Sheep Guarding Llama

Friday. A nearly universal snow day for the north east.  The snow had come down hard last night and we have nearly eighteen inches on the ground today!  This is crazy.  We really made it “just in time” for the kids to get to enjoy the snow.  They were so excited to see it coming down last night and to get to play in it today.  This is one of their favourite things about New York.

With the snow this bad, we are just hunkered in for the day.  The girls went outside and played for a while, a long while.  I’m in dad’s office set up and working.  Power and Internet stayed on here all day, no issues at all (after the little blip that we had last night.)

Dominica and dad made a brunch today for us.  This evening, dad ordered dinner from Papa Roni’s and I drove down to Pavilion to pick it up.

Tonight we all watched The Polka King starring Jack Black, on Netflix.  A weird movie and a weird story, to be sure, but it was well done and entertaining.

Thursday. I can’t believe that it is already March.  But we say that every month.  Time just flies, thus is life.

This morning we had to get the kids ready pretty quickly because we are driving out to meet Dominica’s parents in Auburn, New York at the Denny’s to have some lunch.

So not a lot to report.  A morning of driving.  The girls were excited to go to Denny’s and to see their grandparents.

After lunch we loaded up the Quest with stuff that Dominica’s parents had brought out for us.  Then drove back to dad’s.  There is supposed to be snow tonight, but it was clear while we were driving.

We got back home and had a few hours in which we could work in the storage unit down in the barn.  We got right to work on that and made it through several boxes before the storm hit.  Dominica had worked on the storage unit yesterday, as well.  So there is noticeable progress.  But boy is there a lot that needs to be done.  I mean a LOT.

Our goal is to make it through the entire storage unit before we leave.  We are going to take as much as we can with us, with the most important thing on the list being Liesl’s Ikea dresser that has been in storage for four years now that matches Luciana’s which we managed to take with us to Dallas in our last trip last summer.  After that, it is all just “whatever we can fit.”

We are a little worried, with the snow coming tonight, that there will not be enough time to get through the storage unit before we need to get onto the road to drive back to Dallas, that’s Monday morning.  That only leaves this weekend, tomorrow is going to be a bust.

The snow hit around six thirty this evening.  The girls came into dad’s office to see the big snow flakes coming down in the light of the heavy duty house peak light.  They are so excited. This is a serious snow and they’ve probably never seen it come down like this.

Wednesday. I had to be up very early this morning, about five thirty.  Showered and was ready for Danielle to pick me up at six.  We are driving down to Delhi, New York to meet with a customer down there for an engineering team meeting that is done once or twice a year.  This is my first time meeting this client and should be actually rather fun.

It is a three to four hour drive to get down there, but we had good weather and an easy drive.  Especially easy for me as I did not have to drive, which is great.  Danielle is one of the few people that I get to ride with instead of having to be the driver.

We had McDonald’s from Dansville on the road.  We took some backroads to get to Delhi and made it just in time for the morning engineering meeting.  Our meeting went really well, it was great for everyone involved.  One of those meetings where meeting in person definitely makes things better for everyone.  Especially for me as this gave me a chance to get to know people I’ve been working with for years much better.  That always makes future work a lot more smooth.

We were given an office to work in after the meeting, but we ended up having far less to do than we had anticipated.

So my big, shocking news for the day is that I’m no longer on Spiceworks, which is interesting as I’ve barely been on for a week or more anyway.  So I will be starting March fresh, with no SW to do.  This is going to change my daily schedule rather significantly.  I’m not happy about the drama, but I am thrilled to not be a part of it anymore.  As many friends and Dominica have said, I’ve gotten addicted to trying to help people and have put up with the terrible platform and all kinds of childish drama for years because it allowed me to be helpful.  Now I can not help people and it is not my fault that they do not get help and I don’t have to feel badly in the least about it.  So in many ways, an awesome situation.

For lunch today, Danielle and I met up with Chad in downtown Delhi.  I’ve known Chad for years from MangoLassi, but have never met in person.  He is the person who posts the most that I’ve never met in real life.  Danielle has known in in real life for years, though.

Lunch was great.  Delhi is a really cute little town.  But the Internet is terrible here so having a business here is pretty bad.

We had planned on being in Delhi all day and leaving tonight.  We didn’t have to, though, and were able to get on the road back to dad’s at one and were home by late afternoon.  Very nice.

 

Tuesday. We started the day with packing up the family into the Qwest, driving down to Leicester to meet up with Aunt Sharon and Uncle Leo, and driving down to Short Track in Allegheny County to go to the Cartwright’s Maple Tree Inn, the famous destination for real maple and buckwheat pancakes.

We arrived around eleven and the line was insane.  They can seat a crazy number of people in the Inn so they moved decently quickly but we were not expected this number of people this morning.  Of course, later today I would find out that today is National Pancake Day, so maybe that influenced the lines in some way.  Although I rather doubt that anyone else knew that it was National Pancake Day, either.

The food was great.  The kids were not that into it, though.  They like more modern pancakes not the buckwheat kind.  I prefer these classics, personally, and had quite a few.

It was a long drive home and we had to rush because I had a meeting with Max to discuss the presentation that I will be making in California next week.  It seems like a long way away, ten days at least, but we have so much to do between now and then that there really isn’t any free time for me to be working on a presentation before then.  As it is, we are going to be rushing to get back to Texas in order for me to make my flight out to California!

 

Tonight, Dominica made a tuna casserole and to make Liesl happy we all moved into the basement while we had dinner and watched The Emoji Movie which was awful, just like everyone has been saying that it was.  It was bearable, but not good.  It made her very happy for us to all watch it with her, though.  She’s seen it a few times already, since it is on Netflix, but she really likes sharing movies with us as a family.

Monday. I started my day by installing PC Linux OS, which I have never used before.  Testing for SodiumSuite has me working with so many OS variations that I have never touched before.  I’m getting quite the survey of the market, for sure.

I started using MongoDB Compass today and absolutely love it.  What a great tool for those of us that have to work with MongoDB all of the time.  This is going to make my life so much easier.

This afternoon the girls wanted to eat at Denny’s in Geneseo and there were some errands to run.  So dad and Dominica dropped me off at Tim Horton’s in front of Walmart and I got on the wifi and worked from there with some coffee while they did some shopping.  When they were all done, maybe after an hour or so, they picked me up and we all went over to Denny’s.

This evening, back at dad’s, we watched Table 19, which was pretty decent.