Sheep Guarding Llama

It is Wednesday in Frankfort.  Pretty much a normal day today.  A slow morning and working normal hours.  Still very busy at work as it has been for the last few weeks.  Things have been pretty crazy and everyone is experiencing a bit of burnout.  Really looking forward to things stabilizing a lot so that we can get back to normal.

At dinner today I had the allergic asthma reaction again and, yes, there was soy.  So this is three for three.  Now that we are paying attention I have had soy three times and the asthma reaction three times.  The correlation is definitely getting to be convincing pretty quickly.

This is going to be really crappy if I have a real soy allergy as soy is a huge component of my diet, being a vegetarian.

Tonight Luciana said to me: My favourite part of you…. are snuggles.

It’s been very hard for me to work from the kitchen table at the Toccos’ house.  So today Dominica and I figured out a folding small plastic table and a chair to talk up to our bedroom upstairs which works much better.  There is air conditioning there and very little space but it is quiet and I am able to be far more productive.  It is more comfortable, but still not comfortable, and many fewer interruptions.  This is much more sustainable.

Tonight at dinner I had soy again and I had the breathing problem.  This is the first time that I had hypethesized that I might have the issue and had the soy to test it and had the reaction happen.  So a long way from being conclusive in any way but this is certainly suggestive that this could be my issue.

Was still at dad’s this morning.  Got up and we did breakfast before I took the Chevy Spark and drove back to Frankfort before it was time to start working for the day.

Back in the kitchen working.  It really hurts my back to do this and it is so hard to concentrate while out in the middle of all of the commotion.  Going to have to come up with an alternative strategy for this.

I set up the Amazon Echo today and the whole family is enthralled with it.  The kids are all already addicted to it.  They love asking it for silly jokes and having it play music for them.  It is the first for most of the kids to be able to command a device to play the music that they are interested in and they think that it is great fun.  I am never going to get this thing back, I can tell.

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.