Sheep Guarding Llama

I got to sleep in today as the office was on a delayed open.  I had been planning on not attempting to go in until late anyway knowing that the snow had to stop falling and the roads had to be cleared before I could make an attempt.  So I did not get up until seven thirty, which was nice.

I tried heading into the office, using the Acadia as it is much larger and has the new tires, a little before ten.  The sun was out and it was super bright and crisp but it was a scant seven degrees when I went outside.  I made it no farther than the turn onto the next road before I realized that I could not keep the car moving reliably and needed to turn around.  So back home I went.  No way can I make it to the office, the roads were solid ice with hard packed snow on top.  So slippery.  Our own development is under continuously plowing and they actually have it mostly cleared, but the moment you are on the county roads, you are out of luck.

We got to spend the morning together as a family.  The girls were so excited that I was home.  We played with some of their new toys.  When Dominica got up she assembled Luciana’s Fisher Price ipad Barnyard set (it’s a physical barnyard that gets built on top of the iPad so that you can interact with things – it is a really cool idea) and later on worked on building Liesl’s enormous new collection of Playmobil toys.  Liesl now has the complete Playmobil zoo collection and wants to put it all together into a single, massive zoological park.

We had a great time with our surprise morning together.  We pretty much did nothing but just play with new Christmas toys and make fires in the fireplace all morning.

In the early afternoon the sun had been out long enough that it seemed like there might be a decent chance that the roads might have been cleared so I gave it another attempt with the Acadia.  This time the drive went fine and I was able to get into the office.  This made for a short day for me but I felt that it was good that I went into the office, even for a short day, because there was working needing my attention and I did not want people to be waiting on me just because I live in the middle of nowhere.

I made it to the office on this second attempt without incident.  The roads were mostly good the entire way.  Nothing really bad at all.  I was very productive at work and was one of only very few people who made it in at all.  So I feel good for having made the effort.  Everyone left on the early side as it was expected to be crazy cold tonight once the sun was down.  I did not want to deal with another layer of ice forming where the salt water had been before.

I am in the midst of reading “A Swiftly Tilting Planet.”  That will last a few more days.

On the way home I stopped off at the Yorktown Deli and grabbed dinner for Dominica.  They know that we are vegetarians and they made her a platter of freshly made falafel which Dominica said was awesome. (How does Google Chrome not know that falafel is a common food?  I can’t believe that I had to add that to my local dictionary.  That is just sad.  How common does a food have to be to not be in there?)  It really looked good but I had had lots of great cheese and crackers at work’s happy hour so did not need anything further for dinner.

This evening Liesl and I began playing “The Night of the Rabbit” which I got recently in a Steam sale.  The graphics and music are amazing (the story might be too, we just are not far enough in yet to have determined that.)  Dominica came down to the basement with the laptop and set up on the black couch to be near us.  She had us turn the one monitor around and duplicate the screens so that she could do her own thing but watch us play the game when she wanted to as well.  That worked really well.  It made it a lot more like a family game night rather than Liesl and I doing our own thing.  Liesl played for probably an hour and a half or maybe more.  She loved this game.  She was so excited that she was bouncing all over.  I barely had to help her at all, she is so good at the game.  It has new controls that she has not used before and yet she learned them in just a couple of minutes.  Luciana really liked watching the game too and spent a lot of time on my lap trying to squeeze in with us while we played too.

When bed time rolled around I read the girls another two chapters in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”  I am very happy that the girls are enjoying real literature rather than just children’s stories so it is actually fun to read the story, not only to spend time with them.  I am looking forward to all of the stories which we will get to read now.

It was a good day.  I was very thankful for the many hours of extra family time that I got today as a surprise.  The girls and I pretty much spent the entire day together.  It was a great day.  And while I still went to work, it will make this feel almost like a three day weekend – a great wrap up to the holiday weeks.

Luciana had a bad dream and woke me up with her crying at a quarter after six. I went in and checked on her and moved her and Liesl into the bed with Dominica and I got ready for work. They were happy once they had snuggles and I am assuming that they slept that way for many more hours.

The car worked fine this morning although I gave it quite a long time to warm up as it was very cold out today. The drive into the office went fine.

Work was not as slow today as it has been. Many people are beginning to return to the office. The parking garage was not so empty, I did not get an automatic space right by the elevator door today.

Left the office a little on the early side tonight, there is a blizzard expected by seven this evening and I do not want to get stuck partway home and Dominica wants to go grocery shopping before the storm hits too and needs me home before she can head out.  I was on the road before five thirty and it was clear but by the time that I was in northern Westchester County and turned onto NY35 the snow had started and there was easily half an inch on the ground when I got to the house.  I finished reading “Many Waters” on the drive home.  It was far better than the other books in the series but was not at all as good as I had remembered, and it was inconsistent with L’Engle’s universe so it conflicted with some of her other books.  Not well done.

The little girls were very excited that I was home.  It’s nice to have them waiting for me, screaming for daddy as I come in the door.  I’ve missed that, haven’t had that for weeks.

I told Dominica that she had better get moving if she was going to do the grocery shopping now (she should have gone earlier in the day but wanted me to come home and watch the kids) because there was so much snow.  She had been on her laptop and acted surprised that there was snow.  Then she turned on the light and could see the woods all under a blanket and headed right out.  She just went to the nearest store and straight back as there was so much snow coming down.  As it was, she had a really hard time making it back up the hill again.

I made a fire in the fireplace while Dominica was gone.  The girls and I played upstairs for a while with my lying on the bed and them jumping on my back like they used to do every day when I got home from work in Texas.  Then we played “Silly Socks” in the living room by the fire while Luciana attempted to use the potty.

