Sheep Guarding Llama

The last day of 2014.  What a year this has been.  Most of it was spent with me working at a new job, then a few months of stressful wondering what was going on with that job and my supposed new job, then two months of frantic job hunting with me finding a new job right at the last second before the year was done (not really significant other than it worked out well for a year end wrap up paragraph.)  A very stressful year, for sure.  Our life in 2015 is going to be, in no way whatsoever, anything like what we would have guessed that it would be at any point in 2014.  Nor, for that matter, was 2014 anything like we had guessed that it was going to be when, at the end of 2013, we moved back up to the northeast thinking that we were taking an amazing job opportunity that was going to make us very happy.  Boy were we wrong.  You just can’t predict where life is going to take you.

I ran out to Bullrito’s to pick up lunch for us to eat while we watched the movie.  I did some work before that in the morning.  We were so happy with our burritos yesterday that we just had to get them again today.

Dominica and I started the day, after getting our food, by finishing watching the second Hobbit movie in Cinema Joe.  We are loving having regular access to his theatre which is much nicer than even the one that we had in Geneseo ever was.  We are very jealous.  What is funny is that now, after all of these years, when we finally own a house of our own it is very likely to be Dominica and not me that demands that we have an all out, full scale theatre in it.  We use it non-stop when we have access to it.  And we are not even using it for video games which it would be amazing for.

It was early afternoon when we finally got the kids over to the Grices.  Francesca agreed to watch Liesl and Luciana for a while so that Dominica and I could have a “date afternoon” to go out and see the third Hobbit movie.  We left at 3:45 to go up to Fuqua to the AMC 30 up there for the 4:45 showing.

I will not be going to an AMC theatre again, that was a horrible theatre.  They left the projector room lights on so it was much brighter in the theatre than even when we watch movies at home.  And the screen quality wasn’t as good.  So it wasn’t nearly as nice for viewing the movie.  And instead of nice, big, comfortable seats like Cinema Joe has, these were the smallest little theatre seats that I have ever been in.  There wasn’t enough room for Dominica and I to sit up straight next to each other.  It was smaller than normal airplane seats!  Completely ridiculous.  There is no reason to ever pay to see a movie under those conditions these days.  None at all.

Overall we were not impressed with the third Hobbit movie.  The book was really messed with, no wonder Tokien’s family revoked the rights for Peter Jackson to make any more films, this was really bastardized and in a very poor way.  The movie trilogy was generally just incredibly boring but the story wasn’t right either in really dramatic ways.  What is crazy is that the theme of The Hobbit is about someone corrupted by wealth and that is, apparently, exactly what happened to Peter Jackson.  He was brilliant when he made The Lord of the Rings and now he is very obviously completely out of his mind and doesn’t know how to make movies anymore.  He’s like a little clone of George Lucas who was never able to make a decent movie after he got rich on his original Star Wars success.

After the movie we ended up meeting Bennie and Francesca at Chili’s for dinner.  Just the four adults.  Emily and Madeline stayed at the house to watch the kids.  It is very rare that we get to do this.

We went back to the Grice’s house and hung out for New Year’s Eve but none of us was interested in really seeing midnight so we did not bother with that.  We needed to get all of the little kids off to bed anyway.  So we went back to Joe and Brittany’s house at eleven thirty to avoid the after-midnight drunk traffic.

On the way back to Joe’s we almost hit a small dog running down the road.  We pulled over and I chased the dog as far as I could trying to catch up to it so that I could help it.  It nearly got hit by several cars.  Eventually it got off of the road and cut across a field that I could not see it is as it was so dark out so I had to give up.  It seemed to know where it was going and was heading towards a well lit area with a lot of houses so we are very hopefully that the poor little lost dog found its way home.  We were guessing that it was running scared because of all of the fireworks going off all over the place.  There were constant reports for hours, it nearly sounded like a thunderstorm but there was no sign of rain.

