Sheep Guarding Llama

This morning our house guests drove into Manhattan for their day.  They are not staying with us tonight but rather going to Washington, D.C. late this afternoon.  And Dominica and the girls are leaving shortly after I do this morning to head up to Frankfort for a week to help out with the “new” house that the Toccos have purchased and to visit with everyone up there since Francesca and the kids are home for the summer.  So when I left for work it was to begin a long stretch of lonely time for me at home.

I went in to work just a little on the late side this morning since I was saying goodbye to everyone.

After work tonight I just came home and had a quiet evening at home, by myself.  Very boring, but my first night after everyone has left me is always my time to just catch up on my “centering” time and get myself ready for the time that I have stretching out in front of me.

We are trying to decide if I should go up to Frankfort this weekend.  We are currently planning that I will be home alone this weekend since we are all going to Frankfort next weekend for the Fourth of July holiday.

Got up early today, showered and got into the office. It is a nice day. This whole week has been great for Paul, Karen and Kelly going into Manhattan. The weather is perfect. Dominica drove them to the Peekskill train station around ten to head down like they did yesterday. Hopefully I will be able to pick them up today.

I am about halfway through reading “The Man Who Loved China”, by Simon Winchester.

I was in the office at eight for what was promising to be another long day.

Tonight, after I was back from work, Kelly watched Liesl and Luciana again and the adults headed back downtown for drinks and dinner.  Dinner proved to be difficult so we gave up on that.  Every kitchen downtown shut down by the time that we got down there.  We tried many places walking around a bit.  In the end we just ended up at the pub having drinks.  We stayed out until nearly closing time.

The girls had lots of fun again and are going to be very sad when everyone leaves them tomorrow.

Luciana spent most of the night sleeping upside down with her feet up by our faces. How she gets like that during the night I have no idea. She starts off sleeping on a pillow like a normal person and migrates all over the bed during the night. Then, when it is time to get up in the morning, she is back with her head on a pillow as if nothing had happened.

The weather was gorgeous today. It will be great for Paul, Karen and Kelly going into Manhattan. Paul and Karen were awake and I saw them just as I was heading out the door. Dominica and the girls were going to drive them to the train station sometime later in the morning.

I got to the office at kind of the normal time, a few minutes after nine. Dominica, this morning, after dropping everyone off to catch the train took the girls to the big playground that the city of Peekskill has right on the Hudson River waterfront. The girls loved it. It is a lot bigger than our playground up at the complex and Liesl was able to climb stuff all over it. She has become quite a good climber. That was a really nice treat for them.

Work was extremely busy for me today and I did not manage to get out until rather late; I didn’t get to leave the office until after eight which meant I wasn’t home until after nine. Very late day. That meant that Dominica and the girls had to drive down to the train station to pick everyone up on their way home from Manhattan too since I could not get out of the office early enough to make it to Peekskill station to get them.
The girls were down in the basement playing with Kelly when I got home. Karen was already in bed, sick from food poisoning – she had had a very rough day. Paul and Dominica were hanging out on the deck. Paul bored some scotch for us and we had scotch and bagels (left over from yesterday morning) but it was a very short evening.

By eleven everyone was heading off to bed. I have to be up at five thirty tomorrow so that I can be in the office by eight. It is going to be another long day.

We did not get up all that early this morning.  When we did, Paul and I went for a drive to pick up authentic New York bagels from Daily Bagel and then to the Kurdish Deli to get breakfast sandwiches and back to the house to feed everyone.  It was a bagel party morning.

It was early afternoon when I drove everyone to the train station in Peekskill to get them off to Manhattan.  I stayed with them on the platform until they got onto the train to make sure that they knew what to do.  I know how stressful and confusing that that can be.

I came home and worked for a little bit but they were back in what seemed like no time so I had to go pick them up at the station.

Once we got to the house we set up Kelly to watch the girls while the adults went downtown to check out a new pub that Dominica had discovered downtown.

The pub turned out to be really awesome.  They have an outside patio that we sat on and had dinner. The venue was great and so was the food.  The beer selection was excellent too.  We all got Spiderbite Stout which we universally really liked.

It was not a super late night for us.  Everyone was decently tired.  Really just dinner, two beers and back to the house.

The girls had a great time hanging out with Kelly while we were gone.  They have very much missed have babysitter time.

I had to be up on the early side this morning as I had to work and because I am going into the city in the middle of the day I have to be sure to have as much done as possible this morning.  So I started work around seven this morning and went as late as I could, a little after noon.  I had worked until midnight last night getting as much prep work done as I could to make sure that this morning was as smooth as possible.

I worked all morning and Dominica worked on cleaning the house.  I was able to help a little bit only a little as I was actually on my laptop working all morning and had to prepare to go into the city.

Originally we had been hoping that Dominica would be able to go into the city with us today but our guests were running late and without them being able to make it to the house, pick her up, drop off Kelly to babysit and zip into the city Dominica would not be able to go.  By late morning we knew that shew as going to be stuck at home so at least she had a lot more leisure time to clean and get the house ready.

I worked as long as I could then jumped into the shower and zipped off to the train station.  I needed to speed up the trip into Manhattan so tried going to the Croton-Harmon station instead of Peekskill hoping to catch an earlier train.  No such luck.  There was a festival on today and parking at Croton was a nightmare.  It took so long that I missed the train and ended up taking the same train that I would have taken from Peekskill anyway.  So that was a waste of effort.

It was nice taking the train into the city.  I can’t believe that it has been almost five years since the last time that I did this.  It brings back memories of living in Peekskill long ago and commuting through Grand Central Terminal.

I was running late for the event so had to hustle from Grand Central to the subway to get to the place.  I was a bit late but it couldn’t be helped.  It was a small turnout, many fewer than even I had guessed but at least we had nearly a dozen.  Technology events are always incredibly hard to get people, even people who have committed and RSVP’d, to actually come out for.

The meeting was decent.  Pertino gave a presentation and both Pertino and xByte did some great prize giveaways.  Unfortunately, as seems to always happen, when it came time for me to speak there were technical issues and both the live stream and the recording system failed and my talk did not get preserved.    So that did not work out so well.

Paul and company were attempting to get to the event but ended up being very late after getting stuck in traffic at the Holland Tunnel and then driving all over Manhattan before getting to the MangoLassi Meetup. So they were there for my talk and the wrap up stuff but it was very late.

After the event, Paul, Karen, Kelly and I went to the Chelsea Market for some food and then they drove me back up to Peekskill which is a bit of a drive so I was able to give a little bit of a tour of Westchester County.

We had been thinking of going out this evening but it was already fairly late by the time that we all got to the house so the decision was to stay in and just hang out there trying out some amazing Scotch that Paul and brought with him from Missouri.

Everyone was pretty tired since they had been driving all day so it was an early night for everyone.  They want to see Manhattan tomorrow so need to be able to get up in the morning.