Sheep Guarding Llama

It is Sunday and a relaxing day.  Today is my one full day to hang out with dad back home.  First thing this morning we hung out for a little while AJ was still asleep.  We got a few hours to catch up and relax this morning.

Dad was showing AJ and me how he and some people from the church had been working on getting Ella an Internet radio system so that she can listen to a radio station that she really liked out of Syracuse.  She lives in Warsaw now where there is no radio or television signals because of the mountains surrounding the village.  To get things to work for her they had, to make a long story short, gotten two expensive Internet radios, had them outfitted with special tactile stickers on their buttons to make it easy-ish for Ella to find the buttons that she needs and had them set up so that one could be used and if she felt that it was not working that the other one could be swapped in.

Challenges that they faced include people bringing in other radios that are not all set up for her and, because she is blind, she may not find the right radio or know which one is supposed to work.  Or if there are Internet problems there is no feedback.  And even when working correctly the Internet radios can take over a minute to buffer the radio station with no feedback so it is pretty much impossible to know if the correct buttons have been pressed, if it is plugged in, if it is working, etc.  Quite frustrating if you cannot look at the front LCD on it and know what is going on from there.

So dad was showing AJ and I all of this setup and how they were using the multiple units and all the effort that was going in to making this system work for Ella and once he was done showing it all to us I looked at him and then said, “Alexa, play WBER” (or whatever the call letters were for the radio station in question) and almost instantly the Echo told us that it understood the request and started right into playing the live stream.  Worked perfectly, for much less money, far more easily.  The look on dad’s face was priceless.  I have a feeling that they will be getting her one of these now.

We all went over to the Omega Grill in Geneseo for a very late breakfast.  From there AJ left to drive back home and dad and I went back to the house.

Dad and I spent the afternoon just visiting on the farm.  It’s been a long time since we had time to catch up just us.  There are normally the girls running all over the house needing constant attention and making conversations difficult.  We had a really good time.  And it was nice to have downtime too.  Nowhere to be.  Nothing that need my attention.

This evening dad and I went back to Geneseo and got ourselves dinner from Taco Bell.

I will be heading back to Frankfort with the Chevy Spark tomorrow.

I got to relax this morning.  The weekend is finally here.  I am packed up with Dominica’s pink High Sierra backpack and nothing else to take on my trip.  I am only staying for two nights so do not need very much and we have figured out that we can get my CPAP into the backpack if we are really judicious in the packing.

It was nearly noon when Dominica drove me to the Utica train station so that I could catch my train west bound.  She dropped me off about twenty minutes before the train was due but immediately it was running late and I had about a forty minute delay to wait through.

I went outside and walked up and down the platform.  I was the only person waiting for the afternoon train so I had the entire place to myself.

When the train came they did not even ask for my ticket, it was quite obvious who I was and they already knew where I was going.  I settled into my seat and pretty much just relaxed for the journey.  The down time was very nice.

On the train ride I got a veggie burger and had some issues breathing after eating it.  I looked at all of the food ingredients trying to figure out what might be wrong.  My only real thought is that maybe I am allergic to soy, which is a very common allergen.  Going to have to pay attention to this and see if I can figure out if there is a commonality between all of the times that this happens.

Originally Danielle was going to pick me up at the station but she was busy and AJ was in town so he came to the station to get me.  We drove out to the east side of the city, to which I have not been for a very long time, I think that we were actually in Webster, and had about an hour or maybe two to kill prior to our SpiceCorps meeting there.

To kill the time we went to Houligan’s, which is new to Rochester since I was in the area, and went to the bar to have some drinks.  AJ went through his regular assortment of inappropriately named girly shots (Sex on the Beach, Red Headed Slut and other ridiculous drink combinations) while I had my traditional martinis (gin, of course, or else it isn’t truly a martini and should just be called a vodkatini.)

Danielle ended up meeting us at the bar and after a few minutes we found that our sponsors from Scale were at the bar too and we had a few minutes to get to meet them and make introductions before heading next door to the event venue.

While we were still at the bar, the one engineer and I got to talking.  He is a German citizen, born and raised in Germany of Austrian stock, but as we were talking we started to realize how much background we had in common and after a few minutes had managed to identify a common ancestor from the middle eighteenth century!  So, strangely we were actually cousins!

From the bar we went up to the meeting venue.  Scale did most of the presentation this evening.  It was a good event.  Not a ton of people but a fair number and very good for a Rochester area event.  We had a good time.

Afterwards we went to Houligan’s again and sat out on the patio and had drinks for a while, everyone together.

Late in the evening, AJ drove me down to dad’s house.  AJ had nowhere to stay tonight and had asked dad if he could come crash down there.  So he was able to drive me right there.  Worked out pretty well.

Dad was still up and waiting when we got in.  We spent a couple hours hanging out with dad.  We were all pretty tired but I have not seen AJ since Austin in September and have not seen dad since before we went to Spain so there was a lot of catching up to do.

