Sheep Guarding Llama

Ah, the weekend. Dominica was not feeling well today, very tired. So she was under the weather all day long.

I worked down in the basement a big today at the desktop down there. I did a bit of work with Loggly learning how to use that and getting different systems reporting into it. That is a pretty cool service but sadly it does not support RHEL 5 well which is a big pain. But overall I am liking Loggly a lot and it is going to take a bit of a load off of my plate. I am very glad that I stumbled across it.

We decided that we needed to suck up and face reality that we are not doing anything extravagant with our dining room space anytime soon and it is better to make good use of the resources that we have rather than hoping for things to magically improve someday. So in the spirit of embracing that, we set up the remaining office desk that we have in the dining room space and set it up in the corner with Liesl’s Acer Chromebook so that she can use it as her own workspace. Liesl thought that this was very cool. She is excited to have access to her Chromebook back for one thing. She used to use that all of the time when we were in Texas and she had her own desk in my office space. She used to use the Chromebook to watch Netflix sometimes and to do her ABC Mouse stuff quite often. She has not had a computer of her own for a long time. So this is very nice. And Luciana is about old enough to start using the laptop too. Time to learn how the mouse works and start putting that coordination together. And it looks much better than the pile of boxes that was there before. It’s far from perfect but it is an improvement.

What we are really looking forward to is getting the treadmill moved down to the basement. That is going to make the biggest difference. Having that in the dining room space is just awful. It takes up way too much space and make it impossible to move around at all. We are really feeling the lack of space after moving from Texas where the layout was so much more open. And not having a garage doesn’t help either. And not having a third bedroom. We are really missing the house in Texas.

The girls went out and rode their bikes around yesterday outside and today they talked me into going out with them for probably close to an hour. I took a few videos and got them uploaded to YouTube for people to see. Liesl decided that she wanted to try out Luciana’s new Big Wheel plastic bike and Luciana wanted to use Liesl’s scooter (the kind that you stand on.) Luciana is just too short to use the Big Wheel. Her feet do not make it to the peddles. She is only just three years old as of yesterday and the bike is for ages three to six so she is in the first day of being “old enough” for it and she is a little peanut in general so she is just too small to really use it. We had a lot of fun though. They were so cute and Liesl really loved the Big Wheel. She is the perfect size for it and can really make it go.

Mostly today was a relaxing day. We did not do too much.

Rough day today.  The day started off good.  Got into the office and only got a little turned around taking the new route.  Overall it went well.  We’ve been catching up a bit after a very busy two weeks and I am really looking forward to the weekend.

By around eleven this morning the office was feeling a little odd and just before noon I learned that one of our coworkers, who sits very near me and I see many times a day, one of the relatively few that I actually know and have even spoken to outside of work, and one of only a couple that Dominica actually has met and even met his wife and has spent time with them – was killed in an automobile accident last night leaving behind his wife and two kids, one of which is between Liesl and Luciana’s ages.  So the day was a very somber one.

I was able to come home slightly early today.  I left around five and was home shortly after six.  At least I had time to spend with the family this evening.  We are fine, it was not someone that I was very close to and I have not been working there that long, but it still hits home.

I slept in a bit this morning. Another bright, warmish morning, below fifty degrees, though. Liesl and Katie were up and playing before I left for the office.

I took the highway into the office today, my first time taking it “to” the office rather than just “from” the office. The new construction on 35 is so bad that I need an alternate route. It adds thirty to sixty minutes to my morning drive!

Had sushi for lunch today and then in the middle of the afternoon we had a surprise tune tartar station in the office which was excellent.

Another extremely busy day in the office. I am really getting worn out. But I am keeping productive and getting just tons done.

I got home at seven this evening. That was really nice. (Boy is it sad that now I am excited to be home at seven when I used to be home by five when we were in Texas. No wonder the girls feel like they never see me.)

I ate dinner with Dominica while we watched an episode of “Frasier”; Dominica made sweet and sour veggie chicken and rice tonight. After we ate I played Skunk Bingo with the girls for a little bit which they love and then Dominica and Liesl went out to Walmart to go shopping.

Last weekend, Liesl had asked me if she could go shopping to buy a birthday present for Luciana. She really wanted to pick out a new doll for her because, Liesl said, “Luciana doesn’t have enough dolls of her own.” She likes sharing with Ciana but wanted her to have more that were expressly hers. Very sweet. But Luciana got a Doc McStuffins doll for her birthday that Luciana had requested. So tonight Liesl was going to Walmart to go look for something else for Luciana. They were gone for a little under two hours.

