Sheep Guarding Llama

Wednesday. Another lonely day at home for me without my family.

Tonight Sean came over and we went out to the local bar for tator tots and hung out outside on the patio, which was pretty hot but we put up with it.  Ran into Chris while we were out there as well.

Tuesday.  Normal day of working and writing from the house.

This evening I was selected to attend Quiz Night again instead of Dominica, since she is out of town in Houston.  We managed to come in third tonight.  Not a bad showing.  We are doing decently well in the overall standings now.

We are high enough that it looks like we will progress on to the big final event in New Orleans in late August.  The top five teams from each region get to go on to there.

It is very lonely here at home without the family.

We found out first thing this morning that the ex-girfriend of a friend of ours here in Dallas had died during the night over dosing on heroin leaving a small child behind.  It’s all very sad.  He is in rough shape, they had been together for a long time.  Thankfully they were not still together, that made it a bit easier.  We had just seen him recently, too.

The weather was great today. So the girls and I went out for a walk to do some Pokehunting.

My experiment of going to bed early last night back fired rather a bit.  Instead of getting lots of sleep, instead I was awake at four in the morning!   Fail.

Happy Birthday to my dad.

I walked out into the living room and discovered a cat asleep in our back yard.  It had found a nice little spot underneath a chair that we have out there and was quite content as if he owned the place.  How odd.

Spent the morning posting and writing.  Getting up early does tend to make me jump right into things.

I figured that since the family is away that I should find a good video game to get sucked into and put some time into playing it while I can.  But I failed to come up with one today.

I discovered the short lived ABC sitcom Christella today and started watching a bit of it.  It is super interesting because it basically takes place in exactly my neighbourhood here in Dallas.  And the building in which the main character ends up working is a building that we use all of the time for going out to eat!  The show totally takes place right around us.  The show itself is good.  Not great, but good.  But that it is based on exactly where we live makes it super fun to watch.  You never find shows based on this part of the country.

Saturday.  I woke up at five this morning to the crack of incredibly loud thunder.  It brought me right out of my sleep and in a panic I ran into the “summer office”, which is Liesl’s old bedroom, and checked on the atrium.  Sure enough, the rain was pouring down and the atrium was filling up with water and the house was about to flood.  Someone was surely watching over us to have the thunder and rain be so loud that it brought me out of a sound sleep!  That never happens.  I literally cannot remember a time that thunder like that woke me up and certainly never rain.  Had this been even five minutes later, the house would have flooded!

I ran into the atrium in nothing but my boxers and started working desperately with the rake to get the drain clear.  I was in extremely deep water and when I finally cleared the drain, the water rose like a fountain from the back pressure of air escaping the drainage system.  I cannot believe how fortunate we were that I woke up and was able to clear the drain when I did.  We almost had a major disaster this morning.

I showered, and got back into bed.  I managed to sleep about three more hours.

I got up around nine and had to make myself coffee.  Making my own coffee? That never happens.

I watched Tropic Thunder today.  I was not expecting much but it was actually pretty decent.  Great cast, for the most part.

With Dominica away for two weeks, I have ever curtain and blind in the house open.  It is bright and sunny.  I always am shocked by how much I love this house when it is in full sunlight.  It is a gorgeous house and so open.  It makes me so happy to have it opened up and filled with light and to have views to look out onto.  I really forget what it is like.

I made myself fish sticks for dinner.  It is going to be a rough culinary fortnight.

I have decided that with everything that we have going on that not getting enough sleep is going to be a very bad thing.  I need to be well rested or I am going to succumb to stress and likely get sick.  So while the family is away I am going to attempt going to bed early, like a normal, responsible adult.  Tonight, I am in bed at eleven.  This feels really early, but I am a bit tired, probably from getting up to deal with the atrium flooding situation last night, so I was able to get to sleep even going to bed so early.