Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Last night I snuggled with Luciana as I snuggled with Liesl the night before.  At five this morning Luciana needed me to get up and fetch her some water.  So I went downstairs and got her the water but was then awake for much of the night.  I did not fall back asleep after that.

Most of the family went to Dave’s for breakfast this morning.  I stayed at the house and watched Liesl and Luciana, they do not do well getting up early and going to breakfast.  Liesl was not even awake when everyone left.  I played with the girls all morning.  I even started reading “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” to Liesl which she seemed to like but we did not quite managed to make it through the first chapter before everyone came back home.

There was rain expected today so I got onto the road quite early.  I left just before noon and made very good time, even driving in the rain most of the way.  I listened to “Many Waters” on the drive and am nearly done with it.  Just about an hour left to go.

I got home around three thirty.  It didn’t take too long before I figured out that I had forgotten my phone charger in Utica and have no means to charge my iPhone until Dominica brings it down.  I need to go shopping tomorrow to find one.

Spent the afternoon and evening relaxing at home alone. I started watching one of my all time favourite television shows, “The Vicar of Dibley”, from the beginning again. It occurred to me that this show, which to me still feels like a moderately recent one, is actually celebrating its twentieth anniversary this coming year! Twenty years. This show was being filmed while I was still in high school. No wonder the actors from the show seem to have aged since originally filming it.

I also figured out that our friend Andy in the UK actually lives so close to where the Vicar of Dibley was filmed that I could easily walk there from where he lives.

I was feeling hungry tonight so ordered in pasta from Nonna’s.

I went to bed early tonight. I was pretty tired, having gotten a short night last night and sleeping in the very warm house always leaves me feeling tired. The room that Dominica, Liesl, Luciana and I share stays around eighty degrees all of the time so we are always having a really hard time getting any sleep there. Poor Luciana was soaked with sweat last night. So I turned in early and read some more of “The Arm of the Starfish” before falling asleep.

This morning the whole family got up and went out to the local movie theatre to see Disney’s new movie “Frozen.”  This is Luciana’s very first time going to a real movie theatre!  She has been to the drive in twice but never to a real theatre.  Liesl has been only once or twice and I do not believe that she has ever been with me.

“Frozen” was awesome, a truly classic Disney movie.  Really touching.  Luciana decided to climb directly onto my lap and watched the entire movie with me holding her.  She was so sweet.  Just snuggled up so sweet.  She seemed to really love the movie.  Liesl liked it too.

We watched several movies today. Back at the house we watched the rest of “Wreck It Ralph” that we started last night.  Dominica and I have never seen it.  Liesl has seen it before but was watching it again with us.  It’s cute.

This evening we all watched “Epic” which turned out to be not very good at all.  Very weak story and performance.

After everyone else went to bed, Dominica, Liesl and I stayed up and watched the Doctor Who Christmas Special that aired last week.  It was the final episode with Matt Smith as the Doctor.