Sheep Guarding Llama

Four day to go.  It is starting to seem a little bit real now.  A little big of panic is starting to set in as I realize all of the things that need to be done before I leave on Friday evening.  Time is really running out.  I can’t believe how little time is left (nor how much needs to be done before then.)

Today, mostly I just work at the house.  I did not go anywhere and I just ate leftover food bits around the house like the remaining sliced Swiss cheese.  A pretty boring day.

I watched several episodes of M*A*S*H this evening.  I’m really surprised by how much I really enjoy that show.  I always liked it, but I am now at an age where the combination of the humour of it and the nostalgia really come together for me.

The dogs are a bit better today.  They are sleeping with me now and resting much of the day which is helping to keep me from going completely crazy.

I got to bed at four thirty this morning after having dropped Madeline off at her high school so that she could head over to Florida.  I got home and watched an episode of M*A*S*H before heading to bed.

The dogs got me up around ten this morning.  I actually did better than I had figured that I would.  But I would have liked a lot more sleep than this.

I got up, let the dogs out and checked in with Dominica.  They are in Universal Studios this morning doing the Harry Potter Experience and having a great time.  Dominica said that Liesl rode the Expedition Everest roller coaster in Animal Kingdom yesterday!  That is a really big roller coaster for her.  I certainly would not want to ride that.  I can’t believe that my six year old rode it!!  I never did anything like that until I was in college and even then only once or twice.

Luciana managed to clock in at exactly forty inches when measured in the Animal Kingdom and that meant that she got to ride Dinosaur! just like Liesl did when we were there with Dad back in late 2013.  Luciana loved it.  She was so excited when she came out saying that they went to the time of the dinosaurs! I am so glad that she got to ride it.

Today they did the Harry Potter Experience and Liesl rode the Gringotts ride and Dominica said that it was too intense and scared her a bit.

I spent some time getting all of the photos and videos uploaded from my phone today.  I need my iPhone as clear as possible before we head to Spain so that we are able to take pictures whenever we want to.  We have no idea what our uploading capabilities are going to be from there.  I am also working hard to get caught up or ahead on my writing as I am going to be out of commission for a bit when first heading overseas.  We don’t know what the Internet and phone situation is really going to be like.

I stopped working in the middle of the evening and took some time to go downstairs and relax while watching some shows.  I watched more M*A*S*H and then, for some strange reason, tortured myself with Scary Movie 5.  But then I discovered that Netflix how has one of my favourite Disney live action movies ever, The Rocketeer from 1991.  That was an amazing film that I have not seen in many, many years.  So I had a great time getting to see that again.

I resisted going out for any food today and just ate what was left around the house, which wasn’t much.

Today is my day to watch Madeline.  I got up around eleven knowing that I was going to have to be up very late tonight.  We both just puttered around the house until roughly one.  That gave me time to shower and change and do a few things before we had to drive down to her high school to drop off her stuff for her band trip to Florida tomorrow morning.

We dropped off the luggage a little before two and then went out for a late lunch at Cracker Barrel in League City.  Lunch was great and I am always surprised by how cheap Cracker Barrel is.  It feels like it is going to be so expensive and you get so much food but it is really cheap.  Cheaper than any diner in Peekskill, that is for sure.  We ended up staying there for about an hour.

We didn’t do much this afternoon.  Mostly Madeline just hung out in the living room and I did some light work upstairs.  She had quite a bit of homework to do and spent several hours on that so it was dark and time for dinner by the time that she was done with that.

Around seven I ran out to Taco Bell and acquired dinner for us.  We ate that and watched an episode of That Seventies Show which she had never seen and, surprisingly, somehow doesn’t know any of the actors, many of whom are currently very big stars.

After we ate she tried to get a little sleep.  I went up to my desk and watched M*A*S*H which is now available on Netflix.  I have not seen that show in twenty years for sure and very likely quite close to thirty years.  I only saw it now and then when I was young.  I saw a lot of it, to be certain, but it was always sporadic.  My dad and I both liked it a lot back in the early 1980s.  But watching it in reruns made it oddly out of time and had no continuity.  So I decided to go back and watch it now, in order.  So I am working my way through the first season.  It all seems familiar yet new, too.  And the show holds up surprisingly well.  I can’t believe how good even the first episodes are now, forty three years later!

Madeline managed to get a few hours sleep, maybe more than three.  I stayed up as it would be silly to go to bed just to have the alarm go off at two thirty.  I’m often still up then anyway.

So at two thirty Madeline got up and at a quarter till three we headed out the door.

I was back in the house by four, watched an episode of M*A*S*H and got into bed.

I had to be up at four thirty this morning so that I could drive Joe, Brittany and Bennie to Hobby for their flight to Orlando.  That got me moving quite early today.  I came home and did not bother to go back to bed.  I kind of wanted to but there was too much to do and if I did go back to bed I would not likely get very much sleep anyway.

Dominica was up early this morning.  Well really, she was up all night.  But early this morning she got out of bed, went down to the kitchen and set up shop trying to reach any rental housing firms as they opened their offices this morning.  She did nothing else all morning.

Eventually it was clear that Dominica had no means of reaching anyone and getting a house.  She was having a truly terrible morning.  But I got her to reach out to AirBnB and tell them that she could not do anything and that she really, really needed help.  Once she did that, things got better very quickly.  AirBnB really came through and fixed everywhere.  They found an awesome house that was way better than what the family had been planning on getting and one that was closer to the parks for them.  The house was like 50% more expensive than the original house that they were going to stay in and AirBnB paid for the entire difference!  They were amazing.