Once back to Joe’s house we spent nearly half an hour trying to decide on a movie to watch and finally settled on the recent movie adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s “Ender’s Game” which Emily had seen before but neither Dominica nor I had and Emily said that she liked it a lot and was happy to watch it again.  Overall, not a bad movie but not great.  Very predictable for me, which is unusual.  But it caught Dominica off guard which is shocking as she can always predict the outcome of movies.  I knew pretty much all of the plot twists within the first few minutes.

It was after two in the morning when we finally all headed off to bed.

Dominica was up early this morning.  The girls both got up and sneaked into our room and climbed into bed with me and snuggled for a while.  That makes for the best of mornings.

Dominica and the girls went over to the Grices’ today.  I stayed at Joe and Bittany’s house and worked all day.  It was a pretty productive day.

In the middle of the afternoon Dominica surprised me with lunch from Bullrito’s.  I have never had their food before and it was awesome.  They make huge, fresh burritos.  So good.  She also dropped off the memory card for the GoPro. So finally I am able to get started working on that.  I have no even been able to update the firmware on it without a working memory card.

I put in a lot of time trying to get the GoPro set up to work this afternoon.  So I had just about no chance to actually use it.  I got a few minutes with it in low light in the back yard before it was too dark to shoot anything.  The video came out okay.  Now to learn how to really use the GoPro.

Once Dominica came home we got the girls off to bed because it was pretty late.  Then we set up in the theatre and we finished watching the first Hobbit movie that we had started last night.  I felt like we had watched a ton of it yesterday and were near the end but, in reality, we had only watched an hour of it and had most of it to go.

We finished the first Hobbit movie and then popped in the second one and made it maybe halfway through that one before being exhausted from watching those long movies and quit for the day.  So we were off to bed.  Those movies are just so long and so slow and drawn out.  It is nearly impossible to stay awake for them.  So much slower than the Lord of the Rings.

Dominica got out of bed and immediately went out to the theatre to watch a movie.  I was up shortly after that and set up in the kitchen to work.  No movies for me.

The girls both slept in for a while this morning.  Luciana until around nine but Liesl until after eleven!  She really is a little Madeline, there is no denying that.

Dominica made snowman pancakes for “lunch” today.  The girls got a snowman pancake maker for Christmas and have been asking for snowman pancakes continuously since then.  So she gave in around noon, as Liesl was finally awake by then, and made a batch of them.

Around one Dominica and the girls went over to the Grice’s house.  I stayed and Joe and Brittany’s so that I could get work done.  I got a lot of writing and posting done today.  It was productive, even if I got started on the late side.  Yesterday I got a new article over to Dominica to edit and proof for me.  I got another one, a large one at 3,300 words, completed today!

For dinner, Joe, Brittany and I ordered in from Cheddar’s.  I have not eaten from a Cheddar’s since Brian Souder and I tried them out in Dallas many years ago.  The food was quite good.  I got their fried shrimp, baked potato and broccoli cheese casserole.

Dominica came back to the house with Emily and by nine we went into Cinema Joe with Joe and Brittany too and the five of us watched Dawn of the Planet of the Apes which none of us have seen before (this is why Dominica and I were trying to watch Rise of the Planet of the Apes for the past week so that we would be ready for the family to all watch this together.)  Like its prequel, “Dawn” was quite good too.  Also very sad and tough to take but very well done.  A good message and everything about it was really well done.  Also like its prequel it was a very long movie.

Dominica and I were still feeling like a movie after that was over so we decided to watch the Hobbit  movies (Joe has the first two on BluRay) so that we will be ready to see the third one which is in theatres now.  Joe and Brittany decided to watch it with us too.  We made it about an hour into it but the movie is so slow that we were all exhausted and ready for bed by that point.  So we are saving the rest of it for tomorrow.  Emily was so tired that she had started trying to sleep on the floor of the theatre before we called it a night.

Tomorrow the memory card for the GoPro is supposed to arrive.  I can’t wait to get a chance to start using the GoPro.

