Sheep Guarding Llama

I went to happy hour at the office but returned to my desk and drank my wine there. I left the office at five thirty and on the way home stopped in at the liquor store in Pound Ridge, New York to see if they had some whiskey as Dominica had a hard time finding anything when she had looked in Peekskill. It’s a small town feeling place. I met Tony and David who run the place and they are whiskey guys and had a decent collection for such a tiny place. I got four bottles including Templeton Rye and Johnny Walker Platinum. It is perfect since I go right by them on my way home so it is super easy to just stop in and grab what I need. Much easier than going somewhere from the house. This literally can only take five or ten minutes since they sit by a stop sign on a little village street where the car pretty much has to come to a stop anyway. I just pull over and walk in.

Spent a little time with the girls and got them off to bed. Liesl and I talked about going to the bagel store in the morning to get breakfast for the family, just the two of us. She expressed concern that she didn’t know if she would be able to wake up in time or not. She is so adorable.

We did pretty much nothing tonight. It was a short night, even with me getting home half an hour early.  Dominica went out shopping tonight and got a ton of supplies including Liesl’s big birthday present, a Nintendo 2DS (it is basically a 3DS that is designed for younger kids – no 3D display and no hinge to break so it is sturdier and easier on young eyes.)  We got her Mario Kart 7 which she has wanted to play.  We think that she will really like it.  Dominica got all of the birthday shopping done tonight and a huge bulk of the Christmas shopping.

I was feeling really exhausted and needed to get bed myself. Dominica was not tired when I had gotten the girls to bed, but she sleeps in roughly three hours longer than I do not getting up until the girls wake up. So of course she is feeling very well rested. It is not like there is anything around the house for her to be doing anyway. It is still completely empty. So I was right off to bed after Liesl went to bed. Dominica stayed up late and fell asleep on the couch.

Woke up at six and was out the door my earliest yet. Today I missed the school buses and made very good time getting out east. There was some emergency, though, and while in South Salem they closed 35 east bound and I had to turn around and take the 121 route instead of taking 123 like I always do. This actually worked out well as I only lost six minutes and I’ve spent the last two nights learning this route in the opposite direction so I was able to do it. Seeing the route in the light gave me a completely different impression of where I was. I had no idea that there were so many houses along this path. You cannot see them in the dark of night.

The drive was quite picturesque. The early morning light filtering through the trees. And oh were there trees. It is deep in the forest, winding along the reservoir. Huge mansions on knolls overlooking the water or a stream or just hidden in the woods. I had no idea that this was all here.

Driving into Connecticut this way, into New Canaan on 124, you see a stunning transformation as old New York “deep in the woods” mentality instantly gives way to the human modified, tree-cleared New England style mansions with their expansive lawns. It is very clear that there is a cultural difference between the two places, only minutes apart from each other. The instant that you cross the border the trees thin and houses are more orderly having shaped their environments to them rather than having been built to organically fit into the existing landscape.

This path, the 121 path as I call it, appears to shave about four or five minutes from the drive. Very hard to tell. And leaving just a little earlier, I was about ten minutes earlier than normal today, helps as well. Even with the closed road and turnaround, I did very well this morning. I’ve studied the map a bit more and believe that I have an even more complicated, but shorter and faster route to try tonight. Every minute counts when so much time is spent commuting.

It is a bright, sunny day but cold. It was 25 degrees on my commute in. My windscreen was covered in frost and took a while to thaw before I could drive. I’m wishing that I had a remote starter these days. That tiny little 1.2 litre engine takes a very long time to produce heat for the car. I’m also thinking that a winter coat might be in order here soon, especially as I always wear my fleece all day long while in the office.

I did a crazy amount of catching up on SGL today.  I got probably five posts written during the day filling in all of the gaps in the recent news (the last ten days or so.)  Now I just need to get back to filling in the Disney Vacation days so that I can get all of the stuff that I have already written finally published.

Today was a good day at work.  Feeling good about things. Feeling productive.

I left work at 6:19 PM and tried the new, very complicated, way home through the backwoods of Westchester County.  There wasn’t bad traffic and I made it home in 61 minutes, pulling in at 7:20.  That was great.  It’s only three minutes off of my record but that adds up and the route was more interesting.

The girls were camped out on the new couch when I got in the door and Dominica was down in the basement working on her computer.  Dominica pretty much headed straight out to go shopping.  She had been waiting for me to get home.

I did a bunch more posting of SGL tonight.  Very good progress at getting the Disney days documented.  Once the vacation days are written up, I will be all caught up.

Today is the big day, our couch for the living room is set to be delivered. We’ve been going crazy for a week without anywhere to sit. Bob’s Discount Furniture called me just before I got to work this morning to tell me that they were running early and that they should be at our house around ten this morning.

