Sheep Guarding Llama

Thursday.  I slept a bit much last night as well. I am still making up a little bit of lost sleep.

This morning Dominica worked on getting all of our plans for our next six months in place.  We have had our apartment in Crete rented for a couple of weeks now, since we were still in Nicaragua, but we do not have our final plans for an apartment after that finalized yet and we do not have our flights yet.  We were going to buy our plane tickets while we were in Nicaragua but I had not been paid yet and we were unable to do so while we were there.  But now it is getting to be a bit of an emergency that we get it finalized so that is being worked on today.

It was very stressful as we had to deal with the bank today and remembering why we hate dealing with an incompetent small town credit union.  Between their lack of security and zero customer service and being completely stupid about not allowing us to spend enough money to do single transactions large enough to, you know, buy plane tickets they are pretty much useless!  It was a very upsetting day.  We spent the whole day waiting for the bank to release money after we went through all kinds of hoops to placate them and in the end, they just ignored us.  I’m talking about you, ESL in Rochester.  You are not impressive.  I’m very unhappy.

So we do not have our plane tickets and we are very worried that the price is going to shoot up again because of this.  Getting flights is extremely complicated as it is.  Having to do it over and over again because of pay and bank issues makes it just impossible.

We did lunch at Miss Kitty’s Seaside Cafe today.

Had a busy afternoon, on the phone for much of it.  Late this afternoon Dominica and the girls packed up and went up to Dickinson to see the girls’ cousins in the Christmas parade up there.  Dad was going to go but decided that he was not up to it and that knowing that he was going to see the band play this weekend he decided to just stay home with me this evening.  So we had a nice, quiet evening at the condo.

The girls had a great time at the parade and were very excited about the first that they had candy thrown to them.  They came home with a big bag full of candy.

Today is Wednesday, dad’s first full day in Galveston.  I was up nice and early around seven so I got to watch the sunrise.  I do love having an ocean view.

Dad slept in a bit, flights wear him out.  It was a quiet morning at the Miller house.  Just visiting with dad and hanging out with the girls.

This evening we went to an early dinner at the Rainforest Cafe which is just up the street.  Dad has never been to a Rainforest Cafe.

We had to make two trips to the Rainforest Cafe to be able to get everyone there in the little green car.  First I drove Dominica and the girls down there, then came back to pick up dad who was waiting out front of the condo complex.  The road by the cafe was closed for construction so we had to do some driving around to figure out how to park.

We had a really nice dinner.  The food at the Rainforest Cafe is always pretty good and the girls always have a really nice time.  They just really enjoy the whole experience.  Dad seemed to like it, too.

Dominica and I decided to get dessert while dad took the girls (or vice versa) on the dark ride that the Rainforest Cafe has in Galveston.

Dominica drove the girls home and dad and I walked back.  It was nice to get a walk after all of that food.

This evening, as it was not all that late by the time that we were home, Luciana fired up Goat Simulator on the laptop and played that for a long time.  She loves that game and wanted to show grandpa how she could play it.

Today is Tuesday.  I got up this morning after sleeping for eleven hours!  I feel much better.  Still slightly tired but overall, pretty good.  I’ve caught up enough for today to be fine.

Super busy morning online.  Tons of posting and activity.

Francesca came this morning.  It is her last day hanging out at the condo with us.

Quiet day, we spent a lot of time sitting outside because it was so nice today.

At three thirty I hopped in the car and drove up to Hobby International (my first time to it since it became an “international” airport) and picked up dad. His flight was originally supposed to land at 4:06.  But then it got moved up and we expected him at 3:56.  But he didn’t actually land until a quarter after four.

He had a good flight.  I was able to wait just before the passenger pick up spot and we were right onto the road to head down to Galveston.  This is dad’s first time in this part of the state.  He has been to Dallas but only via a flight so has never driven around an extended portion of Texas.  Even after flying in today he has not really seen Houston since Hobby is so far outside of the city and we drove right away from it.