Today is a quiet day for me.  Time to hang back and get work done while everyone else hangs out.  Francesca and the kids have vacation all this week yet so Dominica and the girls will be hanging out there most of the week but I will be staying at the house and working most of the time.   Good chance to get caught up with SGL (already done) and get some other writing done and some Ruby training too.

We got up around eight. Dominica is feeling much better this morning.  The girls got up and we all went to Waffle House at eleven for a late breakfast.  Then, from there, I dropped Dominica, Liesl and Luciana off at Francesca’s house and then returned to Joe’s house, where it is just me, getting there around noon so that I could work from there for the rest of the day.

It is cold and rainy today.  Down thirty degrees from yesterday!  It is just forty six degrees here today.  Quite a change.

In the evening, Dominica brought me fish tacos for dinner.  I ended up running up to Houston in the evening to have some wine at 13 Celsius with John Nicholson and Nick.  We were only there for about an hour and a half.  Francesca has the stomach bug that has been going around so everyone there had gone to bed early so Dominica and the girls needed me to come back and pick them up early.

Once we were back to Joe and Brittany’s house we got the girls off to bed.  Then Dominica and I went out to Cinema Joe and watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes which was pretty decent but very sad.  Well made movie, though.

It was late by the time that that movie was over.  Ciana had long been asleep.  Liesl was still awake, though, watching Yu Gi Oh which she is completely addicted to.

Dominica was feeling sick before going to bed last night and was sick all night.  She definitely caught whatever Emily, Elton and Brittany had.  So she is the fourth one to have whatever this is.  And to add to it, Francesca has strep throat that she caught from Garrett.  So that is six sick people so far this Christmas!

Dominica spent most of the day at Joe’s house.  She slept until afternoon with the two dogs, Aurora and Indy, snuggled up in bed with her.

Liesl and Luciana got up and played quietly together at Joe’s house until nearly ten when the three of us all went over to Francesca’s house.  Dominica’s parents are heading back to Frankfort this afternoon at a six o’clock Southwest flight out of Hobby and are planning to leave Francesca’s house early so that they can deal with dropping off the rental car and not have to worry about the timing.  Although that will get them to the airport more than three and a half hours before their flight so we are all predicting an extremely long wait for them.

Emily and I walked down to the donuts, kolaches and tacos place on the corner and picked up a late breakfast or early lunch for everyone that was at the house.  Francesca and her mom had gone out shopping and were still gone when Emily and I got back.

It was a really nice day today, seventy six but dark and drizzly outside.  We had the doors wide open so that we had a breeze in the house.

Around one I went over and picked up Dominica and brought her over so that she could wave goodbye to her parents before they left.  With all of the sleep she is feeling slightly better but overall, still pretty crappy.  She has not eaten all day, nothing since the potato last night.

We went back to Joe’s house on the early side.  Liesl set herself up in the living room with the Orange iPad and watched her Yu Gi Oh anime show for the entire evening.  She has finished the entire show but is watching it again now. She really, really loves that show.

Luciana wanted to go to bed and was in bed by six!  Although she got up later on, she was a very tired little girl.

I ran out to Panda Express to get dinner for Liesl and I.  Liesl just ordered noodles (chow mein) but ended up trying my honey walnut shrimp and decided that she loved them and wants to get them next time.  Luciana was not very hungry and did not ask for anything.  So I stopped by Jack in the Box and got her French Fries which we figured that she would eat.

Dominica settled herself in out in the theatre by herself and watched lots of Marvel super hero movies that I have, quite literally, negative interest in watching.  So that works out well.  I am really excited that she can watch lots and lots of horrible movies that I don’t want to have to sit through.  She is working through a massive catalogue of them while I am able to sit in the house working.  It is grand.

I gave Luciana a bath and eventually got both girls off to bed.  Luciana went right to sleep, Liesl stayed up very late watching her show.  Dominica and I went out to the theatre to watch Anchorman which Dominica has never seen!  Sadly, though, the BluRay disc that her brother has is very scratched and cannot play.  We did not make it even halfway through the movie, it was skipping all over the place and she was missing a lot of stuff.  So we gave up and went to bed around eleven.