Sheep Guarding Llama

Monday.  I walked into the office this morning.  Lena knows to get me coffee as soon as I arrive.  So handy.

Today begins our packing to leave Kiev.  We will be flying out on Friday to go back to New York.  So only four days left here in Ukraine!

I worked a long day in the office today.  It is a holiday here (May Day) so a lot of people are out, it is relatively quiet.  Anton and Max were both in the office today, but left early.  But Anton returned later in the day.

Back home in New York, dad had a tornado watch today.

Tonight, after getting home late from the office, I played Minecraft with the kids before turning in for the night.

Sunday.  Today begins our final week here in Kiev, Ukraine.  The time has really been flying by.  We have been busy and getting to see so much of the city.  We love it here and are sad to be leaving soon.

This morning, Dominica and I, having finished Star Trek: The Next Generation yesterday, started watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine which I have not seen in forever and never finished, and that Dominica has never really watched at all.  The first season, which I remember, is really rough and annoying.  But people keep telling me that it gets better as the seasons go on.  We are giving it a chance, but so far, it is just like I remember.

We had Internet issues today with the service going up and down throughout the day.

This afternoon Anton got us and took us to Praha in a park in Kiev.  It is a famous restaurant and the setting is amazing.  Everyone had a great time sitting outside, wrapped in blankets, on the water’s edge enjoying some really fantastic food.

This evening, I started watching Cosmos, the new remake educational series.  It is good.

Saturday.  Today Dominica and I spent the day wrapping up our run through of Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The girls would randomly get into it and watch it with us, or decide that they were not into it, for the entire run.  They liked the first episode, but then were wishy-washy about it after that.  It has been so long since Dominica and I did a full viewing of it, that was a lot of fun.

I did some Hostadillo work today and got Dominica set up to start work on the new MangoCon website.  The old one was a complete disaster, so she has been tasked with overhauling the entire thing and seeing what she can do to get things working again.

We cracked open a bottle of wine today, while we relaxed and watched TNG.

Jeremy and Rachael moved to their new apartment in Geneseo today.

Later in the day I worked on SuiteCRM.

Friday.  Today I am in the office early and mostly working on Restoronix infrastructure stuff, like building out Jira servers and things like that.

Anton and I went out for lunch today at a really interesting seafood place with food shipping in from Odessa.  We got to see some Russian mafia eating at the table right beside us.  But our food and tea were really interesting and good.

By late in the day, we assessed Jira and decided that we all hated it.  So we moved to Asana instead.  Free and easy to use.  Everyone likes it and it is fully hosted so we don’t have to deal with it in any way.  Why didn’t we just start there?

I was in the office until late, so Max and I went out for falafel burgers downtown.

As you can guess, this was some seriously messy food.  Max got a “real” hamburger.

After dinner it was an Uber home.  Max had ridden his bicycle over.

I walked into the office this morning in Kiev.  Max ran out mid-morning for some errand but brought back croissants from Lviv Croissants, a local bakery chain.  It was smoked salmon, very good.

This afternoon, Dominica and the girls came into the office. Anton had gotten them presents for Ciana’s birthday, Lego sets! The girls were so excited. Anton’s wife came into the office, too.

Once everyone had arrived, we took an Uber to the local metro station and Dominica and the girls got to experience a lesser, but still really impressive deep Kiev metro station with the crazy escalators that go way, way down into it.

We went to a whiskey restaurant across town that was really good. While there the girls got more stuff and played all through dinner. We had a really nice time and Max arrived later on, as well. A fun way to celebrate Luciana’s birthday. Something very unique. She turned four in Spain, five in Kosovo and six in Ukraine! She will have such stories to tell.

The Whiskey Korner was great.  We all had a wonderful evening, and so much whiskey.

It was a great evening.  We were all tired when we got back home.  I found out tonight that my cousin Gwen and her husband Mike bought a home in New York and have moved there.  That was quite a surprise.  We just saw them, days before moving to Italy, and they were settling in nicely in Ohio.  Very surprised to find them in New York, of all places.