It was really impressive to see AirBnB come through and fix things even when none of it was their fault.  We were really worried because we are using AirBnB in Dublin the day after we are done in Florida, and we are using them in Oslo in June and again in Austin in September and that is just what is booked already.  We were thinking about using them in Panama City in August as well.

We were so impressed with AirBnB.  We are going to use them a lot after today.  They worked so hard to make things right.  Customer service really rocked it on this.  As a first time user of their service this was really something.

So by early afternoon Dominica was feeling much better.  Which was good because there was so much left to do.  She was running around doing all that she could with what little time remained.  I had to run over to the Grices and do a pick up of Madeline’s stuff there because Dominica did not have time.

It was around two thirty when everyone met at the Tocco house to get Francesca’s car loaded up and ready to go.  It was actually after three when they pulled out to leave.  The three youngest, except for Luciana, were in the third row with Liesl in the middle.  Luciana and Emily had the second row.  They have a long drive to Florida ahead of them.

I finished up work at the house alone.  Then, when I was done, I had to drive down to Dee’s house and pick up Madeline who had been at a school party this evening.

On the way back to the house, Madeline and I stopped at Sonic and picked up food and milkshakes.  She was pretty excited to get taken out for milkshakes, she doesn’t normally get to do that.

Back at the house, Madeline and I ate dinner and watched several episodes of Monarch of the Glen which, of course, she has never seen.  She kind of liked it.  More than most things I would have tried having her watch.  So I am counting that as a win.

We did not stay up very late.  Quite tired here and tomorrow there are errands to run and not much sleep for either of us tomorrow night.  So trying to get some rest tonight.

So much for things being all set and easy leading up to everyone traveling.  Both Dominica and I got hit with a lot of stuff today, far more her than me.

The day started off just fine.  But it was not long into the day when it was determined that I was going to have to work through the night on a major infrastructure upgrade.  So the plan was that I would knock off early, take a break and then start working again around six and go into the early morning.  But late in the day that plan go changed and I needed to instead go to bed early tonight and start work at six in the morning, instead of at noon, my normal time.  This was actually much harder as I normally go to bed between two and three and get up around nine or ten.  So this was shifting my schedule a lot.

This afternoon the poo really hit the fan.  Dominica got contacted by the company that they are renting the house from in Florida (renting it tomorrow, keep in mind) and they decided to tell her today that they don’t have any houses for her and that there is nothing that they can do, sorry.  Oh, but if she cancels her reservation with AirBnB and pays an extra $300 that they will put her into a more expensive house, but even though they are required to provider her a place equal to or better than what she has paid for, they aren’t going to.  So too bad.

Clearly this is extortion.  They know that our money is tied up in the deposit.  They know that the vacation starts tomorrow.  They knew that they had her over a barrel and that she had no leverage.  She checked online reviews and it turns out that since she originally made the reservations that this company had been doing this a lot and their reviews from the last few weeks were full of people getting things cancelled, prices raised and bait and switches.  No question, this is a rental company that knows how to make people panic and extort a lot of money.  They also know that if they do this not only can they get an extra $300 from us but they also manage to cancel the AirBnB reservation allowing them to make extra money from not paying them too.  And, of course, once AirBnB is out of the picture there is no protection at all, the money is gone and they don’t need to have any house for you at all.

Dominica was in quite a panic.  She had no idea what to do.  She agreed, though, that they were completely attempting a blatant extortion scam and that there was nothing more dangerous than trying to keep working with them.  So she reached out to AirBnB and they were on it as quickly as they could be.  They had her look for other options in the area and she spent all evening working on that.

She was a mess tonight.  The evil extortionist kept calling and yelling at her and trying to make her feel bad.  Once they realized that she was turning them in to AirBnB (which likes will get them sued as they weren’t just screwing customers but actually stealing from AirBnB as well) they tried to make it look like the house they told us was not available “magically become available just minutes after they had a chat with AirBnB.”  But there is no way to trust them.  They are scammers.

There was very little that Dominica could do tonight.  It was so late by the time that this went down, which was of course the design otherwise the extortion ploy would never work, that she could not reach any other places that showed house inventory to see if they could make a reservation for us for tomorrow.  She was a wreck all evening and did not want to discuss it with anyone and send everyone else into a panic too.  So that made it so much worse because she really could not talk about it either.

Dominica was so stressed out that she really was not able to sleep tonight and was sick most of the night.  She knows that AirBnB will help her in the morning, but they leave for Florida at 2:30 in the afternoon, that does not leave very much time to figure things out before they have to leave.  There are a lot of people depending on that house so this is a big deal.

I had Dominica make backup hotel plans just in case there was something so wrong that they were unable to get a house for her tomorrow.  At least adding that much peace of mind to an already crazily stressful situation.

So tonight was not a happy night.  It isn’t like this is simply a one week family vacation to Florida.  Tomorrow afternoon is when Dominica, Liesl and Luciana begin their journey towards Europe too!  Dominica had so many things that she was planning to be working on today and tomorrow.  Now she is in a complete panic to be able to get things done so that she can just deal with Florida!

This was pretty bad planning to have Dominica stuck with all of the planning for the Florida trip when it backed up against our first time heading overseas to live.  There are just so many moving pieces going on over the next two weeks.  This was going to be stressful enough without having to oversee this stuff too.  She is a mess.

Tomorrow is one week until I head to Florida.  And one week and one day until we head to Ireland.  This is all coming up on us very quickly.  It is hard to believe that we will be there next week!!