Sheep Guarding Llama

Friday. After such a long, exhausting night last night (working until four this morning) I tried my best to sleep in as long as I could. But, of course, I was called out of bed and Paul came to wake me up and let me know that I was needed on the phone by nine. So very little sleep for me, after a long week of not very much sleep. I am so tired.

Mary was around again today, but she had a busy day so I did not get much of a change to talk to her.

Valentina was out sick most of the day, which did a lot to make me that much busier.

We shipped our first equipment to Bolivia today, to Cochabamba. USPS says that it will take seven to ten days. We will see.

My morning was all very busy. And on into the entire day. I never really got a break all day. I was at my desk dealing with customer issues, or more web hosting, until nearly seven. I was thankful that the interview that I was supposed to do today was canceled (not good enough to go on to the round that I was managing) so at least I got that reprieve.

I was living on coffee the entire day. By evening I was actually able to walk away from my desk. Dominica and I took the change to put on Kara & Nate and spent some time relaxing. For dinner I went out to Taco Bueno and picked up dinner for Liesl, Luciana, and me. Liesl also had me cook her a veggie burger before I went. Then she had Mexi Chips & Dips, Luciana had a quesadilla, and I had my normal vegetarian burritos.

Dominica and I did a lot more planning for our trip to Europe in June as well. We have more of our flights books, and we have our hotel is Athens books now, too. Dominica found some really cool places to stay in Switzerland, too. So it looks like we might do that, out in the country where we have never been before.

We watched our shows for a while, but both Dominica and I were starting to feel sick. Eventually we gave up trying to watch our show.

I video games with the girls for a while. We completed level eight of a total of nine in our multiplayer Zelda action game that we have been working on for weeks.

Then before bed Liesl and I watched episode four of A Series of Unfortunate Events.

I was so ready for a Friday. I need this weekend to relax, if that is possible. MangoCon 2019 is this coming week and I have to get ready for that, as well!

Thursday. Word was busy today, but went really well. Today I had many meetings and ended up closing a lot of new accounts. So things were really good. Overall, though, I had a super busy day with no free time. I worked a full day, but all of the interviews that I was supposed to be doing got cancelled. So far, no good candidates have showed up. It’s been either bad people or no shows all week. That has, at least, given me a little more free time. Well, time to work on other things.

Tonight the girls and I had some video game time together. Then I got to work on a web server migration that took all night. I had the prep work all done during the day and was ready to do it and thought that things would be pretty easy. But, of course, that was not the case. First I did the migration, then discovered problems and stayed up until four in the morning dealing with a distributed denial of service attack that has been hitting the server that I was working on for several days.

Four in the morning and I finally got to go to bed. Tomorrow is going to be rough. But very good work done tonight and I am feeling good about where we are.

Tuesday. I got to hang out a little Busy work for the most part.

Dominica and I managed to watch a little of Kara & Nate during a late lunch today. This worked out well because my evening was entirely lost.

This afternoon we had a tornado warning. We had a big rain storm and the tornado sirens were going off. We got bypassed, but it felt a lot like a tornado outside. We heard that one may have touched down or nearly so in Denton proper.

Like often seems to happen in the evening, my evening was expected to be nice and relaxing with nothing planned and when it got later on, I got contacted with some emergency work to do and I ended up working all evening and into the night. It went well, but was very tiring.

Kat came over tonight, but not until almost midnight. She is staying the night so that Dominica and Paul can help her with cookies for someone at her school tomorrow.

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.