Sheep Guarding Llama

Woke up at a good time this morning and worked from the house for a little bit this morning before heading into the office.  I was pretty shocked when I realized that it had snowed last night.  Real snow too, not just a little flurry.  We could hear the snow and ice hitting the windows and when I looked out the world was all white.  It was thirty degrees and there was at least an inch of snow all over.  I had to let the car run for a while to melt the snow off of the windscreen so that I could drive in.

At least going in a little later meant that the traffic was a little better.

Today was another extremely busy day.  I was exhausted after a long day in the office.  I didn’t get to head for home until about seven thirty and then, of course I hit construction traffic and I sat barely moving for more than twenty minutes.

It was nearly nine when I got home.  Dominica and the girls had had a long, hard day.  Liesl was relegated to her room before I had gotten home.  We pretty much put the girls straight to bed as soon as I was home.

We put on some Frasier and hung out in the living room.  I am looking forward to the three day weekend.  This week has really worn me out.

This morning I worked from home for a while.  I had more work to do from what I had been doing last night so stayed home for a little while to get done what I needed to complete.

Dominica got up and made me scrambled eggs this morning which was really nice.  Liesl was up early enough to see me a bit before I left the house.  Ciana did not wake up until after I had left but was not completely gone yet.  Dominica ran outside carrying Ciana and met me as I drove past the house so that I could lean out and give her a kiss before I left.

It was nearly lunch time when I got into the office.

Work was very busy today.  But I didn’t stay late today.

On the way home I finished reading “A Ring of Endless Light” and started reading “Troubling a Star”.  This book is the last book, the fifth one, in the Austins series.  This is the last major work written by Madeleine L’Engle and the only one written in the nineties.  It is one of her two works that were written after I had finished reading her works in elementary school.  Her last work that  I had read back then was “Many Waters”.  This one was written in 1994 when I was just graduating from high school.  It is interesting seeing the characters trying to be the same through the decades even though only about three years had passed in the story while the world around them flashed forward many years between each book.  I’m only just started but it is sounding like one of the better books of the cycle.

I got home at a decent time, just a little after seven.  Tonight we tried watching “Long Way Round”, Ewan McGregor’s 20,000 mile road trip on motorcycle with his mate from London to New York.  It is pretty interesting.

Got up this morning and poked my head in to check in on the girls and found Liesl sleeping at the top of the bed and Luciana sleeping down at the foot of the bed.  They are so weird about how they sleep.  But so adorable.

I had to go down to the basement and do some extra tax preparation work this morning before I could jet out of the door.  When I did leave it was bright, sunny and sixty four degrees!  It is really spring now.  What a gorgeous day.  The whole weekend was amazing too.  It’s almost enough to make you forget the horrific winter that we just went through.  Almost.

Had a very nice drive into the office.  I am still reading the incredible sad book “A Ring of Endless Light” that I hope to finish tonight or tomorrow morning.  I am near the end.  I read it as a child but forgot just how depressing it is.

Quiet day at the office.  Nice sunlight all day and no meetings. I ended up working quite late, not leaving the office until about eight.

I ended up working all evening from home, working until nearly one in the morning.  It was a very long day but I got a ton of work done that

Dominica was up at eight and already cleaning the house when I got up this morning.  Danielle and her mother are coming by this afternoon on their way through to Connecticut and the house is a disaster so there is much work to be done before they arrive.

We cleaned all morning.  Dominica from eight on and me from more like nine on until they arrived around one thirty in the afternoon.  We made amazing progress.  The living room was revitalized today.  After really pushing hard to get as many boxes emptied out as possible.  We really got the living room cleared out and the carpet cleared.

The house is looking great.  We feel much better than we did before.  The living room looks like we can actually live here now.  Still a ton of work to be done in the basement.

Danielle and her mom did not hang around for very long.  No more than two hours.  They had to get on to Connecticut.

This afternoon Dominica and I worked on our taxes quite a bit.  So much paperwork needed for that, it is awful.  We think that we have everything that we need now, though.  We still have not received our refund from 2012.  We are anxiously awaiting that to come through.

This evening I got the treadmill finally set up in the dining room area.  It is at an angle so that we can use it and still watching the television while doing so.  It is a pretty good setup.  We hope to be able to get it down to the basement sometime soon but that is going to be a lot of work and we are not sure that we can do it alone.  Maybe if I had a dolly I could manage it.

We watched Frasier more tonight, we really like that show, so much more than Cheers from which it was spun off.    And I did my first workout on the treadmill in over six months!  I am hopeful that we will get real use out of it now.  I just did twenty minutes but it is a start.

Luciana went upstairs early as is her new pattern and Liesl stayed downstairs and snuggled on the couch for much of the evening.

We had quite a screaming fit while Liesl was in her bathroom this evening.  There was a beetle on the closet door and she just about lost it.  She has, sadly, inherited both Dominica and my fear of insects.  It is going to be rough for her.

I got my old Google Nexus Android device up and running again tonight.  Danielle dropped it off for me today.  I’ve not had it in probably eight or nine months, I would guess.  It has been repairs and is now back in its awesome orange case and is useful again, it would seem.  I think that the girls will be happy to have access to it again and I will have some fun playing around with it when time allows.

It was on the late side when Dominica and I got off to bed.  We were tempted to stay up late, quite literally, because we were enjoying the nearly cleaned house so much.  So much more space and it just feels so much better.  Having the house be such a mess for so long has really been wearing us down.  There is still the basement to tackle, but that is without our grasp now that the main floor is not so horrible.

It was on the late side when we all went off to bed.  Luciana was still awake after midnight when Liesl went in to join her.

I got up this morning and went down to the basement and worked for a few hours.   I was actually very productive and got a lot of work done.  Did a little work on learning Chef too.  I am just getting started with that, it has a bit of a learning curve.

This evening Dominica chose G.I. Joe 2 as our first movie of the night.  It was horrific.  Absolutely ghastly.  One of the worst movies that I have made it through in some time.  I have no idea what compels people to watch this stuff.  I was quite disappointed to have spent time watching it.

After that bad movie, Dominica discovered that I have never seen Wayne’s World which I had intentionally avoided in the early 1990s because I never found the sketch from Saturday Night Live or, really, Saturday Night Live itself, for that matter, to be entertaining and had no interest in seeing this movie from it.  There are so many memes and quotes from the movie that I did not feel like I was missing anything.  So we watched it and I was definitely right to have avoided it.  Not really entertaining at all and no plot.  Very boring and unmemorable.  I’m very surprised that any quotes from it became so well known because it was not funny at all.  And I like Mike Myers in the years after that in movies like So, I Married an Ax Murderer and Austin Powers.  But this was not very good.  Better than G.I. Joe 2, though.  But that is not saying much.