Wednesday. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. We had another day today of Spiceworks being down for nearly the entire day. It was weird, for most people the community was totally offline but I was able to be on it for most of the day, but not all of it. But far more than other people. So that drove a lot of traffic to MangoLassi over the past two days as this has been going on since yesterday in the early afternoon. It’s been a bit of a wild week. And all of this following the Monday announcement that SpiceWorld London was canceled only six months before the event. I had been thinking of flying in from Cluj to see the event, as well.
Today was a quiet day for me in the back bedroom trying to get things done. I got a ton of posting done, some small projects and got to do some early Black Friday shopping online. I got a Humble Bundle of O’Reilly UNIX books, like a ton of them, for super cheap. That was a great deal, could not pass it up. GOG’s sale started yesterday and I got Technobabylon. Steam’s Autumn Sale started today and I got lot of games, mostly for Dominica, in it. Francesca says that she is going to buy a bunch of games in the sale as well, but she said that last Christmas, and over the summer as well, so we will see if the third time is a charm.
We did nothing this evening, just hung around the house. Dominica and Francesca have to be up very early tomorrow morning so no going out tonight.
Maggie was surprised this morning in Panama, waking up to find that they had been hit by Hurricane Otto. They were hit pretty hard down there, four deaths by noon, mostly from trees falling. They had to open the canal to relieve the back pressure on the water from the storm. Otto also hit Costa Rica and Nicaragua, but they are much larger countries across and were not totally swallowed up by the storm.
I set up my laptop in the back bedroom and spent much of the day getting stuff done there. I am still working on my Italian language training via DuoLingo and am making good progress. Finally hit 19% fluency this morning.
This morning Dominica worked on getting our flights booked for the early part of the year. Hard to believe that we are scheduling the flights for our third year totally abroad already! She found some amazing deals on Norwegian Air flights from JFK in New York City to Rome. We are all booked for the four of us to fly out on January 15th.
Our current plan, and of course this will change, is that we are going to drive from Dallas to NYC just after the first of the year and spend almost two weeks with my dad. Then we will go down to NYC and fly from NYC to Oslo to Rome. Then spend a week in Rome doing sightseeing and whatnot. This will be the first time for any of us to go to Rome or this far south in Italy. We have not been south of Florence in the past.
After a week in Rome we can get local flights down to Catania in Sicily for about $23. Our plan is to be living on the water south of Syracuse. So flights to Catania and the local milk train down to the village, we hope.
Dominica also has her flights booked for returning to the United States in February for Kathy and Tricia’s wedding which is on February 23rd (Rachel’s birthday) at Cocoa Beach, Florida. So she is going to fly from Catania to Rome, then take British Airways from Rome to Orland, rent a car and drive to the coast. She has her Rome to Orlando flight and back all booked and paid for now, as well. So I will be alone in Sicily with the girls for a week during my birthday.
I spent much of the day in the back room on my own and actually managed to get through thirty seven DuoLingo Italian lessons today. I’m rather impressed with myself. I am up to 24% fluency according to the site, now.
Scott and Dominica at the Preamble in Webster
This evening Dominica and I went out on a date and found the Preample not far away in Webster, Texas which was awesome. Trey was our bartender and there were a few other people in the bar for a while but then eventually it was only us left towards the end of the night. We ended up hanging out with Trey for a while. The drinks are fantastic and the selection is really impressive. We found out that they only opened up around April 1st of this year, so we discovered them on the early side. This is going to be our new hangout when we are in the area.
We did a good job of getting up this morning, packing and getting out the door. We were not exactly in a hurry, but did not want to wait around for traffic to get back, either. So we were on the road around noon.
We hit McDonald’s before leaving Carrollton so we could eat while we drove. We went east and tried to take the Dallas North Tollway but it was all backed up from construction so we diverted and worked our way along surface roads to get to TX75 and go down through downtown which worked pretty well.
Our drive was a decently easy one. We sang along with the radio for a ways. We stopped once for gas and once again for an emergency bathroom stop for Luciana. Not a bad trip at all.
We got to League City and met up with Francesca, Madeline and Emily at La Brisa for dinner. I got the firecracker shrimp tacos, which were pretty good. The girls both went for mac and cheese.
After dinner we went to the Grices’ house. But I felt like doing some walking, so Emily and I went out to Target and shopped for a few hours. We walked all over the store and were pretty goofy.
After our shopping trip we went to Starbucks and got coffee for ourselves and Madeline.
Back to the house, up for a little bit talking to Francesca and then off to bed.
I kept up with my DuoLingo Italian practice today, but am not doing as much yesterday or today as I would like to have done. Hard while driving all day to get enough time to do as much as I would like.
Sunday. Our last day in Dallas until next weekend. We are going down to Houston in the morning, so we are hanging out at home today, no real plans.
This morning we took the kids to Cafe Brazil for breakfast. Shawn was working, this is the first time that we’ve actually run into either Shawn or Tim at Cafe Brazil even though they claim to work there all of the time.
Rachel, Chris and Estella left Houston this morning around eleven so we are expecting Rachel to get home in the later afternoon. I’m sure that she will be looking forward to a hot shower after a weekend of camping in the woods without any running water. Ick. So not my thing. If going to a renaissance festival sounds boring normally, camping at one in the cold makes it so much worse. It’s actually hard to imagine how many things would be less fun.
We had a pretty relaxing day. Dominica and I hung out with each other much of the morning. Rachel came home as expected, but tonight is the Walking Dead and we do not have television so she did not stay for too long. Kim came over and hung out for a while. Shawn stopped by. Lots of traffic around the house.
This evening Dominica and I started watching The Ranch on Netflix. Lots of good people, but the show is just not doing it for me. I really like the cast, but the characters are not very good. We watched quite a bit of it, though.
Saturday. We have the house to ourselves all day as Rachel is down in Houston for the renaissance festival there. She left yesterday and won’t be back until later in the day tomorrow. So this is rare for us to have a quiet house for the entire day.
Liesl played some video games this morning. She is really, really into Rayman Origins, which is a hard platform game and we are very impressed that she is playing it so much and so well.
This evening Kim and Armando came over to hang out, we have not seen them in forever. Sheldon and Bryce came along too. Kiara stayed and watched the girls, it has been years since she babysat them, they were so excited.
We started by going to the Drunken Donkey up in The Colony so that Armando could watch the Oklahoma versus West Virginia game up there. We had some snacks there and hung out for an hour or two. Allie was working but we did not see her until we were going to leave.
Sheldon and Bryce went home and then Kim, Armando, Dominica and I tried going out to Mavericks up Hebron but we stepped in and it was not the kind of place that we were looking for so we decided to take Bryce’s advice and go to Cowboy Red River in the city instead. It was a little bit of a drive but turned out ot be far more of what we were looking for.
None of us have been to Cowboy Red River before but it turned out to be pretty nice. The place was huge, had lots of dancing, loads of people and a good live band. We had a really nice evening.