I got to have lunch today at The Lime in downtown Norwalk. It is a little place on Main Street that caters to the organic, vegetarian “crunchy” crowd “like me” and the food was very good. Too bad that it is so far away because Dominica would really like it. We need that in Peekskill.

It was pretty late when I got home tonight. I decided to try out the new route from work to home, going more into the woods It worked much better tonight. I am starting to learn the area a little bit.

I got home and got to see the new couch. It was a great choice. It is huge, seats easily six or seven people on white leather – a bold choice for a family with two rambunctious little girls. But it is the size and look and functionality that we need. It fills the living room and makes a comfortable living space around the fireplace and the triple glass back door. The couch is perfect and Liesl discovered that it is full of secret storage spaces and being such a large couch that is really important. The huge ottoman that it came with (well, we paid a lot to get it too) also is full of storage space. We had no idea.

The backs of the couch are actually just right for Liesl and Luciana to sit on and use their iPads. There is a broad space on top that they just fit on. They love it. And there is a broad edge on the door side where Dominica can put a laptop while she is working on it. And the other side is a Chaise lounge. It looks great but now we have to do a lot more decorating to make it all make sense. We need matching lamps and end tables. This couch would have been perfect in style for the house in Texas. So completely Dutch Modern. But so much higher end than the cheap colorful couches that we have in Texas.

We have our basement couch coming still. That doesn’t come until the second week in December. But we can wait for that. There is little reason to need to have seating like that in the basement until we have a television down there.

This evening Liesl and Luciana took out their “soccer balls” and played “soccer” with me in the wide open basement for a long time.

On the way home tonight I tried a new route taking 124 through New Canaan’s downtown area. I had some challenges doing the route because there were all kinds of twists and turns but while getting lost I actually found some better ways to do the same route. So once I figure it out, I think that it might be pretty good. But there is no way to really tell until I don’t get lost – no way to tell if it saves a few minutes.

Tonight is our last night without furniture. We mostly sat in the basement. Sitting in the basement is no different than sitting in the living room except there is a computer and office chair for at least one of us to use. This is getting rough, but it is almost over.

We talked about our Thanksgiving plans. We have had some communications issues and we had no idea what we were thinking about doing. I thought that we were going out to spend the weekend with dad, that I was taking the train back to Peekskill and that Dominica and the girls were going on to Frankfort on Monday. Apparently we were at cross purposes.

The new plan is that we are staying home this weekend, which is probably good as we still have a lot to do even if the house is very empty. I’m quite behind after everything these last two months. This will give us a chance to relax a bit more and time for me to be productive. A good combination. Then on Monday, when I go to work, Dominica and the girls will drive out to dad’s house to spend a few days there. Then they will go to Frankfort on Wednesday, I think, which is when I will be heading there after work on Wednesday night. I have Thursday and Friday off from work so I have a four day weekend next week. After having just gotten back from a two week (16 day) vacation, this is pretty awesome. I’ve never had time off like this before. I have to get out to Frankfort on Wednesday because it is Liesl’s birthday!

It is Monday morning. Feeling a bit under the weather. My eyes are bothering me more than they were before. At the office everyone decided that it really was pink eye and not just some random eye irritation and that I needed to do something about it. I guess that that probably means that I have contracted whatever it was that Dominica had a few weeks ago. Very strange that I would get it now, weeks later, rather than right after she did.

So it was a long day at the office with my eyes aching and squinting all day long. I left on the early side, around five thirty, to get home and let my eye rest a bit.

I discovered that leaving at five thirty is pointless, I only get home minutes before I would have if I had left at six. No point not working late, I guess. That sucks. But it makes the time that I will be getting home more predictable, I guess. I just never get home before seven, that is just how it is.

I am still “reading” Paul Theroux’s “Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown” and am only just over halfway through it. At this point he is still in Tanzania. Theroux is best known to most Americans as the author of the book “The Mosquito Coast” which later became a Harrison Ford film.

Got home, made a fire in the fireplace and hung out with the girls. Dominica went out and did some shopping, nothing major mostly picking up eye drops for me and returning a pair of jeans to Old Navy.

I got a bit of posting done this evening and catching up on emails. The past month, or really even two, have been devastatingly busy and I am behind on SGL, behind on email, behind on Spiceworks, behind on PMs, etc. Just so much that I need to get back up to date on. I am working much longer hours than I used to and I am commuting a long time every day which is new. And no working from home. So my free time is way, way down.

After Dominica broke the folding chair last night while we watched “Sharknado” there is really nowhere in the house to sit except for the office chair. We are now even more anxious for the couch to arrive, which it is scheduled to do so on Wednesday morning. At that point we will have a huge white couch and Ottoman. White leather. Yes, we are certainly brave parents.