January 3, 2020: Harry Potter Yule Ball 2

Friday, and boy do I need it. I started the day by over sleeping and missing a seven thirty on site meeting in Plano at which I was supposed to be. Not a great way to start the day. I was not even awake until about ten after eight, about an hour and a half later than I should have been.

Once I was up, it was off to my desk and about half an hour to get some things done before our regular nine in the morning Friday team call that goes for about half of an hour. Then a relatively calm day of work. It was a good day with some really good potential sales that I am excited about, but of course we know full well that you can never count any sales deal until it is being billed and the invoice has been paid. “Sure things” are falling through all of the time.

Tonight was the second (for us) City of Carrollton Harry Potter Yule Ball. We had so much fun attending it last year, there was no way that we were going to miss it this year. The girls all had special shirts for it, even!

I was so busy with work that at after five thirty I had to run to take a shower and run straight out of the door. We had wanted to be there at a quarter after six to make sure that we were near the front of the line. We were still on the early side, but not as early as we had attempted to be, but it was not me that we were waiting for.

This year the Yule Ball was not big and crazy like it was last year. Fewer people and they used less of the city’s municipal complex. I have no idea why attendance was down, but it was still well attended. Hundreds of people showed up.

We started out our activities in the “room of requirement” where the girls did crafts. They made howlers, which turned out really cute. And they made one of those weird paper things that you put on your fingers and ask it questions and have it filled with random jokes. I can’t describe it well, but it was a popular folded paper thing that kids my age did in elementary school. I remember them being very popular on the school bus when I was young.

After crafts it was time for ice cream (actually frozen custard) courtesy of Andy’s. And there were cookies. And butter beer from Blooms in old downtown Carrollton. We ate, and then it was time to shift over to the library side of things.

On the way home I swung into Taco Bell for Liesl and grabbed food for myself as well.

After we were home from the Yule Ball, the girls each went to quiet rooms to do their own thing, Paul went to bed, I got on the phone with Jeremy and worked both with him for several hours as well as getting onto a system backup, audit, and update project for a customer. Dominica started watching The Witcher while she had some quiet time to herself.

Tonight is Olivia’s very first night attempting to sleep without a diaper! Hard to believe that she is four now. She is now the age that Luciana was when Olivia was born! That’s crazy.

Luciana didn’t even ask for me to make her dinner (pasta, of course) until a quarter after eleven! Liesl and I recorded today’s SGL video update while the pasta was cooking.

I got my first SAMIT video “Understanding Bespoke Software” posted for 2020. This is going to be the year of SAMIT, I can feel it. So starting the year off right with a post on the very first week. There were twenty views and five upvotes on it by the end of the day, so not a bad start.

Valentina continues to work on getting older MangoCon videos ready for me to post, as well. Those take a really long time, but at least they are progressing.

I worked until after half past midnght with Jeremy. That’s when he called it a night. Dominica was still watching The Witcher. I got yesterday and today’s SGL videos uploaded to YouTube and was pretty much ready to call it a night myself. I am tired. Very tired.