Sheep Guarding Llama

Monday. Liesl had bad nightmares last night. We think that it is likely stemming from a “scary” video game video series that she was watching yesterday. Not really scary, very cartoony 1990 era computer graphics, so not something you would expect her to find scary. But it appears to have affected her some. So she had a rough night sleeping.

I weighed in this morning after a few weeks of avoiding the scales since there was all of that cake and pizza for all of the birthday activities. Keeping the food healthy has been very difficult. But my weigh in this morning had me down another one and a half pounds. Nothing amazing, but I am so thankful that even with all of that “cheating” that I was still moving forward.

I had a decently slow work morning. Not totally slow, but not bad. For lunch, Dominica brought be some shrimp tempura and a Koren rice bowl. It was yummy. We ate lunch while we watched Kara & Nate on YouTube. We are currently up to where they have transferred from Cambodia to Thailand.

This afternoon was much busier and I was on the phone for much of it and I ended up working until eight at night at my desk. Way too long of a day. And that’s just the time at my desk.

Dominica made some potatoes and asparagus for dinner. But I had to eat at my desk, locked in my office. “Dinner time” seems to consistently be one of my busiest times of the day. I never get to hang out with the family during eating times, it just never works.

I made myself some veggie chicken sandwiches for the core of my dinner. We watched Kara & Nate until it was time to go to bed, which I had to push Dominica to go to bed for a change. I was tired for a long time and falling asleep trying to watch our show. I need some sleep.

I did about ten thousand steps today, which isn’t bad. Nothing compared to the nearly twenty thousand that I did yesterday, though.

Sunday. Big time travel planning day here. Dominica and I spent much of the day watching Kara & Nate, our new favourite travel show that I got her hooked on last night. And today’s main focus was working on our initial travel itinerary for this summer in Europe.

There was some rain during the night, so the atrium was a little wet. But the sun came out and it was a beautiful morning. I was up early and just went outside to hang out with Paul. I managed to get a bit of sun and my legs actually got the slightest bit of a sunburn this morning.

Dominica got up and wanted to watch Kara & Nate with me. So we started pretty much at the beginning of the series (I made it through three or four episodes without her) and watching it much of the day. We made it through their first few months of travel. We are loving it, it is our new favourite show to watch together. And we have over six hundred episodes to watch!

It was mostly our YouTubers and sitting outside in the atrium all day. Very relaxing. It was quite a nice day. The girls mostly did their own things, Luciana in their bedroom and Liesl in ours. They like their chill weekends.

Dominica and I had to do a ton of work with Emily and Francesca today on the phone to try to figure out the first part of the Europe trip coming up in less than two months! So many things going on in the next two months. Yesterday we booked the first house on Crete. Today we booked our flights from New York’s JFK to Athens, Greece. We don’t have the hotel booked in Athens yet, but the plan is to fly to Athens, do a few days, then get to Santonini for a very quick sight seeing trip, then pop down to Heraklion, see some stuff, and drive to Chania to get to our rented house. From there? Who knows.

We are in a situation not unlike 2011 where we spent months and months trying to figure out what we would do in Europe with nearly unlimited options to choose from and six weeks to spend. This time it is only four weeks and we are trying to plan an ultimate trip for Emily, so it is less us brainstorming as much as it is us pitching all kinds of ideas. This is so much more complex. We are looking at options like Rome, Paris, Amsterdam, and Barcelona. Maybe going back to Switzerland, too.

I did a little work today. But mostly it was a chilling outside, travel planning, and YouTube travel vlogging day. Very relaxed. I did a huge amount of pacing, too. I didn’t carry my phone with me while I did, so I have no idea how many steps that I did, but other than when I was outside getting some sun I was essentially walking or walking with weights all day. I’m getting fifteen thousands steps based on other walking day. Not bad for never leaving the house.

For dinner this evening, Dominica made fried rice with tofu, eggs, and toasted sesame seeds. I am pretty sure that this is the best fried rice that she has made yet.

Saturday. This weekend Dominica and I started the day watching some House Hunters shows, both International and Renovations. I also had some client work to do on an HP C7000 blade cluster that I have been doing for a few days.

While we were watching our shows this morning, Dominica was doing research on VRBO and found an amazing house that we can afford and fits all of us on Crete on the outskirts of Chania. We showed it to Emily and she was like “BOOK IT RIGHT NOW!” So we have our stake in the ground in Greece, a two bedroom house near Chania with a pool and just off of the beach. Now the trip is real. And coming up soon.

We got just a tiny bit of rain today. Mostly it was warm and sunny. We have been on air conditioning for a week or more. But it doesn’t have to run very hard.

This evening I was watching Kara & Nate and Dominica joined me and after watching their episodes on Lebanon and Iraq, she is now addicted to it. She never likes YouTube travel vlogs, so this is a big victory. I have been watching them for a few days and really like their hows. I found them because they had done an episode in Montevideo.

I did some video gaming with the girls tonight. Only about an hour. We played their Zelda multiplayer game where we all wield swords and a bow and arrow together and play cooperatively. We beat levels five and six tonight. Five is the one that we had to give up on yesterday because it was too hard and frustrating. We are improving a lot.

I had to work a bit more tonight, though. So I got interrupted.

Friday. My day started off really busy. I had a lunch time meeting, so of course my early morning ended up just being totally nuts so that I was spending the whole morning rushing really quickly to get enough done so that I could get to the shower and get out the door.

I left with plenty of time to get to my lunch meeting which was supposed to be just eighteen minutes away, I gave myself double that time, just in case. But the moment I turned to get onto I35E southbound, I was in a parking lot and Google Maps was totally useless. It kept telling me that the delay would only be a few minutes, it was, in fact, about fifty minutes. It took nearly an hour for me to get just eighteen minutes away! So frustrating.

I had lunch at a Koren BBQ place that also did sushi. I went for a giant sashimi salad bowl which was amazing and pretty darn healthy. Quite different from what I normally get. I like sashimi but as a salad was quite different.

My meeting went for two and a half hours, so a pretty big chunk of my day. It was after three when I got back to the house. Luckily the drive back wasn’t so bad. Only took twenty two minutes taking the surface roads and avoiding the highway.

I spent the afternoon going back and forth working in the office and hanging out in the atrium. The girls had their friends over today until around six thirty. So they were off doing their own thing all day, I barely saw them. They were pretty quiet today.

Paul and Dominica wanted to play video games tonight. So they went to Free Play to play arcade games. The girls and I hung out this evening. I watched travel vlogs and discovered some new ones. The girls talked me into playing video games with them for much of the evening as well.

Wednesday. I was super tired today. My night was just working all night. I worked most of the night and finally got a chance to lay down for nearly two hours, but basically could not sleep, and then was woken up by Paul that my phone was ringing and it was back to work. So almost no sleep for me. My entire night was one of dealing with spaced out AT&T support calls. They really seemed to have them spaced out as if it was engineered to see if they could make me fall asleep and they managed to push things off to yet another shift. So this morning I started the day working with the same people that I was working with yesterday, except I had been working four shifts straight, and they went home, had dinner, slept, etc.

So my day was basically a blur. I did, after working all morning, finally got the AT&T issue fixed. It’s been hell dealing with that for weeks.

I had a pretty slow day once I was through my morning hassles. But I was just so tired and never got a chance to really not stop working. So I just worked through the day.

I managed to make it to a reasonable, but early, bedtime and get off to sleep.