Sheep Guarding Llama

The alarm was set for three but I was already awake without it this morning.  The girls slept upstairs in their tent last night and Dominica slept in the guest room in the basement so that I would not wake her up when I got up this morning.  I probably got at least two hours of sleep last night, it is hard to say. But regardless, I am pretty tired today.

I was ready in no time and was outside waiting for Danielle and her mom to pick me up well before three thirty.

We were on the road very early.  It is a long drive to Manhattan from dad’s place.  We went south down Interstate 390 and across Interstate 86 in the Southern Tier.  We stopped for coffee several hours into the trip as we had forgotten that nothing was going to be open for a very long time.

It was still decently early when we got to the Croton Harmon train station.  It is always weird to me that we use this train station even when coming from so far away because this station is close enough to our house in Peekskill that I have walked home from it before.  It’s almost like being home, but not nearly close enough to really feel like we are at the house.   And we have lived in that house so little (less than two years total, split up between two separate times spread out over a six year window) that it never feels quite like home.  But in some ways, it does have a home feel to it.  That house has been ours for eight years now, so there is always this small attachment to the area in a strange way.  But never enough to not feel like strangers.

We had no problem catching the morning train into the city.  It’s an easy ride.  And one that we just did, or at least I did, a month ago with the family for our bus tour day.  Odd that I am doing two marathon day trips to Manhattan so close together.

We got to Grand Central Terminal and split ways.  Danielle and her mom had some family stuff to do this morning.  I went straight to the AetherStore offices and set up shop there doing some writing and then hanging out and catching up with everyone. It was a busy day as I’ve not seen most of everyone for about a year.

It was a pretty relaxing morning, I got a bit of time at my own desk before Rob and I went out for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon working.  Danielle and Shannon had a lunch meeting in the same restaurant and I did not even know.

Rob and I hit a liquor store on the way back to the office and got back just in time for the very small and very casual MangoLassi impromptu Manhattan Meetup this evening.  Only four people showed up, but we made new friends and had a nice time hanging out.  Technically there were more like eight or nine people, as AetherStore provided quite a few. We had pizza as well, all at their offices.

We had to leave on the early side, around eight, to get back to the train station and get the train back to Croton Harmon so that we could drive the very, very long drive back to dad’s place.  Danielle’s mom was staying for the week in Brooklyn so did not ride back with us.  It was just Danielle driving and me riding for the tiring ride back home.

It was after three in the morning when Danielle dropped me off.  And it was right off to bed for me.

Monday.  Tomorrow Danielle and I are going down to Manhattan for the day.  So today is very busy with Dominica trying to catch up on sleep from her party weekend (she is in rough shape today) and me just writing and posting all day.  I’m exhausted already and know that there is going to be nearly zero sleep tonight and tomorrow is going to be crazy.

I tried to get to bed around ten this evening, knowing that I had to be up at three, but I did not manage to fall asleep until at least midnight, if I really got any sleep at all.  Manhattan tomorrow for the second time recently.

The girls slept up in their living room fort again tonight.  They are so silly.

We had to get moving this morning as Dominica left Lake George very early this morning with Tricia and we needed to meet them up in Rochester to make the exchange.  We decided to get lunch at Jay’s Diner while we were up there.  So I took the girls along with me in dad’s convertible.

We had a nice lunch, I’ve not seen Tricia in a year, not since we went to the bar in Rochester with them which might have been more than a year ago.  We hung out at Jay’s Diner for easily two hours.  This is my second time here, Eric and I did breakfast there a few weeks ago, in years.

Saturday on the farm.  I slept in late this morning trying to catch up on some sleep as I have had very little for the past few days, but Art and Danny Case stopped by and woke me up this morning to show off the new Chevy Camaro that Art had bought yesterday.  It’s pretty cool and the colour is great.  He got the turbo charged four cylinder so it has a lot of take off but is lighter than the bigger engined versions and gets good fuel efficiency.  Liesl came out to check out the car, too.

Dominica and my passports arrived yesterday in the mail.  So we are ready to head off to Europe as soon as the two for the girls arrive.  Theirs were expected to take longer.

Last night the girls talked dad into making a giant fortress in the living room and they slept up there all night inside of the tent.  They are so silly.  I don’t remember ever sleeping in a fort like that.  But there again, I didn’t have a sibling to have fort adventures with, nor iPads to watch shows and play games inside of a fort, either.

 

Friday.  The last day for the free Windows 10 upgrade offer from Microsoft.  We are at dad’s today and I spent the day working from his office and much of the day was spent getting Windows 10 installed on my 2012 HP Folio 13 ultrabook that Liesl is going to be getting soon as her school laptop.  This was an all day process with all kinds of challenges in getting Windows 10 installed.

This morning Art went and traded in the Malibu that we have been driving all summer.  So we are without a car now until we head down to Texas, which is pretty soon.  We don’t all fit into dad’s car so at least one person always has to stay at the house.  But we don’t have to worry about that until Dominica returns on Sunday.  Just the four of us right now.