Sheep Guarding Llama

This is it, we are officially, completely “in motion.”  Today is the day that my family has been waiting for for three and a half years.  Today begins my travel to join the family and head to Europe.  But first, Florida.  We will be in Spain, having been to Dublin as well, by Monday.  What a weekend it is going to be. This is one weekend that I think none of us will every forget.

I had to be up early this morning, which was anything but ideal, because I had to get Joe and Brittany at Houston’s Hobby airport.  Their plane was scheduled to land at 8:05 this morning.

It turned out that the time for their flight was wrong and even though they got a late start they were on the ground in Houston by 7:26!  So I was scrambling to get to the airport to get them this morning.  But we were back to the house before nine.  They were pretty exhausted after the week away.  The dogs were very glad to see them.

I spent my entire morning packing, cleaning and doing laundry.  There is still so much to be done before we can leave.  I got my iPad all charged up so that it would be ready to travel tonight.

It was a crazy day and I had no time to spare.  I worked on getting the house in order and every ready until the very last second.  No time to spare.

It was five when we left to head to the airport. Traffic was terrible so it took about fifty minutes to get there.  So all of the “extra” time that I had budgeted was used up just in the initial traffic.

I got to the airport about six.  I got put into the pre-screened line and got through security super fast.  I had a nice, long, relaxing wait then for my flight, exactly what I needed.  The last few days have been stressful and hectic trying to get everything ready.

But now that I am in the airport, all of the prep is done.  Nothing more to do, I am here and it is all moving forward.  It is really hard to believe that it is really real, but I am now committed and on my way to our new life in Europe.  So surreal.  Other than getting married and having kids, this is the biggest life change that we have ever made.

I ate at a burger joint in the airport.  Two small beers and some fried shrimp, pickles and jalapeños and it was time to get onto the plane.

The flight was fine tonight.  I had a whole row to myself on Southwest which was pretty awesome.  The flight was not too long.  Just over two hours.  Houston to Orlando isn’t bad at all.

I got into Orlando and rented my car.  We had a rental lined up from National but there was no National rep there to rent it to me, just a sign sending me to Alamo.  They took care of me but then National had no cars of the right size.  So Alamo gave me a free upgrade and I got a Mazda 3 which was great.

It was a long drive, almost an hour, from the airport to the house that the family had rented.  Not a bad drive, but I was tired and just wanted to get there and get to bed.

It was just after midnight by the time that I actually got to the house!  Everyone was asleep already.  I just came in and went straight to bed.  Dominica had a king bed and the girls have been sharing with her.  They had left room for me – Dominica had told them that if they left room I would be able to snuggle them when I arrived from Texas so they had carefully not go onto my part of the bed.

Going to be a very busy day tomorrow.  We are in Disney all day, have logistics to deal with in the morning and in the evening – we are off to Ireland.

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.