Today is a day of logistics. Brian was up and cleaning the house around three I think. I slept in until nearly four when I rolled out of bed, got dressed and was ready to be out the door in about five minutes. Oreo got up and moved into the living room on the “new” couch that we just brought down from New York. He missed that couch, I think, as he used to always lay on it when it was in the basement of the Peekskill house so that he could be near to me while I worked in the basement office.
We were on the road pretty quickly over to the airport. Without a doubt, DFW is the worst airport ever. Having used it twice in the past couple weeks it still remains an incredible challenge just to get to your terminal even with GPS, Toll Tag and all the other tools necessary to make it is as easy as possible. The roads are horribly labeled and confusing, tons of information that you need is not available, there is a toll (without any warning) just to drive through the airport (they call it a parking toll but we never parked – this is twice now) and there appears to be no way to get to the actual places that we need to go and “near enough” is as good as you can do. It is absolutely terrible. I travel a lot and never have I had to deal with an airport like this in the US, Canada, England, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Holland, etc. I will actively avoid trying to use this airport even though I live right next to it. The whole thing needs to be razed and a professional needs to design a working airport in its place.
I got home from the airport at around five. It takes way too long to go to an airport that is almost walking distance from our home. I had originally thought that I would try to go back to sleep, but I was wide awake and decided to just start working as there is so much that needs to be done. Oreo had gotten out of bed so there were not puppy snuggles waiting for me.
It turned out to be a productive morning. I signed right in to the office and got to work. It was a good morning to be on extra early as today was the announcement of the unemployment numbers by the federal government so it was convenient to already be awake rather than waking up just to handle that call. The US has lost another 131,000 jobs this month. But mostly those were from the public sector and the private sector actually added jobs. So the economy appears to be recovering with the government being unable to find a firm footing.
Dominica emailed to tell me that Liesl used the potty for the first time yesterday! I can’t believe how quickly she is growing up. Potty training already. She is only just over twenty months old. Ahead of schedule for that as far as I can tell. Even before this happened, about a week ago, Dominica had said that we would be beginning potty training as soon as Liesl returned from Lake LBJ. Liesl has been giving many of the signs that she is ready to potty train.
I ended up working from home this morning. I was already signed in and getting stuff done and there was just too much to do, both at the office and around the house, to be able to go in this morning. I was very productive. I had several phone calls that I had to do today so that worked out really well. I had been planning on spending much of the morning cleaning the house but ended up being so busy that I never really managed to do that at all.
When I left the house I looked around for Oreo and discovered him in his kennel. This is the very first time that I have ever seen him voluntarily use the kennel as a place to sleep. I found it surprising that he used it since he loves the couch and it is only he and I in the house so he has no reason to be escaping anything.
I finally got a chance to take the Wii that Dominica boxed up for the Ralstons to the UPS Store during working hours and to get it shipped off to New York for them. Surprisingly, even with insurance of $300 on that massive box, it still cost less than $40 to ship the box to New York. Not bad at all. So next week they will have a Nintendo Wii and tons of boring games to play.
I also ran to Target to get emergency cleaning supplies that we needed to get before Francesca and the kids come to visit us tomorrow afternoon. Since I was over there and had not managed to eat all day and as it was one hundred and eight I decided that I needed to get some ice cream from Marble Slab Creamery. From there I ran into the office so that I could work from there this afternoon.
Work went a little late but pretty good for a Friday evening. As soon as it was clear that the work was done for the evening I ran back to the house. Oreo was still in his kennel. I didn’t close the door on him, he just felt that he should be in there I guess. He is such a good, sweet little dog. I had to pull open the flap for him and tell him that he could get out before he would.
Jeff had some work for me to do so I spent an hour and a half getting work done for him. Then I was able to pack the car and get Oreo’s stuff together so that he could go on his vacation weekend to visit Maggie.
It was roughly eight forty when I was finally able to pull out of Las Colinas. My first stop is Fort Worth to drop Oreo off with Maggie. I stopped in just long enough to drop off my little boy. We will see him again on Sunday afternoon.
The drive south went okay. There was some rain for the first two hours of the drive which slowed my progress considerably as I had to drop my speed by almost fifteen miles per hour to avoid hydroplaning.
I stopped in at Taco Bell for a quick dinner. I discovered that they now have delicious “crispy potato soft tacos” on the $.89 menu which is awesome. Finally another vegetarian option. Taco Bell is always veggie friendly but this is a great addition to their veggie lineup. That will definitely make me more likely to stop in at TB as it is very delicious.
I stopped near Temple to get fuel and found myself swarmed by flying cockroaches and crickets. It was amazingly disgusting. I’ve never had any insects get all over me like this before let alone cockroaches and their noisy kin. I was kicking them away but still they were getting all over my legs, shirt and head – and I was in shorts so it was that much worse. At one point one flew into my hand and got stuck in between my fingers! All I can say is… EEEWWWWWW!
I pulled into the lake house on Lake LBJ at one twenty in the morning. Better than expected. I shaved forty minutes off of the GPS’ original estimate of my arrival. I have to be up before seven in the morning. I am going to be quite tired tomorrow after a very tired day today.
Once my office work is completed in the morning we will be on our way back up to the metroplex.