Sheep Guarding Llama

Thursday. The last day that I am completely alone. At least that is the plan. Dominica and the girls will be home next week. What a difference that will make. I can’t wait to have them back home.

I finished reading “Second Fountation” today. I have now reread “Foundation”, “Foundation and Empire” and “Second Foundation” one after another. Once I get my Audible subscription re-uped I will be getting more of the series, ones that I have not read previously.

I did nothing tonight. Really nothing. Thought about using the Wii U as it is new and novel and even turned it on but couldn’t bring myself to watch anything or play anything. Just did a little minor setup on it and called it a night.

Wednesday. On the home stretch now. Only today and tomorrow alone yet and then after work on Friday I head north for the weekend. The little green Spark has been giving me some intermittent problems for a little while now. It is losing power and the oil light comes on on tight turns which is very odd. I can’t put my finger on what is wrong. Mostly it is working, but not quite. Something is definitely wrong. I’m considering renting a car for this weekend. That is a lot of driving with this car having issues.

This evening I got the Wii U set up in the living room. I think that Liesl is going to love it. I played Wind Waker for maybe ten minutes just to see how it looks. Definitely does not knock your socks off or anything.

Tuesday. Working my way through the week. I have been getting worried about the amount of noise coming from the ceiling and walls in our master bedroom. For a week or so I have been hearing something or somethings moving around there. I am hoping that it is just squirrels. At first I thought that it was squirrels on the roof but now that I can hear it in the walls I know that whatever it is is actually inside the house. I don’t want to go into the attic alone in case it is something bigger and more worrisome than squirrels. Stumbling on raccoons in an enclosed space is never a good thing. If I am going to do that I want to do it when someone is around to call an ambulance after I fall down the attic ladder trying to get away from pissed raccoons. I have a feeling that whatever is up there is going to require some actual “dealing with” which I am not looking forward to.

On my way home tonight I picked up a Wii U as a surprise for the girls. I managed to get the Wind Waker collector edition from GameStop in Yorktown Heights on the way home. Dominica likes the Legend of Zelda games and I knew that she would like this one. Wind Waker HD, which comes with the system, is ranked as the best Zelda game ever so hopefully it will be at least mildly fun.

Tonight at home our new Ubiquiti router and Netgear switch have arrived. I did not take the time to hook up the switch tonight but I did spend the evening getting the router set up which took a bit of work as it needed an initial firmware update and some setup. But it looks like it is going to be a really nice unit. Under the hood it is a Brocade Vyatta device but with a handy web interface.

Back in the office this morning to begin my final week of being alone. This coming weekend I am running up to Frankfort, picking up the family and then running out back home where we will be staying with dad so that I can go to my twentieth class reunion. So just five more days to go.

Not much to report today. Things are very slow for me. Just go to work, come up and hang out by myself until it is time to go to bed.

Today it is time to return back home to Peekskill. I stayed at the house this morning watching the kids all morning while everyone except for Madeline went off to Dave’s Diner for breakfast. Madeline just slept so I never saw her. This was my last window to spend time with the little ones before I leave to go back down to Peekskill.

I packed up the car while everyone was gone and they all left to go see How to Train Your Dragon 2 at the noon showing so I left at the same time that they all did. So that worked out really well that it wasn’t such a big “goodbye” to the girls as they were leaving to go do something too. It was sad goodbyes, though, we are getting way too little time together. Liesl understands that a week is only so long. For Luciana it is really rough. Dominica said that she wakes up crying sometimes at night asking for me. L

So I was on the road at around eleven thirty. I took the Thruway thinking that I could hop over to NY 9 south somewhere partway down the Hudson but before I even made the turn from 90E to 87S I was already in stopped traffic! Not good.

I bailed at the first exit that I could get to which let me take 787 to downtown Albany and cross the river there on 9 & 20 from where I worked my way south on 9 all of the way down to Peekskill. It is a much slower road but very scenic. I got to see all of Rensselaer, Columbia, Dutchess and Putnam counties. Columbia is a county that I am not sure that I have ever driven through before, actually. Beautiful countryside. And some really cool historic areas like Hyde Park and Rhinebeck. Places that I know but have never been to, at least not in my memory. There are a lot more major colleges and universities along that route than I had realized too.

It took me probably four and a half hours to get home. Had to stop for gas once and stopped at the little roadside place called Grandma’s Deli just south of Fishkill on 9 for a sandwich before getting home.

On the drive I finished reading “Foundation and Empire” and managed to start reading “Second Foundation.”

It was mid-afternoon when I got to the house in Peekskill. I hunkered in and didn’t really leave the bedroom all afternoon. I mostly relaxed today, did very little work. But I did a little.