August 17, 2016: Cheesecake Factory

Wednesday in Houston.  We are on our final week down here for the summer.  We are planning on leaving to head back to New York early next week.  We don’t know exactly what day we are leaving yet, but likely over the weekend unless I get scheduled to go to Indianapolis.  We had planned to leave this Friday night, in two days, but needed to stay to help out with driving kids around through Tuesday evening.

Luciana’s finger is much better today.  She made it the whole day without even thinking about it again.  Thank goodness, she was such a mess about it yesterday.

I wrote all morning, was very productive.  I feel great about my day, today.  I got so much done.  Plus had some good meetings, too.

Dominica did a ton of flight planning today and managed to get Maria a flight from Panama City, Panama into Rochester, New York.  She got an amazing price, she is so good at this stuff.  We are very relieved and Maria is coming up to handle all of the filmography for MangoCon in September!

I ran out and did some grocery shopping this afternoon, hit Taco Bell for some lunch and gassed up the car.  Today was my first time ever shopping at the new Walmart Neighborhood Market that has opened up near the Grices’ place.  We watched it getting built last December.  It’s a great place to get groceries, cheap and very friendly and quick.

Dominica and I spent much of the afternoon trying to figure out our travel plans for the fall.  We think that we are closer now that we have been.  Dominica is very, very concerned about the risks from mosquito borne illnesses in the Central American tropics, where we want to be all autumn, and that is causing complications.  We really want to be in Chiapas and possibly Belize or Guatemala, but those are all prime mosquito countries.  So we are playing with tons and tons of different possibilities to try to find something that will give us what we want and works with schedules, flights, safety, cost – oh traveling full time is very difficult.

This evening the Miller clan broke off and did our own thing for dinner.  We went out, just the four of us, to the Cheesecake Factory that is just down the road from the Grices.  I’ve never actually eaten in one, I don’t think, but have only had delivery before (or take out.)  Dominica has been without me recently.

Dinner was excellent.  We had really great food and the girls just loved it and devoured their food.  They ate really well and said that we need to eat here a lot more often.  They want to come back tomorrow.  Liesl says that this is almost her favourite place to eat but still prefers Waffle House.

It was late when we got back.  The little kids all played some video games together for a little while and were off to bed.  Dominica and I had to stay up late because her parents were flying in from New York on Southwest coming through BWI.  We were originally going to pick them up at eleven but because of storms in Baltimore they were delayed several times and we could not get them until very late.