Sheep Guarding Llama

DuoLingo Streak: 23 Days

Monday.  My alarm was set for eight thirty this morning, but I was awake at eight.  I got up, did my daily DuoLingo, showered and was out the door.  I am working up in Plano, today, around Headquarters Drive.  I grabbed Taco Bell breakfast and coffee at the corner of Frankford and the DNT and ate on the drive up.

I put in a more than four hour day doing telephony consulting up in Plano for a very large energy producer.  It was a fun and interesting day.  We had a chance to talk about SodiumSuite, as well.  And MangoLassi, too.  It was a fun project and a nice day.

While I was there, we got word that instead of being pushed back for later scheduling for moving out to Phoenix, things are actually being pushed up and Jeremy and I will be starting to move on Friday, rather than on Monday!  So things are really in motion now.

I worked until mid-afternoon in Plano, then drove back home.  I was only home for a little while before Dominica wanted to go up to Frisco to go to IKEA.  IKEA is just one street over from where I was working all day.  So just a round trip drive for me.

It was around five thirty when we finally drove to IKEA and did not get there until after six due to all of the terrible traffic that was going on as it was rush hour on a Monday.  Probably not the best time to have decided to drive up to Frisco.

We had dinner at IKEA, of course.  Dominica had the salmon.  Liesl decided that she does not like the al dente pasta there and stole my veggie wrap, but did not like the cheese in it, and so ate mashed potatoes.  I had a salar and a veggie wrap.  Dominica ended up with a double salmon.

We spent way too much time shopping this evening and before we were to the end Luciana was over exhausted and just whining and crying the whole time.  I was tired after a long day and just wanted to get home.  Our objective, however, was to find Dominica a little desk for her to put her laptop on while working on the new love seat that we bought from IKEA recently.

Dominica spent the evening working on her website.  She has moved from her awful, garbage Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro to my amazing Asus RoG laptop and is able to work a lot better now.  It is so much faster and more stable and doesn’t have any of the problems that she constantly encounters from that cheap junk.  It is amazing how problematic having to use a bad laptop can be.

We had some last minute changes to our travel plans for Jeremy and me over the next two weeks and Dominica and I were up for a few hours attempting to deal with that.  That made for a stressful evening and I knew that I was going to have to get up in the middle of the night to deal with it further, so we limited our bedtime reading this evening to just one chapter and got to bed a little early so that I would have some rest before needing to get up at four thirty.

That means that tonight was just chapter five of the second book in the Harry Potter series: The Chamber of Secrets.  The girls were both sad that we could only read a single chapter, they love these books.

Both girls slept in our room last night.  As often happens, Luciana got the couch and Liesl climbed into bed with us.  Luciana loves to snuggle and does all day long, but at night she gets too warm and feels trapped so likes to sleep on her own.  She migrates all over the bed as it is, which is probably why she feels trapped when she sleeps with people around.

DuoLingo Streak: 22 Days

A nice, relaxing Sunday at home with nothing particular needing my attention.  More or less.  I was up at eight, well before anyone else.  So I had a little while to relax in my office and work on some serious catching up on SGL.  I got in a few hours to myself before anyone else woke up.  I had the Steam laptop all ready, though, so that I would be able to play something once Liesl was awake.  I was in the mood to play some XCOM, but I try to not play it until she is free to join me.  We like to play it together.  She roots for my squad as they face down the alien hordes.

At ten thirty I ended up doing a consulting call that went for two hours.  Not what I really wanted to do today, but I need to pay the bills.  Really cannot complain about getting to do Sunday phone consulting.  I will be working tomorrow, as well.  Tomorrow I am on site with a customer in Plano.  I have been really busy this month.

While I was on my call, Dominica brought me a cafe latte.  And as soon as I was done, she made a late breakfast of egg and cheese on bagels.  Liesl set up XCOM on the Steam laptop and as soon as we had eaten we played for several hours.  I had a lot of really successful campaigns on XCOM today, too.  One of my better days.

At five thirty, Luciana wanted to game so I gave up the Steam laptop and let Luciana play Slime Rancher for a while.