While Ciana and I were home alone she asked me to put on Kai-Lan on the big screen and to snuggle with her on the couch, which I did for a few episodes. We had a nice time just the two of us. After two episodes she declared it to be bedtime and took the orange (covered) iPad up to Dominica and my room and put herself to bed in our bed and fell asleep after not too long.

Dominica used Luciana’s birthday money to buy her a “Big Wheels” tricycle that she can ride around in the parking lot and Liesl got her a present that I am not allowed to see until tomorrow.

We put on the “Odd Couple”, the original 1968 film, and the three of us watched about half of it before I declared it to be bedtime for all of us and we all went to bed.

Got up this morning and before I was out of the shower Liesl had snuck into our room and snuggled with Dominica.

I worked from the house for about an hour this morning as there was so much to be done that I needed to make sure that work was moving forward prior to doing the long commute in.

The weather is gorgeous today. When I got in my car I discovered that the fuel efficiency had gone up, again. It is now 35.2MPG. I wish that I could get my day to day average as well. More information about the fuel efficiency would really be helpful. But boy is this car cheap to operate.

Today was incredibly busy in the office. I managed to finish reading “Troubling a Star”. I have “House Like a Lotus” that I am reading on the Kindle to finish yet and once that is done I can use my Audible to listen to “An Appropriate Time” and with that one, I will be all done with this series of books that I have been working on for quite some time. Since I need to wait before reading that last one via Audible I started rereading Irene Hunt’s “Up a Road Slowly” which I also read when I was young. I wish that I had records of when I read these things now as I have no idea at what age I read them or in what order and, in some cases, if I have read them at all.

My Wifi USB dongle arrived from Amazon today. That is for my desktop so that we can hook it up in our bedroom so that I do not have to go down to the living room to use a laptop or the basement to use the desktop and so that Dominica and I are not sharing desktops which drives us both crazy.

Katie arrived at the house in the late afternoon. She and the girls watched “Frozen” again. Dominica tells me that this was the girls’ third time through it today. They really love that movie. They have several “Frozen” books now too. Each of the girls got one for Easter.

I had a late day at the office because there was a technology showcase this evening after normal business hours that we were expected to attend. The upside is that it is different than normal work and it provides a “hard stop” to the day, but the downside is that it goes late and doesn’t assist in taking care of excess workload which has been a challenge the last week and a half.

There was food and drinks at the event this evening, which was nice. Goat cheese stuffed dates and a cheese selection for me. And wine. The event went late, nearly till eight which made for a very late night and later than I had been expecting. It was nine when I walked in the door at home.

Katie had attended a Netgear and Veeam event today which is why she was in town. She was exhausted after an evening of the high energy wonder twins playing with her all day. Luciana was worn out from all of the play time and put herself to bed shortly after I arrived home. Liesl stayed up until everyone went to bed, pretty much.

Dominica and I did a bit of discussing of our vacation plans for Europe later this year. We are trying to figure out what we want to do. There is a decent change that I will be in Barcelona for work in October so we are trying to figure out if we can connect the vacation time to that to make better use of the time.

At some point, probably around five this morning, Luciana figured out how to get to our room and ended up in bed with us. So it was all four of us there which, even with the window open, made the room pretty warm. I got up around six thirty and Luciana was up shortly thereafter and made me go down and get her an iPad and chocolate milk so that she could start her day. Before I left the house both girls had migrated to the living room which was mostly good as they would leave Dominica alone. They were happily playing together with Liesl’s new Easter Legos when I left to head into the office.

Beautiful morning. The weather is great this week. I stopped and got a sandwich on the way in.

Extremely busy day at work. Exhausting.

This afternoon both of the girls fell asleep and slept all afternoon into the evening. The weekend, plus Katie visiting and, I assume, the fight last night really wore them out.  Katie had gone back down to New Jersey this afternoon but she is going to be back here tomorrow for one more night because she is working in the city on Thursday afternoon.

I got stuck at the work until quite late.

I left work just about at eight and on the way home hit horrific traffic. It took a full 90 minutes to get home even though it was late in the evening.

The girls were awake and upstairs playing together when I got home. I had to set up in the living room and keep working until a quarter till eleven when I was straight off to bed.

I read in bed for a little while and finished reading Madeleine L’Engle’s “Dragons in the Water” and just started “A House Like a Lotus” which is the last of all of the books from her that I have to read from the era when I was reading them as a kid. This one was the O’Keefe series title written right as I started reading the books, in 1984.

Somewhere around midnight Liesl and Luciana, who were still wide awake and making a lot of noise in their room, ran into our room and climbed into bed with me. They had been so rambunctious all evening and once there they were both asleep in no time.

Dominica came to bed closer to one in the morning and was quite impressed that I was able to carry both girls, still asleep, into their room and get them into bed without any disturbance at all!