Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

DuoLingo Streak: 13 Days

Friday.  I had a busy morning of work, no surprise.  Dominica and the girls slept in very late and did not get to school until after noon.  We are slowly trying to fix their sleep schedules to get them onto something that actually works.  This is a mess with them not falling asleep until so late.  But me reading to them at night seems to help a bit, we will do more of that.  Me reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone last night at bed time, instead of Dominica reading it in the afternoon as part of school, seems to have helped a bit.

Had a really busy morning and early afternoon of writing and posting.  MangoLassi was exploding with activity, which is good as it has been a slow few weeks leading up today.

At three I ran out to get the oil changed on the Quest.  It’s been overdue and we’ve just been so busy, and generally not driving anywhere.  But it needed to be done, and with the trip next week it would be missed for at least a week and a half, if not more, if I did not get to it today.  So to beat the after work rush, I ran out at three.

I got to our corner auto shop and was first in line on arrival.  They remember me now, just from the car before I even get out.  It’s nice having a little, neighhourhood shop to go to and actually know people.  We scored big time and the synthetic oil that we use was thirty dollars off today, too.  So instead of eight something dollars, the oil change was fifty something.  And it only took about twenty minutes.

This evening, we made a daddy / daughter evening of it.  None of us had eaten all day and both girls begged to get to go to Panda Express, so for the first time in probably more than nine months, that’s where we went for dinner.  That was a nice change, for sure.  It really feels like forever since we have been there.

It was extremely warm this evening, for some reason.  So frozen yoghurt was also in order.  We drove up to Yogurtland and Luciana decided to break with tradition and get caramal froyo for the first time and she loved it.

After dinner, the girls played video games on their own for a while, Slime Rancher continues to be the main game of choice.  It’s been the big one for a week or two and has been a mainstay ever since Liesl got it for her birthday nearly a year ago.  That was one of the best higher cost video game picks ever.  So often when you spend more on a game, it never gets played.  But this one has been a favourite since the very first day and has held up really well over the year.  Both girls love it and still fight over who gets to play; and they often play the game together, helping each other through different parts of it.

Liesl told me that Slime Rancher has had some really significant updates to it in the last few months that have really improved the playability and it is so much better that it is almost like a whole new game, now.  So they are getting way more out of it than they did before.  I pay attention, for the most part, and see new updates to it coming out with some regularity.

I had to work on an article for Information Management that was due today.  I’m writing about the often overlooked aspects of disaster planning, a popular topic given the recent hurricane activities.  That took maybe two hours.  After that, video game time with the girls.

First we played Minecraft, but that is always buggy and everyone gets frustrated after a while.  We are building a new panda themed world, to celebrate having gone to Panda Express this evening, and so the girls were modeling large pandas in the game and tasked me with building a replica of the Panda Express restaurant to be the center piece of the game world.  While we played the game we watched the first half of Wild, Wild West from 1999 with Will Smith, Kevin Kline and Salma Hayek.  The girls enjoyed that, but mostly just played the game.  It’s a recent addition on Netflix and I’ve not seen it for the longest time.

From Minecraft we moved on to Overcooked, which we have taken a break from.  We struggled to get any stars tonight, but did get a few and unlocked what appears to be the final boss battle!  I’m a bit excited to complete this game, it is exhausting.

Then we played a little Cheesecake Cool Conrad, but got stuck on our very first level unable to figure out where the last ice cream cone was and we could not move on.  So the girls are going to research that over the weekend and figure out where we need to go to move forward.

Then we played The Fairy Tale Mysteries: The Puppet Master again which we have not played in a very long time.  I like the hidden object and puzzle bits of that game.  The story is bleh and hard to get into.  But it introduces the Brothers Grimm and is decently well done and part of a series.  It’s simple to follow, making it an easy one for the girls.  None of the puzzles are too stumping.

After the video games were done, it was time for our reading of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.  The girls prefer when I do the reading, so I read again tonight in Dominica and my room.  We ended up reading three chapters, from the time Harry gets onto the Hogwart’s Express at King’s Cross Station until after he is sorted into his house and has started attending classes and visits Hagrid for tea.  The girls were excited to read the first chapter, then Luciana just wanted to go to bed instead of reading the second chapter, but by the third both girls wanted me to keep reading and Dominica had to veto reading a fourth chapter because it had gotten so late by that point.  But the girls are loving the book, now.

It is great that the girls are so much back into doing reading at bedtime.  This helps them get to sleep much better, as well.  They wind down much more quickly and fall asleep hours faster.

After story time, the girls both asked if they could sleep in our room tonight.  Both girls wanted to sleep on the new IKEA sofa in our room.  No one has slept on it yet.  But Liesl is more the snuggler, at night at least, than Luciana so took the bed and Luciana took the couch at our feet and everyone was asleep very quickly.

DuoLingo Streak: 12 Days

Thursday.  Now that I know that I am going to be out of town next week, there is a lot to do to make sure that everything is ready for the trip and to spend as much time with the girls as possible as I will not see them for the majority of the week.  At least I have the last flight out on Monday and the first flight back on Saturday so I will be home in time to sleep at the house for Friday night, even though it is Saturday morning.  So I will only miss the family for four days.

So today was super busy.  Not a lot of posting, though, for that it was a pretty slow day.  But I had consulting calls nearly all day and so was on the phone for the majority of it.  So very little to tell, nothing of interest.  But it was a solid day of work that kept me hopping from first thing until very late.

School went well for the girls today, at least according to Luciana’s regular after-school check in with me.  She always pops into my office for an after-school hug and she gave me her signature “thumbs up” that school was good today.

I made myself some dinner tonight, just veggie burgers and tried to eat them while watching some YouTube videos but actually fell asleep for a little bit while trying to do so!

Later in the evening Liesl, Dominica and I sat down and watched Lost in Space, from the 1990s.  I have not seen it in a very long time and Liesl has never seen it.  Dominica actually watched it on her own pretty recently, which I had not realized.  It took a little cajoling to get Liesl to watch it, but she was in a “snuggle on the couch with daddy” mood so she stayed and then she ended up liking it.  We tried to talk Luciana into it, but she would have none of it and spent the evening in her own room watching something on her iPad.

After the movie, it was bed time.  We were all tired.  Dominica had missed reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone for school today and I was unable to get the next Magic Treehouse book from the library for our bedtime reading as we had finished Night of the Ninjas yesterday and needed the next title in the series.  So that is on hold, for now.  The girls asked for me to read HP&PS tonight, so I did.  They said that they like me reading it a lot more and want me to read the whole thing.

This is the first time that I am reading HP&PS in print (well, on the Kindle) since Dominica first had me read it, while we lived in Ithaca, when we were first dating.  I have since listened to it as we have the book on CD (literally, on CD) somewhere in our storage, but I have not read it directly.  And I prefer reading it myself as I was unhappy with the semi-dramatization of the book on CD available in the US.