I did some SodiumSuite support work today.  We had a new release and finally tracked down a problem that we have been having for over a week that has really been plaguing us.

I had some more time to work on journalling on SGL.  And finally I have completed all of the entries from March and have worked my way into April.  That still leaves quite a huge gap, but I am working on it.  The gap is, at least, getting smaller.

Dominica made tilapia and green beans for dinner, it was quite good.  We watched two episodes of the fourth season of Cheers while we had dinner.

Liesl played her Christmas themed hidden object game twice through today, again.  That is four complete play throughs this weekend.  She is oddly addicted to a very funny little game.  She played The Sims 3 for a while, as well.

Luciana and Liesl took a shower tonight.  They had a load of fun playing with their science set and My Little Ponies while in the shower.

I had promised to play a little Overcooked tonight, so after their shower we did.  Just two rounds, but that is nearly half an hour.  We are up to the “Peckening” which is basically the final boss battle, I think.  So it takes forever.  We are up to sixty six hours of total play time on that game!  Like Slime Rancher, this is the other one that Liesl got for her birthday this past year.  Both really turned out to be great finds that have endured and gotten an absurd amount of use.

After our video game time was done, it was about one in the morning and it was time for us to start our family bedtime reading.  Luciana really wants to start the sixth book in the Magic Tree House series, but that one is currently out from the library, so I have a request in for it.  Instead, tonight we started Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.  The second book in the series.

Tomorrow I am working for a large energy company in the area all day, on site.

DuoLingo Streak: 21 Days

It was after noon when I woke up.  Only four hours of sleep, too.  It took me a bit to get moving.  I got some journaling done and then Liesl was the next one up.  Liesl had slept more than anyone else last night, having gone to bed and slept before coming to the airport to get me, then being asleep again instantly once we had returned home.

Liesl got up and fired up the Steam machine so that we could play XCOM today.  She has been so excited all week that I promised a lot of XCOM this weekend.

So we played all afternoon in the living room.  We made it through several campaigns and advanced the storyline a bit.  It was a generally good XCOM day.

Luciana slept in very late.  She did not get up until probably four in the afternoon.

After XCOM, Liesl played her hidden object Christmas Candy Cane video game, all the way through on her own.  She really loves that game.

I took a little time to be in my office, just a couple hours.  Luciana wanted to play Minecraft with me today, so we gave that a shot but as is the case more often than not, the Minecraft multiplayer system did not work and we could not play together.  It almost never works, it’s not well made at all.  So many problems.

Instead we decided to watch some shows together.  So we watched FailArmy and then watched a whole bunch of SciShow Kids.  Dominica went out to do some grocery shopping and tried to pick up Panda Express for the family, but they were out of Chow Mein and all shrimp items.  What?  How does Panda fail to have that much of their main items?

While Luciana and I were watching shows, Liesl decided to play her hidden object game through a second time.  She likes it that much.  So in all, I believe that she beat it once at her grandparents’ house, once when we first got it, once today and is now playing it again.

Instead, Dominica came home and cooked dinner here.  Once food was ready, everyone moved into our room and we put on Netflix’ newly released (as of like yesterday) Fuller House season three.  We watched for about half of the available episodes.  We will probably watch the rest tomorrow.

After that, it was time for bed for everyone.  Dominica had fallen asleep while we had been watching the show.  Luciana was ready for me to tuck her in right away.  Liesl wanted to finish her second run through her video game, so I let her and she was actually done before everyone else was ready for bed anyway.  So I got her off to bed as well.

I did just a tiny bit of work, mostly building a test Fedora 26 with Cinnamon system for some work that needs to be done, then was off to bed myself.  It was not that late and everyone else was already asleep by the time that I turned in!

DuoLingo Streak: 20 Days

Another morning of getting up early, setting up my Chromebook and working like crazy from the condo dealing with phone problems for people.  Exhausting, especially on top of everything else that is going on.

I also did the dishes this morning.  I’m very industrious.