Once Dominica was home we headed to the basement and watched some Doctor Who before heading to bed.  At bedtime I read the girls another two chapters in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”  Liesl is really getting into the story and Luciana seems to be enjoying it although I am not sure that she is following along or not.

And so the new year begins.

I was home alone this morning, Dominica and the girls did not leave Frankfort until eleven.

Dominica and the girls made great time and got home around two thirty, way earlier than I had been expected. I spent much of the morning cleaning around the house as today was my first day of daylight in which I could actually spend some time cleaning and actually see what there was to clean. Working these long hours makes it really hard as the house is always so dark. I leave in the dark and come home long after dark. There is never a time when the house is bright except for the weekends and I am rarely around on the weekends. So today was a rare cleaning day. I even took the hand cleaner and worked on some of the spots on the living room carpet.

It was great to have everyone home. This is our first afternoon at home together in nearly two weeks. The girls were very excited to be home. The living room was filled with their Christmas presents and they were very happy to get to start taking them out and playing with them. Luciana’s first mission was to get her Calico Critters Drive Thru Café set put together so that she could start playing with it.

I made a fire in the fireplace and we all stayed up in the living room for a while. After an hour or two Dominica and I decided that we were hungry and did not want to deal with going anywhere today so we ordered in dinner from Nonna’s and when that arrived the whole family went downstairs and watched Doctor Who all evening.

When we put the girls to bed tonight instead of reading the normal bedtime stories, which in recent months have been primarily “George Shrinks”, “If You Give a Mouse a Cookie…” and Luciana’s all time favourite “Pete’s a Pizza”, we read a couple of chapters in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Liesl got really into it and immediately sat on my lap and was perfectly quiet and intent while I read the story. Luciana took a little while to calm down but when she did she came and snuggled up beside me as well. Dominica even stayed in the room and listened to me read the book to them.

Liesl is now the same age that I was when my mother read The Chronicles of Narnia to me and recorded them onto cassette tape that I listened to all throughout my childhood.

I read a little more of “The Arm of the Starfish” before falling off to sleep myself.

My last post of the old year.  This was a major year for SGL not in content but in traffic volume.  The site was always busy but nothing like it has been this year.  I am a bit better known than I have been in the past, as is the way with things typically, and the site is just getting larger and larger as the content grows at a pretty steady state making it easier and easier for people to find the site or reference something in which they have interest.  The last two days have had over 69,000 page views each day, some of the busiest days for the site ever.  This month, as a whole, did not hit the 800,000 mark quite but was very, very close at 790,000.  A very respectable number for a silly old identity blog.

I slept a lot last night, more than eight hours.  Very odd for me.  Good thing that I went to bed ridiculously early.

I stopped at the deli and got my breakfast sandwich and then in to the office.  Everything was very slow today and the office was almost empty.  People really take the holidays seriously here.  We got let out of work at one but I had some additional work to do so did not actually leave the office until two, but at least I managed to get lunch before leaving.

When I left the office the Spark had some serious problems.  Even in the parking garage the warning lights were coming on and the engine almost stalled several times.  Not good.

I made it out to CT15 but the car was barely able to move and I quickly realized that the engine was almost stalling and I was stuck in first gear.  I got to the first place that I could pull over and shut the car off for a bit.  Then I turned it on and let it warm up for a while.  After significantly warmed up, it seemed to run okay.  So I drove home without major incident.  That was a bit scary.  With Dominica out of town, I was concerned that I was about to get stuck over an hour from home.

Got home and called Dominica to let her know, as she had not seen my emails, that I needed her to come home tomorrow so that I could reliably make it to work on Thursday.  I have no need to drive again today or tomorrow so that is not a big deal if I am stranded at the house during that time.  She said that the Acadia has an engine light on too and her dad has it at the shop reading the computer output on it right now to see what the issue is.  I tried getting the Spark into a shop today but no one can see it until Thursday and the shop that is practical for us to use isn’t even answering the phones today.  So the plan is, Dominica will be home tomorrow and we will try to get it scheduled somewhere at that time.

Quiet evening for me.  Nothing special, did some work but not much.  Watched some more of the Vicar of Dibley and was off to bed before eleven.  I’m getting old now that staying up for New Year’s doesn’t even occur to me.  Read a little of “Arm of the Starfish” while in bed.

Was awake early this morning, before five thirty. The bed was so comfortable though, I stayed in for at least half an hour more.

Without the family in the house getting ready for work is so much easier. I was up and out the door just after seven. I skipped my breakfast at the deli today, I was not hungry and really need to start losing weight again.

Since my normal mobile phone is not able to be charged at the moment, I am using my Windows phone instead. This is when it is really handy owning two cell phones just for me. So the book that I was reading in the car, “Many Waters”, is on my iPhone. Instead I started rereading “A Swiftly Tilting Planet” on my drive. These old books really take me back. It has been so long since I last read them that I really do not remember the stories at all but as I read them it all sounds so familiar. I’m guessing I read this one in the 1984 – 1985 era. About the same time that I read “The Arm of the Starfish.”

Got to work quite early. Very slow day. No meetings scheduled. Almost no one in the office. Even Spiceworks is extremely slow. Having Christmas and New Years both fall on Wednesday is probably the most business crippling juxtaposition that there is as both work weeks are completely cut in half. When they fall on a Monday or a Friday, the interruption is so much more minor. It is almost like the office is closed and I am just here hanging out.

Dominica does not know when they are coming home yet. Wednesday is, realistically, the earliest that they might and if not then, then probably Friday early afternoon.

Did not get home until late but it did not matter.  Short evening at home.  Ate some leftovers, watched some “Vicar of Dibley” and went to bed early.