Sheep Guarding Llama

Monday of my week alone.  I figured out today that I had forgotten that I have a party at the office on Thursday evening and that I will not be home until very late, probably after midnight, so that if Dominica and the girls come home on Thursday I will not see them until I come home from work on Friday anyway – they will all be asleep before I get home and will still be asleep when I leave for work.  So it makes little sense for Dominica to come home early to our still empty house where there is nothing to do with the girls when they could stay and visit with grandpa for an extra day instead and I will see them on Friday when I get home from work the same either way.

I worked late, no need to come home early as it is just me.  When I did come home I had a call with Art, Danielle, Alex and Dominica for, I would guess, an hour and a half.  That was at nine and I barely made it home before we had the call.  That’s how late I was at the office.  The drive home takes rarely more than eighty minutes.

After the call I played a little Assassin’s Creed, maybe two hours at most, and called it a night.  A very uneventful day.

Got up this morning and we got me packed up and mostly ready to leave.  Just before nine we all drove out to Dave’s Diner for breakfast.  The girls were super picky, as always, and really didn’t eat anything.  That is such a problem.  Luciana normally will eat a little and Liesl often nothing.  Today, though, it was chocolate chip pancakes and apparently Luciana is like me and can’t stand the taste or texture of chocolate in breads of that nature.  So she would not eat either.  That did not work out well.  For the rest of us breakfast was very good.

After breakfast it was back to the house and at ten thirty I was on the road back home.  The plan is that Dominica and the girls will come down on Thursday so that I can see them then.

The drive was pretty good.  I actually did not hit any traffic until the lower Hudson Valley.  Even there it was only so bad.  Probably lost no more than half an hour sitting in effectively stopped traffic.  I bailed at the Interstate 84 exit and drove out east to the Taconic Parkway and took that into Yorktown Heights to make things easy.  On the way into Westchester there was an electronic sign up stating that the Hudson River Line was closed due to the horrible Metro North train derailment that happened this morning.  That was my old commuting line and still my current route into Manhattan.  It derailed and was on the news while we were at breakfast this morning.  A few people died and many were injured.  It was really fortunate that it was an almost empty train on a Sunday morning.  Had it been tomorrow it would have been horrific.

I got to the house early afternoon and had the day to relax.  And that was my plan today.  No work, just take some time to take advantage of being at the house alone.  I got Assassin’s Creed, which I had waited for a year to get in the Steam Black Friday Weed Sale, installed on the computer in the basement and put in a few hours of playing that today.  In just this one day I managed to make it farther along in that game than I had managed to get when I had played it on the PS3 several years ago since it was one of, if not the first, game that I owned on the PS3.

And thus begins my week alone in New York.  I have five days until I see the family again to spend in this completely empty house.  After the three weeks alone in Connecticut this being alone motif is wearing itself pretty thin.

On the drive down I finished reading “A Concise History of the Middle East” which I started, I think, while in Connecticut during my stay alone.  And I started reading Francis Mayes’ “A Year in the World.”  After this I believe that I will have read all of her non-fiction writing except for her recent memoir which I am not sure is even out yet.  But it will be some time before I finish reading this one.

This morning Dominica and her dad got out the door pretty early so that they could go to the movie theater and see Catching Fire which they had been unable to see last night.  Dominica’s mother and I stayed home and watched the girls.  I played more of Liesl’s new Mario Kart 7 video game and managed to unlock all of the tracks so that she has the ability to drive any course that she wants.  She is a long way from winning races and we had to have a talk today about her setting the difficultly all of the way up on the game.  She is convinced that it is easier on the hardest setting and it is just making things harder for her.  Being five and playing that game is challenging enough.

After they were done with the movie, Elizabeth and I packed up the girls and drove them to Utica’s Brewery District where we met Dominica and her dad at the Celtic Harp, an Irish pub that they like to go to there.  The Brewery District is a pretty surprising little bit of Utica that is gentrifying a little bit in the middle of the city.  A nice area to go for food or a drink.  The food was quite good and very filling.  The beer selection was pretty lean for me, we just got Guinness except for Dominica who got something of Saranac’s that did not impress her.  It was supposed to be a spiced winter ale but was not very spiced for her tastes.  Liesl and Luciana were pretty restless.  We were upstairs on a high balcony and they mostly entertained themselves by looking out of the railing down on the people eating below.

After the late lunch, Dominica’s parents took Liesl and Luciana back to the house for a day with the grandparents and Dominica and I got the evening to go out shopping on our own.  First stop – the Village Toy Shop in New Hartford to look specifically for Christmas presents for Luciana.  We already have a pretty big cache of presents ready for Liesl.  Being five, Liesl is trivial to shop for.  She is into everything and can tell you the things that she wants.  Luciana, at two, is really hard to predict, especially a month away.  We found a number of things that we think that Luciana will like.  Her big thing is going to be some Calico Critters.  They are so cute and something that Liesl never had.  Luciana needs something that is uniquely hers.

We went to the mall too and hit several stores looking for toys and returning some clothes.  We found some stuff at Target including some very affordable games for Liesl’s new 2DS.  One is the new Kingdom Hearts game which is obviously for Dominica to play while Liesl is asleep as it is way too hard for Liesl and is part of a series that Dominica has already been playing.  The other is the Lego Pirates of the Caribbean game.  This one is for both Liesl and Dominica.  They have played Lego games together before and they both like them.  It will be harder for Liesl to play but we think that she can handle playing it.  She picks up video games pretty quickly.