Sujit & I started the morning going across the street to a place called The Early Baker which does a really good breakfast.  I got a Georgian dinner modified as an American breakfast, which was really good.  And very filling.

Once in the office, it was solid meetings until two when we all rushed out to drive to The Curry Bowl for their Friday buffet, way across town.  The buffet was, indeed, extra good today.  One of the best Indian buffets I’ve ever had.  Really extensive and really great quality.  Even fish on the buffet.

One more meeting after lunch.  Then at four we had an interview call with a candidate that sounds promising.  And straight back to the condo from that call.

We had a little while to relax at the condo.  I got all packed up for my flight and did some calls, emails and such while I had some time.  Then at eight we went to the Star of India for dinner.   Dinner was amazing, again.  Star of India really does a great job.  Dominica is going to love being able to walk across the street to get that.

After dinner we stoped at Fry’s for groceries and then returned to the condo, I freshened up and then caught my Uber ride to the airport.  I arrived at Terminal 2 at right around ten.  My flight was scheduled for twelve fifty in the morning, but was listed as being delayed for just over twenty minutes.  So loads of time for me.

There was nothing to do at the airport, everything was closed.  So once my bag was checked and I was through security I just sat at the gate.  I even laid down on the floor and tried to semi-nap.  I was extremely tired.

The flight ended up leaving on time and we even had a strong tail wind getting us to Dallas ahead of schedule!  The flight itself was fine.

I got to Dallas and Dominica was there very quickly.  There was some issues with the luggage and we had to wait about forty minutes for that, though.  So we did not manage to leave the airport as quickly as we had hoped that we would.

Nearly six when we got home.  The girls were in bed and asleep in minutes.  They didn’t even ask to sleep in our room or anything.  They were so tired.  Ciana barely even knew that I was home, Liesl had stayed awake the whole time, though.  Dominica told me that Luciana stayed up all night and had come to get her to go to the airport to get me.  But she fell asleep in the car on the way.  Luciana later said that she was so excited that I was coming home tonight that she could not sleep.

It took until nearly eight for me to actually fall asleep.  But nothing planned for the weekend.  Going to just be resting up and hanging out with the kids.

DuoLingo Streak: 19 Days

Thursday.  I got up at five thirty this morning and got to work on NTG projects that needed my attention all morning.  I had been hoping that I would be able to fall back asleep but I found myself unable to do so.  It was a long morning for me.

On the way into the office, we grabbed McDonald’s  There is a McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Panda Express, and Firehouse Subs right on the corner in front of the office.

I was very happy to get to take my morning shower today, however, because this was my first morning with hot water at the condo.  I was getting quite tired of the cold showers.

Sujit and I went to the office around nine thirty. Early this morning the HVAC guys were in and got our AC working.  By early afternoon it was actually a little chilly in my office.

I had Panda Express for lunch today.  Liesl would be very jealous.  I just got it to go and ate in the office.

After lunch I came back and moved into my own office, since I have a private office, and took some time to Telegram with and then Facetime Liesl and Luciana.  Liesl has figured out audio messages on Telegram and so sends those to me all of the time which is so adorable.  I can’t wait to get home and see the girls late tomorrow night.

So this afternoon turned into a significant bombshell of news at work.  Loads of changes and some really dramatic stuff that I had proposed and now everything that I had been thinking was happening yesterday and even this morning, is not happening and so much has changed and my head is pretty much spinning as I adjust to all of the new things.  Wow, what a day.

The office was super quiet all afternoon.  At five we went back to the condo for a while and I spent a lot of time catching people up with all that was going on and making plans and trying to remotely interview people via proxy and try to wrap my head around everything that was going on today.

Went to dinner at Star of India tonight.  Had tandoori fish, very good.  And tried some really amazing eggplant.  So good.  Dominica is going to love that place.

Back to the condo and at eight thirty we were both feeling so tired that it was time to get some sleep.  I did a little extra DuoLingo, talked to Liesl for a bit on Telegram, wrapped up some SGL journalling and by ten was ready to get to bed myself.

Tomorrow is going to be a huge day.  I’m not even sure where I am going to start.