January 4, 2015: Day at the House

Dominica got up this morning and went shopping with Francesca and then went over to her house.  I stayed at Joe and Brittany’s with the girls as well as with Clara and Emily until around noon when Francesca came over and picked them up and took them back over to her house.  I stayed at Joe’s house so that I could do some catching up on work as I have had very little time to work on anything for the past three days or so and am feeling like I am a bit behind.

It was a very quiet day for me.  I sat in the kitchen working at the kitchen island for the whole day.  I got a lot of posting done both on Spiceworks and on MangoLassi.  I also managed to get another article written.  This one was one that I had not worked on before, it was a completely beginning to end written in a single afternoon article.  That is three in the past week or two.  I am keeping a good pace.  Now if I can just keep that up.  If I could turn out two per week all of the time then I would be in great shape because I would get time off from time to time.

It was a nice day to work, Joe and Brittany spent most of the day out in their theatre having a movie day and everyone else was at the Grices’.  It was probably my most productive work day since before Christmas!

Today is also the last day that we have before Francesca goes back to work.  We, Dominica and I that is, will be watching all of the kids tomorrow because they do not have school until Tuesday.  So our plan is to stay here tomorrow and hit the road to drive back north again on Tuesday morning.  I would love to be on the road long before seven to get as much driving done as possible as early as possible.  But I want to get a good, long night of sleep in too.  It might be impossible to leave that early.

The plan is to drive to as close to Canton, Ohio as we can manage on Tuesday, then spend the night in a hotel.  It is a triple award points week with Choice Hotels so we will take advantage of that.  We will nearly earn a free night for every night that we stay this week!  Perfect timing for us.  Then Wednesday morning we will drive the last little bit to my family in Ohio and spend the entire day with them there.  Then head east and just grab a hotel as soon as we get tired which, we assume, will be in as little as an hour.  We would like to at least cross into Pennsylvania if possible.  We will grab another hotel (still at triple points) for the night.  Then, on Thursday, we can get up whenever we wake up and do the rest of the drive home to Peekskill and get in at a good time with very little effort.  In all it makes for only one hard day of driving and I have plenty of chance to rest up for that.  So we need to pack the car completely tomorrow evening so that we are all ready to go.

I have found Trivia Crack on my iPhone and have been playing that the last few days.  Madeline introduced me to it.  I have gotten Andy playing it too, now.

finally got around to editing another one of Dominica and my Kidding Around Europe Podcasts today too.  We have had two of them done and waiting for me to edit them for the longest time.  That is something that I am going to have to be doing continuously while I am in Europe.

At nearly seven I went over to Francesca’s house where she and Dominica had made stews for dinner.  We ate and hung out for a little while.  They were mostly engaged in planning for the Disney World trip in March that I cannot go on since I will just be starting my new job.

Emily and I went to Walmart to do some shopping.  I picked up a one terabyte hard drive to use with the laptop to offload files because the laptop is completely out of space from working with just a single GoPro video.  That was a bit of a problem.  So I needed some way to be able to keep working.  I also stocked up on soap and shower supplies for the house.

On the way back to the Grices’, Emily and I did a run to Sonic and picked up dessert for everyone who wanted some.

Francesca was ready to head to bed by the time that we got back.  She has to go to work tomorrow even though the kids do not have school tomorrow.

We got back to Joe and Brittany’s house and got our girls right off to bed.  It was a little after ten by the time that they climbed into bed.

Dominica and I went out to the theatre and watched Joe’s copy of Ted which neither of us have ever seen and we have been wanting to see.  It was decent.  Nothing special but a cute, fun movie.  And another one that we have been wanting to see but have not had the chance.  We are bringing down our list of unwatched movies very quickly.

Got to bed around midnight.  I made #1 for the week on Trivia Crack.  I am not really sure what that means but… yay!  I guess.

Tomorrow is packing day.  I have a lot of work to catch up on still and Dominica is going to be getting the car loaded all day so that we are prepared to leave.