Sheep Guarding Llama

Today was a bit of a momentous day.  Dominica and I have been trying to decide what we are going to do.  But today we decided for sure that we are going to go it without me having a normal job and I am going to focus on writing and we are going to continue our world travels as we have been doing.  We told Change this morning and started the process of figuring out the notice period and how that will work and I requested time off next week to make SpiceWorld easier to deal with.

We ended up managing to work out, due to my current project status, that I could wrap up with work tomorrow and get paid through Tuesday in lieu of notice and be all wrapped up by Wednesday, which is perfect.  So I will be free to work on things that we need to do next week on Monday and Tuesday and then can be out in Austin for SpiceWorld nice and early!  It is still going to be one hectic week.

We are quite excited.  Tomorrow I will be wrapping things up in the office and then we are all done.

We had lunch brought in from the Chinese place that the Toccos use.  General Tso’s shrimp and their amazing eggplant.

Last night I was up following the giant earthquake that happened in Chile, near Santiago.  It was the first earthquake of this magnitude in 450 years there, quite an event.  There were half a dozen earthquakes during the evening and a tsunami.  Nearly every location that our family is going to be living in for the foreseeable future was affected by the earthquake – either having quakes directly or in the path of the tsunami, even including Nicaragua.

I got my iPhone updated to iOS 9 this evening.

Dominica did a lot of packing tonight.  We are in full motion to be read for Nicaragua.

Tonight as we were going to bed we found out that AJ had broken down in Alabama, having “forgotten” to put oil in his car or to get oil changes.  The car ran out of oil and eventually gave up on him.  The engine seized and the car is totaled.  Now he is stranded in Alabama with everything that he owns in the car.

 

Wednesday of our big decision week.  We started the day feeling good but not having all of our ducks in a row yet we are still waiting.  We did very little today, we were home and I worked.  Dominica did a bit of packing, we need to be into a storage unit soon so trying to get that all ready.

By this evening we were pretty confident that we had our answer, but we are awaiting the confirmation in the morning that we have gotten everything figured out.  But, for all intents and purposes, we know tonight that I am going to be putting in my notice on Friday and will be done with my current job very soon.

Another tough day of mostly waiting to see how things will fall.  By today we are pretty confident that we are going to be turning down the option to move to California and are going to look into doing something else but we are not completely sure yet.

This afternoon I had a brief meeting with the office to talk about the situation and to set a schedule for deciding on what is going to be done.  So the current schedule is for a decision to be reached by Friday afternoon.  So, one way or another, we should know what is going on by Friday.

We are feeling generally good about the option to not move to California but do not have all of the pieces in place yet and are not one hundred percent sure that it will all work so we are still waiting to figure it all out.

So still under a bit of stress as we try to make decisions.  Can’t wait for this to be all over.

I was up early this morning.  Had a lot of phone calls today.  Kept myself very busy.     So I was up at seven this morning.

We spent a lot of time today trying to figure out what it would look like for us to move out to California.  Dominica did a bit of research on the home school laws to see what that would look like and actually found that California is pretty good for that and that it would not be all that big of a deal for us to switch the home school stuff from Texas to California.  We are pretty happy about that.  It was a major concern that that would be a disaster.

The downsides to California are pretty big.  Really high taxes, long commutes, incredibly high costs of living and long hours in the office away from the family.  It all adds up and very quickly.  And then there is the cost of getting out there, too.  That’s not trivial.  And then, on top of all of that, there is the fact that they waited to tell us about the move until after we were out of Panamá, after the retreat and when we had just, the night before, paid for and committed to the flights and apartment in Nicaragua.  The timing for making the decision to go to California could not have been “worse.”

So most of our day was spent trying to look into options and get a really good idea of what it would mean to go and what it would mean to not go.

We are a bit stressed but hopeful.  We really hope that this bit of stress turns out to be just what we need to be a catalyst into something bigger and better.  Time will tell.

It’s Sunday and we are taking it easy today.  It is going to be a long and stressful week as we try to figure out our plans and make decisions and there is pretty much no way for us to get additional information over the weekend so we are stuck trying not to stress too much and just being as ready as possible for the coming week.

I played Blackguards a bit today.  The girls discovered that they like the game a lot and spent a huge amount of the day hanging out in our room watching me play.  It is so funny how much they get into watching me play video games.  I put in many hours at the game and completed a chapter or two.  The story is good and I am enjoying it.  The strategy portion is fun but I dislike the lack of decision making, it is really just a story that tells itself, more or less, with break points for me to do some gameplay before the story moves along again.  The story telling is good, but the style is not one that I normally gravitate too very much.

This evening we watched more of Modern Family together before going to bed.