Sheep Guarding Llama

Liesl had insomnia last night and came in to sleep with us. Even now that she is five and a half and Luciana is not quite three, Liesl is still the one that asks to sleep with us at least three quarters of the time. It was so warm tonight that we had the bedroom window open and had fresh air. Finally, we’ve been missing that. Dominica has been opening the back door a bit recently too. We are so tired of the winter. Time for it to be over.

I got up early this morning, it was just after five. But I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed for a while. Liesl was very snuggly and the birds were out singing which was great with the window open. So I was lazy.

Got up still relatively early and took care of some bills and stuff before heading into the office. Traffic was horrible this morning and it took at least half an hour longer than it should have to get to work. That did not make me happy at all.

It was chilly when I headed out this morning but got into the fifties today and was a very nice day. I wish that I could have been outside for a bit. Maybe spring is actually here.

Good, productive day at work today and thank goodness the weather is great now. It is warm, pushing into the high fifties, and sunny. Very nice. At home, Dominica opened up the windows and made the back deck accessible and the girls spent a lot of time playing outside today getting some fresh air. Dominica missed not having a deck at our Texas house, I can tell, a place where the girls can just go outside and play and she does not need to monitor them because they are essentially inside of the house. Liesl had that when she was two and we lived in the apartment in Texas because we had that tiny balcony but Luciana never lived there. It’s a nice feature to have.

While they were outside, Liesl was running her hand along the railing and got herself her very first splinter. She didn’t know what to do and ended up breaking it off and getting it buried deep in her finger so she just had to wait for it to work itself out which is going to take a while.

Came home and we had a nice evening just hanging out as the family. Nothing exciting tonight, but a lot of family time.

Tuesday.  The weather is improving.  Not even a hint of cold today.  Nice and warm all day.  We are starting to open the windows in the house now.

Dominica did some painting today.  We have some touch of painting that is needed in the back of the house so she did the first coats of that today. One of the benefits to being back in our own house is that this simple stuff we are able to deal with ourselves rather than having to hire other people to do it and never being sure if they really have done the work or not.

Just a quiet evening with the family tonight.  We had the back door open much of the evening as it is so warm.  So nice to have fresh air all of the time again.

Monday and back to work.  This is the first week where we are expecting a nice week for the entire week.  This is spring for sure.  Or at least it seems like it might be.  The drive this morning, though, was a little cold and while it never got below freezing there was one moment on my drive when a bunch of ice fell onto the car.  It was only for a second, but it happened.  Very odd.

At the office people reported traffic from farther south being awful and that there was bad weather in the city.  People were taking an extra hour to get into the office.   But the weather was nice by later in the day.

I’m continuing my project of standing in the living room instead of sitting on the couch.  It makes it so that the girls can’t climb all over me while I have the laptop and it keeps me from just melting in the couch and not doing anything all night.  It also keeps me from being in the bad posture of sitting down all day long.

Sunday at home with the family.  I slept in this morning and Dominica got up early and made home made scones.  They were amazing.  Last night she had started making clotted cream which was ready this morning.  So the whole family went scone crazy and we ate tons of scones this morning.  They and the clotted cream were amazing.

Today was my day to experiment with a “standing desk.”  I set up a laptop on the side table with some boxes stacked on it to make the laptop be right at the height that I need to be able to stand and work while being right in the middle of the living room.  So far I am really liking it.  I am so much more able to do things around the house while still keeping on top of things.  This is so much more conducive to the way that I like to work.  I can use the laptop but also do stuff around the house.

We watched more original series of Star Trek today and some more of Cheers.

Tonight we watched Houseboat which is always a good classic.

I slept in this morning, not getting out of bed until Liesl came in and jumped into bed with us after nine.  Boy did I need the extra sleep.  I have just been getting farther and farther behind recently.  Even after Liesl joined us, we stayed in bed for a bit and did not get up until Ciana went down to the basement and was calling for us.

Got up and we put on the original serious of Star Trek while we hung out in the living room.  Only a few minutes into it I decided to figure out how to work from my laptop while standing up.  I set up a box on the sideboard table that put a laptop at the right height so that I could stand and use it right next to Dominica and where I could watch the television.  This ended up being awesome because I could walk away from the laptop at any moment and do things and just walk right back to it anytime.  So nice.  If I sit on the couch I become “stuck” there with a laptop on my lap which is very hard to use.  And then the kids climb on me and knock things over.  Just this morning Luciana knocked over my coffee after knocking over two glasses of water last night.

Liesl and Luciana spent the whole day playing in the living room with us there.  Liesl was so excited to continue working on the cardboard box that she had turned into her rocketship last night.  She named it “Disco Rocketship.”  She and Luciana added a cargo bay to it and played with it much of the day.  They loved it.

The weather was awesome today.  It rained the entire day, from before we woke up until after we went to bed.  We had the windows and back door open part of the day because the house was so warm and Dominica was cooking.  So the girls decided to go out back and play on the deck for a long time.  They had a great time.  It is nearly fifty degrees today so they just played and played.

We did not do a lot today, but it was a good day.  Dominica made a couple really awesome meals and this evening she went shopping for a little while and came home just in time to help put the girls to bed.

Tonight we watched Blade Runner which Dominica has not seen since we were dating, probably in 2001.  That time was her first and it was the Director’s Cut on Laserdisc.  Last weekend I was talking to Dominica’s dad about Blade Runner and how if you watch the Director’s Cut without having seen the original how hard it is to follow the story because much of the explanation portions are missing.  Dominica overheard the conversation and decided that she needed to try watching the original cut now, about thirteen years later.  It is hard to believe that we have not watching this, my second favourite film, in all of that time.  We have owned the Collector’s Edition BluRay since it first released.

Dominica liked the movie far better this time.  She was able to follow it.  Such a good movie.

Some discussion of it on Mango Lassi too: http://mangolassi.it/topic/500/blade-runner

Microsoft Office is out for the iPad now and so I got that downloaded to check out today.  The apps include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.  I only got a brief chance to check them out but from a first look, they seem pretty awesome.