Sheep Guarding Llama

DuoLingo Streak: 18 Days

Wednesday.  This morning was super busy in the office.  We had a system hacked and that ate up much of the day figuring out what needed to be done about that and how it would be tackled.  That led to several other design meetings that, in the end, were unrelated and I ended up having an incredibly busy day of just an incredible number of meetings.  But it was all good stuff.

For lunch today it was just Sateesh and me.  We ran over to Firehouse Subs.  I have not had a Firehouse Sub since Dominica and I had first moved to Irving.  It is possible that I have not had one since before Luciana was born!  I forgot how amazing their veggie sub with mushrooms is.  I have to get these all of the time now.  So delicious.

A busy afternoon, then back to the apartment.  We took a few hours to digest the thoughts of the day and had a call with Jeremy today to officially work out his offer.  So he is coming to join us on October 2nd.  He’ll be coming in and out of Phoenix every couple weeks.  That’s going to be exhausting.

It was one heck of a busy night.  We ordered in Indian for dinner, but ended up running across the street to Star of India to pick it up then brought it back.  I had some really awesome okra!

I was feeling really tired tonight and so got off to bed well before midnight.

DuoLingo Streak: 17 Days

Tuesday.  First day in Phoenix on my second trip here.  It is not nearly as hot as it was a few weeks ago.  It’s actually quite nice.  Still warm, but not bad at all.

We were up on the early side.  I was awake before six and got ready quite early.  There is no hot water in the apartment so that made for an unhappy shower situation this morning.

Off to the office by eight and it was meetings all day.  No real breaks at all.  We worked like crazy.  We did break for lunch and drive way across town, again, to get really good Indian food.

The office is much more set up now than it was a few weeks ago when I was here.  Now there are two private offices set up (one is mine, of course) and about six cubicles are set up.  It’s like a real office now!  And there is a big television in the conference room as well.

After work we went back to the condo and the team came over and met us there after a few hours.  We ordered in Indian for dinner and made a night of it.  Not so much work tonight, mostly a chance to relax.

DuoLingo Streak: 16 Days

Monday.  Tonight I have to head off to Phoenix for the week.  This morning I got up and worked, but only for about an hour before Dominica kicked me out of the “summer office” because she needed it for her own work. So I was without a place to work.  I decided that I would play XCOM for a bit, thinking that Liesl would wake up and join me, but she never did.

I ended up getting more than two hours in on XCOM, which was great.  It was a fun, relaxing morning and I was really successful in the game, too.  Maybe my most successful batch of campaigns yet.  I had to fill Liesl in on all of the details as soon as she was awake.  She hates missing it when I play.

I worked a bit of today and relaxed some and tried to spend some time with the family when I could.  I leave tonight and will not see them again until Saturday morning.  A lot of packing going on today.

We left for the airport at eight thirty.  I got there and it was totally dead at the terminal.  No one in the check in line.  No one in the security line.  Almost no one at the gate.  So fast and easy.  I got right through security and then went to Blue Mesa for a drink and veggie burrito.  I ate slowly to kill some time, then went to the gate and relaxed.  Plenty of time.

Got on the flight and got a window seat, 11A and had an uneventful flight to Phoenix.  Just over two hours.

I arrived in Phoenix, got my bag, caught an Uber to the condo.  It was late, after midnight.  So Sujit had been waiting up just to let me in.  So we said hello and we both were off to bed within ten minutes of my arrival.  Much to do tomorrow.  Now I am in Phoenix safe and sound.

DuoLingo Streak: 15 Days

I must have been pretty run down, I fell asleep quickly last night around one in the morning and I did not wake up until almost ten!  I never sleep that long.  I got up, checked my messages, found no emergencies (which is a miracle) and fired up the Steam laptop to get it ready so that I could do something fun and relaxing today.  And then went into the office (the summer office, Liesl’s old room) and journaled for a bit.

Liesl got up at eleven thirty and we set up in the living room to play XCOM.  Our video game that we play together.  It amazes me how much she loves that game.  What a great game for us to be able to share.  She really understands the strategy and rules of it.  It’s great learning for her.

Dominica went out for a huge shopping trip this morning.  We are low on everything so she is hitting both groceries stores (Aldi and Walmart), and both dollar stores (big one for super cheap stuff, and Five Below for some Harry Potter themed candy to go with our literay adventures.)  It is good that Dominica enjoys going shopping alone because it helps her to fill her time wanting to get away from everyone and none of the rest of us want anything to do with going shopping.  So it works out well for everyone.

