Sheep Guarding Llama

This is it, we are down to the wire.  Today is my last full day here in Texas.  I am picking Brittany and Joe up from the airport early tomorrow morning and then working all day and heading to the airport for my flight to Florida tomorrow evening.

The dogs did well last night.  Liza slept beside the bed, Indy slept at my feet and Aurora snuggled under the covers keeping me warm.  They seem to get more calm the more that they realize that I am here and not going anywhere.

There is much to be done today.  Cleaning, paperwork, bills, Amazon deliveries, battery charging, packing, laundry, paying bills, going through mail, and work, of course.  Plus taking care of the dogs which is a rather demanding thing.  I still have some time tomorrow but it is limited and very last minute.

Did a ton of work cleaning and getting stuff ready today.  I can’t believe how much cleaning that there was to do!  I just keep doing it and there just keeps being more.  I did a few loads of laundry too.  So much garbage has been produced.  I’m bringing bag after bag down from the upstairs.  How so much trash got made in the weeks that we were here I cannot understand.

I took care of more details today like getting our Chevy Spark registered again here in Texas.  That requires getting paperwork done from a few places but I think that it is all set now.  And I did some bill paying.  Trying very hard to have all of my ducks in a row.  Once we leave, it is all so final.

I got the new memory cards for the cameras via Amazon today and the additional batteries and charger for the Nikon AW100.  So I got all four batteries charged and ready for that too.

I got most of the house cleaned up today.  Pretty much just the final stuff in Dominica and my bedroom to do, most of which is done, and then the big job of cleaning up the girls’ room which is a huge disaster.

For dinner I just ran out to Taco Bell.  Then hung out with the dogs for a little bit and watched some more of the second season of M*A*S*H while more laundry was running.

I decided that I wanted something sweet so went to Sonic for their milkshakes later on in the evening.

Dominica and the girls took a half day in the parks today.  Today they were back in Universal and they had a rough morning so took the afternoon off.  They need to rest so are taking tomorrow off completely so that they will be rested and ready to go to EPCOT with me on Saturday!

The countdown has begun, much less than twenty four hours until I head for the airport.  I can’t believe that our move, that we have been working on since late in 2011, is finally coming to fruition.

I am really looking forward to seeing my girls.  It’s been a full week without my babies now.

Well, only two days left at this point so my main tasks really center around cleaning the house and getting everything packed up and ready to go.  The dogs did great last night, they all slept in bed with me which makes for a pretty full bed.  Aurora gets under the covers and snuggles much like Oreo used to.  The dogs all stayed in bed, more or less, into the afternoon so I got the morning with some quiet without them being all over me which is good.  Dog sitting the three of them for a week has really made me not want to have a dog again – none of these three is anything like Oreo.  They all are full of the annoying dog straights like barking at everything and constantly jumping on you but have none or very little of the sweet, affectionate traits that you would want in a dog.  They have been driving me crazy and there are so many things that I need to do that I completely am unable to do, like work on podcasts, because of them and everyone can hear them on every conference call that I do.

Today I spent hours cleaning around the house.  The girls really left an incredible mess in every corner of the house. I had to really walk all over trying to figure out where all they had left stuff.  I really mean the entire house is covered in their mess.

I had a few Amazon shipments come today.  Mostly the GoPro equipment including batteries, charger, LCD touch screen, floaty back, hard drives for video backups and more.  It was a really big order.  I had to place one more order today for batteries and charger for the Nikon AW100 as well as we appear to have left the charger for that stored somewhere in New York as we cannot locate it here, anywhere.

This afternoon, once work was really slow, I went down the street to Waffle House down by I45 and had lunch there alone.  I only have a few meals left in Texas before heading out.  I figured that it would be slow at this time of day, it was around four thirty.  But it turned out that I was the only person there for the entire time that I was there!  So very, very slow indeed.

This evening was spent wrapping up work for the office then about a forty five minute phone call with Danielle followed by an hour phone call with Paul and Danielle.  Then I put in another hour or two cleaning around the house.

This evening, in the hallway in front of the laundry room, I uncovered a massive spider that I could not identify that had been underneath a hamper that had been left there.  It was so big, very possibly the largest non-pet spider that I have ever seen in my life and definitely the largest that I have ever seen indoors.  It was really scary.  I had to spray it with Pledge to slow it down and then drop something heavy on it, repeatedly, to bring it to a stop.  So nasty.  I really hope that that is the only one.  It’s going to be hard to sleep tonight after seeing that thing!

I was so busy today that I did not watch a single thing, not at my desk nor on the television in the living room (there is no theatre as the projector has been broken for anyone who has not followed along.)

The family was in EPCOT today but I got no real report on the day.  In the evening I know that they were going to Norway to have a Princess Dinner experience there – that is their favourite place to do it.  I believe that they are only doing that once this entire trip so tonight is the big one for the three little girls.  This will be their only day in EPCOT until the rest of the family leaves.  Then my family will do EPCOT with me on Saturday for my one day in the parks.

Only three days left!  Wow is time running out!  Today I did my inventory of everything that I think that I am going to need before heading away from Texas.  So I did an emergency order via Amazon to get stocked up on a lot of stuff – mostly GoPro supplies.  I placed a pretty huge order that will arrive tomorrow.   Hopefully I have figured out everything that we are going to need.  The one thing that I got but was not able to get all of the parts for was the Steadicam.  Everyone is out of stock of the counterbalance needed for that to really work so I am out of luck there.  I got the Steadicam but without the counterbalance.  Not sure what I am going to do – maybe just save it for the next trip and do without it this time.  It is, after all, just one more thing to have to deal with on a trip that is already extremely busy.  Maybe it is just one thing too many.  It will be ready for me when we get back.

Slow day at work, most days are right now.  Everyone knows not to load me up with stuff because I am going to be traveling all weekend and I just have a lot going on at the moment.  Next week I’ll be getting settled into Spain and dealing with the teams locally in Europe so I will have all new challenges then.

Today my big thing was researching Redis.  I have been doing a lot of that.  Mostly research, teaching myself about it and building a test cluster that I can mess with on CloudatCost.

This evening, after work, I ran to Taco Bell to pick up dinner for myself and watched M*A*S*H in the living room with the dogs while I ate.  I am into the second season now.

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.