Sheep Guarding Llama

I got up and packed up this morning so that I would be ready to leave directly from work to head to Frankfort as soon as I got off of work today. It was a very slow morning. The office is basically empty, as is expected.

I got released from the office at noon and was ready to go. I had checked online and saw that Vera Bradley delivered Dominica’s Christmas present to the house today while I was at the office so I ran back to Peekskill, which is only slightly out of the way, and grabbed it before driving north to Frankfort. Dominica and the girls left dad’s house at nine this morning so arrived at Frankfort before I got out of Peekskill.

My drive was not bad. Only saw a few flakes of snow the entire way and traffic was not bad. I drove up to Plattekill Service Area and went in there to grab myself some lunch as I did not eat at the office before leaving and it was the middle of the afternoon now. So I grabbed food at Arthur Treacher’s.

I had finished reading “Venice: Pure City” the other day and today decided to do something that I rarely do and reread a book. On the drive north I read the first half of ”A Wrinkle in Time” which I read when I was quite young. I cannot place the reading of the book in my memory so I have no idea if I read it when I was in second grade or high school but my best guess is somewhere around third grade. I remember having read the “Time Trilogy” by Madeleine L’Engle and there were only three books. The fourth book, “Many Waters”, was not written until 1986. I did go back and read that one, but it was later than when I read the earlier books because I exhausted the available titles at the age that I had been reading them. So third grade is my best estimate for my original reading of “A Wrinkle in Time.” There is a fifth title in the series, “An Acceptable Time”, but that was not published until 1989 when I was no longer following the series and was unaware of its writing until recently. I read several of Madeleine L’Engle’s books when I was in elementary school including all or nearly all of the Austin’s and O’Keefe series (the O’Keefe series being the sequel series to the Time Quintet but written contemporary to it.)

The drive from Peekskill to Frankfort is under four hours but pretty close to it. It was just after five when I arrived and everyone had just walked in from mass. We had a relaxing evening for the most part. A bit later on, maybe around nine, we tried to put the kids to bed but Luciana was over tired, we think, and had a really rough time. She kept Liesl awake and caused all kinds of problems. I eventually had to go up and lay down in their room for a while. Even that didn’t go so well. At first Luciana came and snuggled with me and tried to hang out reading what I was reading on my phone. But Liesl got upset because she was being good but wanted snuggles. So she climbed into my bed too. Then, after not too long, Luciana started picking on her sister and eventually got kicked out of the bed.

All in all it probably took an hour or more to get Luciana to go to sleep. She finally fell asleep in her bed and Liesl in mine. Around eleven I had to sneak out without waking up the girls so that I could go down to the living room and assist with the set up of all of the presents for tomorrow. That took, as it usually does, until around two in the morning. I was very tired having gotten quite little sleep over the past few days combined with lots of driving.

I was exhausted this morning and did not get into the office until kind of late.  Slow week so not really a big deal.  I only got a few hours of sleep last night, even so.

Today is my one day alone in Peekskill.  Got in from Ohio late last night and leaving for Frankfort tomorrow after work which, I hope, proves to be a short day.  So I just spent the evening, after I got home from work, hanging out in the basement.  Didn’t really do anything today.  Just used the time to relax.  I caught up on Family Guy while I was home, that was about it.

I was up at eight and by a quarter to nine was down in the kitchen with the family. Our plan was to be on the road at nine but we ended up stalling too long and not actually leaving until a quarter till ten. It is a lot of work to get the two little girls ready, get the cars packed, get everyone fed and out the door.

Dominica drove the girls in the Acadia and I drove dad in the Volvo convertible. It was so warm this morning I contemplated putting the top down for a minute but figured it would be too cold once we were really out on the road. We really got lucky with a warm weekend. It is in the mid fifties today and it hit the low sixties last night. That is incredibly warm for this time of year.

The drive went just fine. We hit some small patches of very heavy rain twice, once in northern Ohio and once in Erie, Pennsylvania. That only slowed us down by a few minutes, nothing noticeable. It cleared up very quickly and we made good time out to Buffalo.

On the way we made a few stops. Luciana requested a “cheese sandwich” by which she means she wants a sub from Subway. Both girls are addicted to those. Thanks goodness they are cheap and you can get them anywhere. The two little girls ended up eating an entire eleven inch sub between them, even with Liesl originally stating that she was not at all hungry and did not need any food. Dominica and I went to Sheetz to get our food instead, we don’t have Sheetz in New York nor in Texas so we like to take advantage of it when we can.

