Sheep Guarding Llama

Quote: “NASA’s continuing investment in rocket fuel-based space travel is much like would be explorers of the 1300s spending all of their resources not on advancing sailing technology, but on the catapult industry.”

Thursday. Today is the atrium painting day. Paul and Dominica were painting by eight in the morning. It went all day, but was done by this evening. The atrium is now a light, sky blue colour, and the trim is bright white. Dominica said that it reminded her of something in Central America. I thought that it was more like a sea side cottage in New England. It gives the impression of spring. Tomorrow the new lights will be going up.

Our plan at this point is to take out the rubber tiles that are in the atrium, bring in a load of pea gravel and sand, do a little leveling out of the clay that is in there, put down some drainage, then put in AstroTurf. That will really make it look super nice, year round. And make it was better for just going outside and using it. And it would manage the heat in the house better. Just the new paint is going to do wonders for that. But AstroTurf instead of the nearly black rubber mats would go a really long way, too. Same for drainage, the current solution drains horribly. But getting in a layer of drainage, then going to a porous top would totally change the drainage situation. And that’s after the new gutters have already totally changed how much water goes in the atrium. We must only get about one third of the water that we did before!

Work was good today. Kept me busy. Had a very good meeting late this afternoon.

We were able to go back to fresh air today, it cooled down and we don’t need the air conditioning. We might make it through the weekend without it. Storms due to return on Saturday.

The girls are heading to their friends’ house tomorrow afternoon, so we will have some quiet time in the afternoon to really work on cleaning up the house before the weekend guests arrive.

Paul had league pool tonight. The girls and I played video games for a while. Mostly Sonic Racing Transformed online, Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing, and Screen Cheats. We have gotten really good at SSASR and the girls are starting to be able to beat me from time to time. And I was amazed to find that on Screen Cheats they were both able to beat me consistently. Luciana especially is really brutal at that game.

Nick stopped by for maybe an hour this evening and got to see the work on the atrium.

Wednesday. We went to air conditioning last night to be able to sleep and had to keep it on all day today. We have a hot week coming until it breaks with expected rain on Saturday. Today we hit eighty nine degrees!

First thing this morning Paul and Dominica started with painting of the outdoor furniture and painting in the atrium. That’s going to take a couple of days, there is a lot to do. But it was nearly all primed by the end of the day. They also got the old outdoor furniture prepped to be ready to spray paint once the wind dies down. This is the old furniture that used to be on our back patio and that we always used to sit on before we moved away. It was new then and in good shape and quite comfy. It lived under a roof so was well protected. When we moved away, the roof got ruined and so did the cushions. But the metal survived. I will always think of that furniture as the furniture that we sat on in 2011 when Dominica and I plotted our long two month back packing trip around Europe. We used to sit out there every weekend planning our adventures.

Lee and Alex are planning to come down to visit this weekend and will be staying for a few days. So we want to have the atrium all ready for them as we will be using it a lot while they are here. There is a lot to be done before then.

Another big gaming night with my girls. More Chaos on Deponia, Journey Down Chapter Two, & Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing. The last one we have around 125 hours into now! The girls have gotten so good at it. They are experts. We had a nice night together.

Tuesday. We started out the day with the windows open, but we know that we are quickly heading into air conditioning weather. Our tiny “window” of fresh air is just about over.

This morning started with semi-power washing the atrium. Painting will start tomorrow before the sun gets too bad. Spackling and minor repair is the plan for today.

Work wasn’t too bad and I mostly got to knock off at the end of the day. We are starting to get our team together. The new guys are working out great.

This evening was a long one of video gaming. The girls and I played Chaos on Deponia some more. Mostly that was me and Liesl early in the evening. Then Luciana came out and joined us and we played some of A Journey Down: Chapter Two. Unfortunately, we were hours into the game when last we played it and our saved games were lost. So we are starting over and playing through this chapter again so that we can get to the third chapter.

Then we played some Sonic and Sega All Stars Racing for quite a while. Paul raced with us a bit, too. The girls liked having someone that they could beat.

It was a fun night of gaming.

Monday. I actually got to sleep in a little this morning. The team was on top of things and handled all of the early morning stuff.

This afternoon the real work on the atrium began. Paul and Dominica got the beam that has always gone across the atrium removed. I moved it out to the front yard. They did a lot of work on the walls, the old wiring, fixtures, flashing, and stuff. Tomorrow is the power washing. Then painting comes after that. We are going to be putting up strips of coloured LED lighting out there to make for a soft, uniform lighting situation to make it a lot more pleasant out there.

This evening Paul and Dominica had to run a delivery of cookies to Kat. She needs them for her classes again.

Liesl and I spent the evening playing first Deponia together, which she completed pretty quickly. Then we played the sequel, Chaos on Deponia. We played way more of this game than we played the first time. Several hours of it. By the end of the night, I would estimate that we were close to halfway through the second title. Liesl is very much looking forward to getting to play more of it tomorrow.

Sunday. I got up on the late side and was pretty much straight off to work. Another very busy day. I worked for several hours this morning, mostly with Allen. It was a long day, at least seven hours of working at the office. Rodrigo is off this weekend for his wedding anniversary so my normal pressure relief valve is not around.

A storm rolled in this morning and it was raining for much of the day. Not too heavy, though.

Kat came over for a little bit today, then she, Paul and Dominica ran out to deal with some stuff for a few hours for her. I was still working.

Rachel stopped by between showing houses and getting ready to go bar tend. But I only got to see her for a few minutes.

Very little to say about the day. I was in my office until after six when I was finally able to wrap it up and walk away. Things should be pretty much good for tomorrow. Tomorrow is going to be really busy.

We put on 30 Rock for a while. Everyone wanted Taco Bueno for dinner. Dominica and I went out and swung through Taco Bell for Liesl, then Taco Bueno for Dominica, Kat, and I. Luciana had shells and cheese, Paul made himself something.

After dinner I was in the mood for something sweet. We had nothing in the house. Liesl wanted to come with me. We went to Braum’s and got ice cream. It is right down on Trinity Mills. Liesl got the cookie monster fancy sunday. I just got a frozen yoghurt soft serve cone, small.

We came back home and watched more television with everyone for a while. Then around ten, Kat went home and everyone went to bed. Liesl and I set up Deponia and played for a while and I poured some wine.

Tomorrow is going to be a very busy day. We did a lot of work today to try to have as much as possible ready for tomorrow. But there are so many people going to be using the network tomorrow that someone is bound to unearth all kinds of unforeseen situations. I am going to be so tired all week.