I finally got to see and set up the Amazon Echo that had arrived almost instantly after we had left for Spain back in March.  We bought the early beta of it which made it very cheap but it had come long before we were ready to use it.  Getting it set up was pretty easy and I was able to play with it for a good twenty minutes before going to bed.  Just in that short span of time dad thought that it was pretty cool; I can tell that he wants one of these now.

AJ slept upstairs in the living room.  I got to sleep on the futon down in the basement.  This was my first time in a firm, comfortable bed since leaving the Toccos’ house in Houston in March.  Boy did it feel good.  So comfortable.  My body has been anxiously awaiting this.

I brought the Echo down to the basement with me and hooked it up by the bed.  Being able to just ask out loud for the time is pretty neat.  Or to ask the weather.  And once in bed I was able to just say “Alexa, play a thunderstorm” and the Echo put on my environmental sounds which is perfect for me at night.  I have only just started playing with it but so far I am really liking it.

I am very thankful for a Friday.  Having a weekend away at dad’s is going to be really nice.  I am even looking forward to some quiet time on the train with nothing in particular to do for a few hours.

Today was a lot of birthday preparation for Luciana’s birthday.  There was a rainbow cake to be made, on which I had to advise because even the family baker (Francesca) has never made a layer cake before!  It’s crazy that I have made them many times (but not for at least twenty five years, I am sure.)

The party was late this evening after everyone was home from work.  We had dinner and then we had the cake which turned out awesome with a full rainbow of colours inside.  Then Luciana opened her presents, which she loved.  She was so excited and I managed to get some videos of it as well.  She has been looking forward to celebrating her birthday for months.  Being four, it is a time when your birthday is a really big deal.

So the kids had a lot of fun this evening playing with new toys.  After everyone went to bed I stayed up for a while and started playing the Tropico 4: Modern Times Expansion set which has about thirty to forty percent more scenarios to play through with new twists and stuff to learn from the original game.  I am really getting my money’s worth out of this game.  It was only about five dollars to buy, I believe, and I have gotten scores of hours of gameplay and hundreds of hours of run time out of this game.  It has been a lot of fun.

Tomorrow I travel out to Rochester for SpiceCorps and will be visiting dad all weekend.

Very tired this morning having gotten very little sleep last night because I was up late dealing with being paged out.

The Steam and GOG Summer Sales have been going on and I’ve been taking quite a beating there.  There have been just tons and tons of games that I was really interested in.  I’ve gotten probably around forty games in these rounds of sales!  Liesl, Luciana and I have an immense backlog of titles to work our way through now.

I am still working from the kitchen.  I need to rethink this strategy.  Today is Thursday and hopefully things will be on the slower side and work with it being the lead in to the weekend.

I bought my train ticket for the Amtrak Lakeshore Limited on Saturday so that I can zip out from Utica to Rochester to go to the SpiceCorps Rochester meeting Saturday night and then get some time visiting with dad.  The plan is for me to go out Saturday, go to the meeting, then go to dad’s for the weekend and come back out to Frankfort on Monday driving the Chevy Spark back with me as we need a car for us.  Francesca has the GMC Acadia so that is in use and we do not all fit into it anyway.

Today did turn out to be pretty decent.  Not too bad at all.

Today was far less busy than yesterday was with work.  Yesterday was really bad.  Today, I am still working at the kitchen table, but it was much improved.  During the day I was able to make another attempt at playing the final scenario in Tropico 4 and I am very happy to say that I was able to beat it.  I have completed Tropico 4 which is something that makes me very happy because I have such a history of not completing video games.  It is really easy for me to start a game but taking the time to actually work my way completely through them and getting to the end takes quite some effort and it makes me feel very good to be able to stick to it and knock them out.  I have a huge backlog of games to play and completing some is a nice feeling.

This afternoon, while playing in the living room with her cousins which always gets a bit rowdy, Liesl fell forward and hit the couch with her face.  The impact knocked out one of the loose teeth that she has had.  She took it like a champ, though, and barely complained at all.  This is her second tooth in about two weeks.  She is losing them very quickly now.

This evening the kids were all outside using sidewalk chalk to colour all over the Toccos’ large, new black topped parking lot at the house.  It is perfect for the kids to all play outside.  They love the space and the neighbour kids came over too to join them.

This evening I was able to wrap up work and not stay at it all evening.  While we had a little bit of time to relax, Dominica and I grabbed the television in the dining room and put on The Love Boat and made it through one and a half episodes, which Emily joined us for.  We are now on the fourth season of the show (having skipped the second season as, for some reason, that is the one that is not available.)

After watching the show we tried to go to bed but after everyone else went to bed I ended up getting paged and needing to get up and work for a while before I was able to actually try to get some sleep.  I am still generally pretty tired.  Going to take a while before I get a chance to catch up.  Between the recent travel and all kinds of issues at work, there just has not been a lot of opportunity to be catching up on sleep (or SGL or much of anything else.)