It was about two thirty when we arrived at the Buffalo / Depew Amtrak Station. Nearly an hour before my train. It is really too bad that we had not gotten out of Ohio on time, I might have been able to make the earlier train and been home two hours earlier. The parking lot at the station was completely full, not a single space left let alone the two that we needed. I ran in, printed off my boarding ticket and checked on the train status. Then I went outside and said my goodbyes to everyone. It’s really only one day that I will not see the girls. It is afternoon now and I will not see them tomorrow but I am driving straight to Frankfort from work on Tuesday afternoon so will see them most of the evening. I have no idea yet what time we might be able to leave on Christmas Eve. Might be a full day, might be quite a bit less.

I passed the hour pretty quickly at the Amtrak station. The train, the 288 Empire Service, was right on time. I got a row to myself and settled in for the long eight hour trek down to Croton on Hudson.

The train ride was pretty nice, but almost completely in the dark so I got to see nothing out the windows. At least I avoided all of the driving on flooded roads that Dominica and dad had to do to get back home. I just had to ride along. I had my iPhone and iPad with me and Amtrak has WiFi now on the trains (but app downloads, YouTube, Audible and other obvious uses for it are blocked so be sure to have what you need with you before you go!!) So I was on Facebook, FourSquare, email, etc. the whole time.

I have been reading Peter Ackroyd’s “Venice: Pure City”, a history of Venice and the Venetian Empire. By the end of the ride I had made it through about three quarters of the book. I also started, but only made it a little ways, into “Lolita” in my attempt to read much of the critical literature that I have never made it through. I ran my iPhone all the way down and nearly managed to completely recharge it during the ride.

We got held up slightly near Schenectady, which is normal, and were running a little late coming down the Hudson Valley. We were just late enough that I missed the late Metro North train by ten or fifteen minutes and it was going to be more than an hour until the next one. Even if I took the Metro North up to Peekskill it would still drop me two miles from home with the big hill in the way so I would have a long walk even after waiting over an hour for the next train and riding it up to Peekskill. It would be about two in the morning when I would get home going that way with most of the time just sitting around doing nothing.

When I got off of the train I looked around to see if there were any taxis available but I did not see any at the taxi stops at the train station. Likely because it was getting so close to midnight none were waiting there, it is a Sunday after all and there were not that many people departing at Croton Harmon station. I weighed my options, no matter what I am not getting home before two in the morning. So what is the best option?

I opted to use my time to at least get exercise if I am going to just be waiting around anyway. I am all packed up for taking a hike this evening since I had to hike up the Peekskill hill anyway tonight and it is not raining and is decently warm. A good a time as any for a long walk through Westchester.

I set out and got up to 9A and was so warm, just getting to the first road, that I had to take off my fleece and shove it into the backpack and roll up my sleeves. I was starting to sweat and there is a lot of hill climbing to be done.

It was a very long and quiet (and dark) walk. The entire route was new to me. I’ve been to Croton Harmon station many times but have always driven in or out on Route 9. So immediately exiting the station I was covering new territory. The distance from the station to the house was nearly nine miles. A very serious walk and the terrain was continuously up and down the hills. There was almost no flat ground for me to walk over. Very exhausting. I had a somewhat heavy backpack on (filled with clothes, some documents, a Blackberry, an iPad 2, a camera and some small stuff including my fleece) as well as my CPAP back which is so awful to harness that it is easier to just carry by hand. Then I had my iPhone in my shirt pocket too so that I could easily check the map as I went. I had one bottle of water from the train which was really good as everything was already closed everywhere that I went. I did not see one open store the entire walk. No open business of any kind. I actually only saw one person and one dog the entire way but nearly a dozen whitetail deer.

Overall it was actually a pretty nice walk. It was very quiet and I decided to not even put in my earphones and just to enjoy the solitude and silence. There was no traffic. I would estimate that I saw fewer than ten cars the entire way! It was very dark. Very overcast with rainclouds above blocking out the sky but reflecting the light pollution from the towns back down so that gave me some light. But most of the time I had almost no visibility onto the ground so was having to walk extra carefully to ensure that I didn’t step on anything or into anything.

It has been a while since I have had a chance to take a nice, long walk like this. Very good exercise and the weather was perfect. No rain at all although it was pretty humid. At times my glasses would even fog up. The entire walk was either along the Hudson River or through the deep forest heading up towards Peekskill. It was quite remote.

Walks like this are great for getting to know the area. I have a much better feel for where I live now than I have for the five years that we have owned this house. So odd that I’ve never gotten around to walking the area before.

I measured the trip on Google Maps so that I would have a comparison that I know better. The trip was, almost exactly, the same as walking to my father’s farm from the top of Court Street in Downtown Geneseo – up by the light at the top of Main Street by the Catholic Church and the village buildings. Similar elevation changes too. No wonder it seemed like such a long walk.