We did a little more shopping, got ourselves a quick snack in the food court then started driving back to the house.  We were talking about Gerber’s, a new local speakeasy that has opened up downtown, when Dominica decided that it would be the perfect time to try it.  So we stopped in for Manhattans at a 1935 themed downtown Utica speakeasy.  The place was really nice and we hope to be able to make use of it when we are in town.  A very nice bar with great drinks, neat fresh menu and great ambiance.  And I love the fact that there are no televisions.  It’s a real pub meant for talking, not for ignoring people and watching TV like you were still at home.

Back home, played with the kids a little and it was time for bed.  I leave to return to Peekskill tomorrow after breakfast.  Then it is most of a week alone for me.  Dominica is going to stay in Frankfort tomorrow and head out to Peoria so that the girls can hang out with my dad on Tuesday.

Surprisingly I was up early before eight this morning and came down to the kitchen and managed, by noon, to be completely caught up on SGL.  Finally.  I’ve been needing to get that done.  There was a lot to write about since the Disney trip was in that missing time.

Dominica was up not long after me and spent the morning assembling Playmobil stuff for Liesl.  Both girls are super excited about the Playmobil stuff.  Ciana thinks that it looks like great fun.

I’ve been keeping up to date on Spiceworks too.  Very productive morning for me.

Mostly just worked on my laptop or played with the girls until it was early evening and time to go to the Kitlas for dinner.  (A Friday tradition here.)  After dinner Dominica and her dad tried to go to the movies to see Catching Fire together but the movie sold out before they got there so they came back to the house.  It is amazing to me that movies still sell out in this day and age.  That so many people want to go watch movies in a theater amazes me.  And that, at the same time, drive in theaters do so poorly.

I played Liesl’s 2DS some on Mario Kart to win some races and open up new characters and cars and tracks for her.  She played her 2DS so much today that the battery died by early evening and we plugged it in in the living room and both girls played it for hours more sitting on the couch.

The family watching the first six or seven episodes of the new WB television show Arrow which is on Netflix.  Even I enjoyed it and it is based on a comic book.  However, recently, I’ve figured out that I actually have traditionally enjoyed movies based on comic books and that it is exclusively Marvell comics that I dislike so much.  I’ve always liked Superman, Batman and, now, Green Arrow stories.

It’s Thanksgiving in Frankfort!  I am very thankful for getting to spend the holiday with my girls and that I have a new job that allows me to be here with everyone.  Eight years at Citi we were very fortunate that I was able to work from home for occasions like this.  I’ve lost that but now I get the both Thanksgiving and Black Friday off completely so instead of working from Frankfort for a little longer I do a few fewer days but really get the days off that I am here.  No need to sign in and check on anything, at least not this year.  We will see what next year brings.

This morning was the family sitting around in the kitchen, as we often do, and looking through the Black Friday deals.  I think that most of American has turned to Thanksgiving being a day of shopping planning more than anything else.  There is so much special shopping that happens just before, during and immediately following the holiday that it is impossible to ignore.

My Black Friday deals are from Steam.  They have tons of awesome deals all week plus special lightning deals every eight hours.  They are brilliant making you stay logged in continuously and checking the latest deals over and over again.  I got a great haul of stuff at the beginning of the sale knocking out half of my extensive wishlist.  I have a process for this stuff and I put things into my wishlist all year long knowing that there are going to be awesome sales.  My ability to delay gratification is key here and really works in my favour.  Because I can hold out knowing that things are in my wishlist and won’t be forgotten or missed, I can wait for the awesome sales.

My big scores at the beginning of the sale included nearly all of the Assassin’s Creed collection and Skyrim: Legendary Edition for myself.  And Night of the Rabbit for Liesl and I.  After this, my wishlist is down to just about six items and all are things that are pretty new and will easily wait for next year’s sales.  I now have seventy four games in my Steam library!  That is enough to keep me busy for a long, long time (that list includes Liesl’s and Dominica’s games too.)

Before three we packed up the kids and headed across town to Joe and Barb Tocco’s where we are celebrating Thanksgiving.  Both girls spent the entire evening being very restless because they wanted to eat the cake that Dominica had baked (it was purple and pink so Liesl was going bonkers) and to open presents.

We had Thanksgiving dinner with the family, then more family came over to visit.  Once the crowds had dispersed we sang Happy Birthday to Liesl and cut into the cake which was very good.  Once the cake eating was done it was into the living room for the girls to open their presents.  Because she is only two and could not handle Liesl getting presents and her not, Luciana got the Playmobil Advent Calendar that they were getting anyway wrapped up for her to open. That kept her happy.  Good thinking Grammy.

Liesl got two Playmobil sets, Animal Clinic and the Asian Animal Park, from Dominica’s parents.  Both girls are super excited about those.  And from us she got the red Nintendo 2DS and Mario Kart 7.  When she opened the 2DS she was very excited but we asked her if she knew what it was and she said “no.”  LOL  But she was excited nonetheless.  We explained what it was and she was really interested then.  She opened the game and knew immediately what Mario Kart was, as she has played it on the Wii previously.  She was truly excited about that because she likes that game.  I opened the 2DS for her and told her that I might need to charge first (which she is used to and understands immediately) but she looked at the 2DS and turned it on immediately all by herself and just started using it.  Apparently this will be very easy for her to use.

It was pretty late when we got back to the house.    Dominica set about putting together the Playmobil animal clinic for Liesl.  Liesl is super excited, this was a perfect set for her.  I got the 2DS battery run down, then plugged in to charge up for tomorrow and the latest software update applied.

I put in a bit of time getting SGL updated this evening.  With some work tomorrow morning I think that we will be completely caught up after falling behind while in Disney World.