we get to New York which is going to make a lot of things very, very difficult. It is pretty silly that we are all driving up there with two cars and yet we have no car!
Work was okay. I spent much of the day today writing Python which is a very nice change from the usual. I have not actually worked in Python before. I’ve written a hello world program and I’ve read books on Python and I’ve worked in many related languages like Perl, Ruby, etc. So this is fun. We are now using Python for Linux administration at the office – mostly because it is one of only two languages that are really options because they are the two that are installed on every box and it won out over the other, Perl, because it tends to result in code that is readable by anyone needing to verify or modify it whereas the Perl that we get, even from system administrators, tends to border on having been obfuscated.
For lunch today, Nicki and I went to La Cima. I drove to work today anticipating a La Cima run. The weather was great today, though, so I am sorry that I did not get a chance to walk instead. I’m hoping that I can force myself to work this coming week even though I have the car all to myself. It will be tempting to just drive myself everywhere.
Work was fine this afternoon. I got regular emails from Dominica letting me know where they were and how the drive was going. Liesl is having a really rough time of it which is pretty much making it a rough time for everyone. Francesca has been driving all day but Dominica has at least managed to not fall asleep which is very helpful. Nothing harder than trying to drive and stay awake while your passenger is nodding off.
I worked till normal time then Nicki and I went over to La Cima for drinks. We ended up getting dinner there, in the lounge, while we were there. It was completely packed tonight. We couldn’t even get to the bar there were so many people. That was rather surprising. They cleared out on the early side and we were there till around nine thirty.
I was fairly productive tonight. Got a lot done. I was hoping to get to bed around eleven or maybe even earlier but ended up working until around two thirty in the morning! So much for getting a lot of sleep tonight. That isn’t going to be good.
Dominica and Francesca made it to Florence, Kentucky tonight. They are staying there and heading off to New York first thing in the morning. They made it most of the way and Dominica never had to drive at all so tomorrow is going to be relatively easy for them. Northern Kentucky to Frankfort is really not a bad drive at all.
I have to be up quite early tomorrow, around five thirty. I am driving down to Austin for the one million users party at SpiceWorks. I am going to be on their live webcast and one of the other community members who I know from the online community flew down from Milwaukee tonight for the party so I will get to see him tomorrow.