It was three thirty, I think, when I got to the house. My feet and ankles were very soar but the rest of me was doing just fine. I was awake for probably forty five minutes, letting my body relax, before getting into bed. I still had problems getting to sleep but eventually got a little. It is hard to relax after exercising for that long. Had it been flat ground I would have fallen asleep in half an hour, but with all of the hill climbing I really got a workout and my heart was really working.

Tomorrow I am going to be quite soar from the walk and very tired from the lack of sleep. It is going to be a long day.

We did not get to sleep in much this morning because we had to get up and be in North Canton by ten thirty. That was about half an hour away. Luciana was tossing and turning all night and demanded that she sleep on my arm for most of it meaning that I ended up basically not sleeping at all. By the time that we got up this morning I am estimating that I got only one hour of sleep and Dominica probably only got about three. The girls both got a bit more sleep than us plus they slept in the car last night too, so they are fine today.

We checked out of the hotel and drove out to North Canton. We pulled in just as dad arrived riding with Aunt Marlene and Uncle Don. Most everyone else was already there. It is a surprise party so the family was all gathering at the restaurant to get ready so that Aunt Gayle would bring grandma after everyone else was already there. This worked out extra well as it gave a bit of time, over half of an hour, for Liesl and Luciana to get to see everyone and not be over excited when grandma walked in. Liesl and Monica, of course, had to hang out. Liesl did not want to leave her side.

Aunt Gayle and grandma arrived at five after eleven. We did a great job and grandma was totally surprised. She had no idea and especially no idea that dad had come in from Rochester and that we had come in from Peekskill. She was really, really surprised when she noticed dad holding little Luciana. Grandma does not get to see her great granddaughters very often. Luciana was tiny the last time that grandma saw her.

Liesl was the first to run up and give her a hug. Then I went up and hugged her and she held my hand for a long time while she took stock of everyone there and greeted everyone.

While we were waiting for lunch to get started, all of the cousins headed to the bar and got cocktails. It’s funny that our entire generation is a cocktail one. We are all very much alike in many ways.

It was a very large gathering for lunch. Grandma and her siblings and spouses were there. All of my aunts and uncles. All of the cousins. And Liesl and Luciana are the only members of the next generation. I think it was twenty three people!

After lunch we all went to Aunt Marlene’s house where we spent the rest of the day. Grandma opened presents. Then Liesl opened late birthday presents and Luciana got some gifts too. The girls were very happy just having a really large house to run around in. They had a blast and were so happy to be with family. They are both very family oriented kids.

I had an article published on InfoStor today: Understanding the Western Digital SATA Drive Lineup in 2014.  This is my first time being published by InfoStor.

Today is our travel day to get out to Ohio. I went into the office this morning, grabbing my usual (now) egg and cheese sandwich at the Kurdish deli on the way. The day was reasonably slow, the holiday season is really upon us now and things are wrapping up for the end of the year.

My day went pretty well and I was doing okay to leave at a good time from the office but at the last second some work came through that needed my attention and I ended up not getting to leave until after six thirty (I had been hoping to have left between five and five thirty.) So I was much later than I had wanted to be getting home.

I got to Peekskill around eight to get the family loaded up and ready to go. Dominica had the Acadia packed up and ready to go. This is a big trip for her and the girls, leaving tonight and not coming home for nearly two weeks, they probably won’t be home till after New Years. So there is a lot of planning to be done. They are going to Ohio, then to dad’s and then to the Toccos’.

We had to stop at Walgreens on the way out of town to pick up grandma’s birthday gift that they had said was ready for us to pick up. But when we got there they had lost it (pictures that we had them printing for a display that Dominica was putting together) and we got stuck waiting in the parking lot for half an hour for them to get everything reprinted for us. So by the time that we left Peekskill to actually get on to the road, it was after nine in the evening! Much later than I had been hoping. Nearly three hours later.

We got on the road and thankfully it was warm, very warm being over fifty degrees, and the weather was clear. We had a great night for driving so far. We took route 6 west until we picked up Interstate 84 which took us over to Scranton, a route we have not done in a very long time, and then down via Interstate 81 until we could pick up Interstate 80 to carry us west across Pennsylvania.

The little girls were asleep pretty quickly and did very well on the drive. They got a lot of rest so they will probably be fine tomorrow.

The drive, from Peekskill to Alliance, Ohio, took about seven hours. It was after four when we got to our usual hotel in Alliance. Not a lot of time for us to get sleep. We got a room with a king bed and the girls both wanted to snuggle with me. Not going to be a lot of sleep for me tonight.