I played XCOM until nearly seven in the evening managing to get through several missions.  The game moves forward very slowly as it is quite had and I have to reload and play much of it over and over again.  And it is extremely hard to concentrate on it as the girls insist on talking at me continuously for the entire time that I play.  So it is not as relaxing and focused as it seems.

At a quarter till seven, we switched to playing Overcooked with me and the girls.  Dominica hasn’t played any games with us in a long time.  We are past the main levels of Overcooked, so we are onto what seems like the final boss and the game is a bit different at this stage.  We played for over an hour until everyone was upset and frustrated as always happens with that game.

Liesl watched some YouTube videos for a while and Luciana took over the Steam machine to play Slime Rancher.

This evening was family reading time for many hours.  We did the last forty percent of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone tonight.  We worked really hard to get through it all before I had to leave and we made it.  We had a really good time reading it and the girls are loving the story.  They are really into the Harry Potter story now.  They can’t wait for me to get back and do the next book in the series.  We hope to start that next Saturday.

DuoLingo Streak: 14 Days

Saturday. I woke up at nine thirty this morning.  Had a great night of sleep.  The kids both slept in our room last night; Liesl in our bed and Luciana on the new IKEA couch at the foot of the bed.  She was very excited to get to be the first one to sleep there and looked like she was very comfortable.  It had to be a world better than sleeping on our ancient, broken Target furniture that has been what was there until this week.

I did some SGL journaling this morning.  Then went out to mow before it got too hot.  While mowing, I believe that I noticed that new neighbours have moved in next door to the west.  We never got a chance to meet the old neighbours, although I saw them once during a power outage, but only for a second and only from a distance when the neighbour beyond them had waved to them and told me who they were.  I have not seen their cars recently, but there is a new, white, Dodge minivan that has been next door recently and what appears to be a new family there.  It is a rental property, so this is not surprising.

Big SodiumSuite news today is that the very first bit of Mac OS support is now available.  It’s a manual install at the moment, but a simple, working manual install that we will likely have worked out very soon.  This is huge as that was the last, major operating system hurdle to SS monitoring adoption.

I spent some time playing XCOM with Liesl.  Back to the game that I am playing, rather than the one that she has been playing.  We have been stuck on a super hard alien abduction encounter in Chicago that we have been trying to get through for at least a month, easily more.  Any time that we try it, our forces have gotten killed.  Today, we were able to get through it in just two tries!

I had a bagel with peanut butter for breakfast.  I discovered that Dominica accidentally bought crunchy peanut butter instead of creamy. So I have a jar to myself now.  I don’t prefer crunchy but like it about the same.  Liesl will not eat crunchy; she does not like the texture.

Luciana asked to go to the splash park today.  It is nearing the end of summer and the park is going to close in a few weeks for the season.  We figured that it made sense to go today, especially as it was a pretty warm day.  It was nice when I mowed this morning, but was ninety five by the time that Luciana requested the trip.

We stayed at the splash park until it was time for them to close.  We did not get there until decently late, maybe around five.  But were there a couple of hours and did not leave until after seven.  The girls had a great time and requested that we return tomorrow. The park was quite full.  Being the end of summer, a weekend and a really warm one added up to the park being extra popular.

We made the unusual decision that we would go to IKEA for dinner tonight.  We were just in the mood for their food and the girls just love going to IKEA in general.  So we figured that it made sense.

IKEA is up in Frisco, which is not that far of a drive, just a few miles.  We got there at seven thirty and did dinner first.  Dominica had the salmon dinner, the girls both had pasta, and I had the salmon wrap which turned out to be fantastic.

We did a little shopping, but mostly just let the girls look around as they just love the whole idea of furniture shopping and how there are little apartments built into the store.  They had a grand time, again, even with it being less than a week since the last time that they were here.

We were at IKEA until they closed, of course.  We bought two throw pillows and some play fruit for the girls to go with their other play food.

We got home and Luciana spent about forty five minutes playing Slime Rancher, and Liesl came in with Dominica and me to watch two episodes of Cheers before we all climbed into bed and I spent most of the evening reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

We read from about ten until around one in the morning.  We have perhaps eighty pages, out of two hundred and twenty one, left to go.  I am trying to read quickly enough to be able to get to the end of the first book in the series before I leave for Arizona on Monday evening.  It is a lot to read by then, but I think that we can just make it if we read again tomorrow like we did today.

I am really enjoying these long, family reading together times.  The girls love to snuggle while I read and they get really into the stories.  And I have not read this book in so long, I forgot how good it is.  The movies of the first two books were so awful and so truncated that there is so much of the subtle parts that I have forgotten about.  Luciana is anxious to watch the movies now, but we are going to make sure that we finish the book, first.