We were back at the condo by five.  We did an early dinner going to Kitty’s Seaside Cafe and eating there.  Dad is always very hungry after his flight.  We sat in the back room instead of the front room where we always have been before.  They have an eight person table back there, which is handy.  It is so nice, for us, that the season is so slow because we really have the restaurant to ourselves.

Dinner was awesome and we learned that Miss Kitty is from West Monroe, LA, which explains her accent and the style of food, which is just amazing.  She has owned the restaurant for about a year.

I tried going to bed last night.  Dominica was asleep before I even started putting the kids to bed.  I was up until after midnight getting the girl off to bed.  I was in bed probably by half past midnight.  I might have slept a little but by around one thirty or maybe two at the latest I was awake and definitely not going to fall back asleep.  I tried in vain for a little while but then decided that it would be far better to just get up and actually do something rather than laying in bed getting nothing done and regretting neither getting sleep nor having done a single thing by morning.

I set up two laptops in the kitchen and got to work.  I also put on Hexcells Plus, which I had been playing yesterday too, and went back and forth between knocking out a few puzzles and getting some posting done.  It also gave me a chance to monitor our massive video game download project.  We have enough now that we could easily survive on what we have.  Now I am just rounding out the collection since we own the games.  They will be ready in case we want them.

I actually had a very productive morning.  I got a lot of things done that needed to be done and I am feeling far better about things.  It is so easy to get behind on things.

Another GOG sale today.  More games for the girls.  Their collection is getting to be intense.

Francesca was over today.  It is Monday.  Tomorrow is her last day staying with us as Dad arrives tomorrow evening.

This afternoon I hurt my heel – that issue that I have where the tendon slips out of position and does not go in the track in my heel like it is supposed to do.  Intense pain and I cannot walk on it at all.  No fun at all.  So the last half of the day I was just hopping all over the place and avoiding moving as much as possible.

I was off to bed very early this evening.  I need a lot of sleep, I am seriously exhausted.

I found a new video game today for my iPhone.  The Murder Files: Enigma Express.  It is a silly hidden object game but one that continues in the theme of the Blue Toad Murder Files game that Dominica and I liked so much on the PC.  It’s a free game and I’m kind of addicted.

Dad arrives in Houston tomorrow evening around four.

Today is Sunday.  Only two days until dad comes to visit us in Texas.  The girls are very excited.

Francesca came out to Galveston this morning and we all went to the Golden Corral for breakfast.  They really have good food there and a good variety.  It is perfect for us because they have a really big variety and they have lots of items that all of us like.  The girls eat lots of different things there and it is really easy for us to deal with all of it.  We will be using them a lot from this condo.  Way to convenient not to.

After our late breakfast, Francesca, Dominica and the girls went back to League City to go shopping.  The girls got dropped off with Emily and Madeline at the Grices’ and Dominica and Francesca spent the day first shopping then wrapping.

I spent most of the day relaxing around the condo.  It is great having a mostly quiet weekend.  I got a lot more time to myself today than I did yesterday.  They all left around noon or before and I did not leave the condo to go to the Grices to pick them up until almost seven thirty.

What did I do with my new found freedom, you ask?  Well, in addition to managing the massive, ongoing Steam games download I played a few video games and spent a lot of time working on getting new games working and set up.  Then I discovered HexCells, a Minesweeper-esque puzzle series.  In almost no time I played through the first one in the series.  The I went on to play HexCell Plus but got nowhere near beating that one.

After I picked everyone up around eight we loaded up in the Spark and drove down a few exits and went to Denny’s for dinner.  Dominica and I both got veggie burgers with sweet bourbon sauce.  Liesl had mac and cheese.  Luciana was going to have cheese sticks but saw the reindeer themed pancakes and had to have those.

It was pretty late when we got home.  Dominica was falling asleep in no time.  I finally managed to get the kids off to bed around midnight.  Dominica was really tired.