Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is a big day for us, we have officially made the final payment on our 2013 Chevy Spark.  It is only a little, cheap car and we only took out a three year loan on it and we made the final payment a month early because we wanted to, but it is done and it is ours.  This is the first car that we have paid off and owned outright since Dominica’s Mazda PR5 (the blue one) was paid off, which was a very long time ago, sometime around 2006.  This is the first car that Dominica and I purchased as a couple that we have paid off!  And it is the first of the “now we live in Europe elimination bills” that we have to work on.  The other big, new pay-down items are selling off the white Acadia and selling the Texas house.  We plan to do both of those this summer.  What a massive difference those two items will make on top of having the Spark be all done!!

We did not have rain today, possibly the first day without rain since I have been back in New York.  So much rain here!

This morning I walked to the Friendly Bake Shop and got $30 of donuts for everyone.  We eat a lot of donuts here. They are awesome.  They make some of the best donuts anywhere right around the corner from the house.  Very hard to resist.  It’s the icing that really makes the difference.

I got to work first thing this morning and worked all day.  So, like yesterday, was locked away up in the upstairs bedroom away from everyone for the entire day.  But, I think, I was decently productive and I am feeling much better being on my own upstairs.  It is not an ideal work environment but it is easily as good or more comfortable than I have been in Spain for the last few months so I am used to it.

The kids played outside a lot today.  There was a lot of fighting too, especially while Dominica and Francesca were out doing some shopping.  The kids are getting on the restless side.

It was a very busy work day today so little time to do much of anything.  I pretty much ventured downstairs for coffee and returned to my upstairs cave to work.

We put on some Michel Bublee on the Echo today and Liesl was so excited about the music that she smacked her head into the door!

This evening Dominica and I watched about three episodes of Modern Family before she headed to bed and I returned to work for another couple of hours.

Of note, today Greg and I talked further about plans that we had started working on in earnest two days ago about getting all of the servers out of the Toronto data center.  On its own, this is not worthy of much note.  But this is really just some context for what is to come in about a week (obvious this post is being written a few weeks later than the date of the post.)

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.