Sheep Guarding Llama

Still no furniture so not a whole lot to do around the house today.  I was up at seven this morning, my internal work clock already set, apparently.  I got up and let everyone else sleep in and went down to the basement to use a real computer for the first time in a long time.  It has been over a month since I had real access to a decent computer where I could actually accomplish something.  It feels great to be on a nice desktop again, and with a massive monitor.  I love the new twenty seven inch monitor, even if the resolution is a little lower than the one I am used to.  This setup will be awesome once the second monitor is up and running, which should be next weekend at the latest because all that we need, at this point, is an additional power cord.  We just could not justify buying yet another PC power cord when we own so many and can pick up one of ours in a week.  Just making due until then.

We did a late lunch or early dinner today heading out to New City Diner for the first time since we have been back.  The New City Diner was one of our regular eateries four years ago before moving to Texas, eating there definitely makes it seem like we are back home here.

After dinner we came back home and I watched the girls for the evening and Dominica went shopping for more supplies.  The girls had a good time hanging out.  I played some Age of Empires II: The Forgotten which I bought today – the new expansion pack adds more to the game and makes things work more smoothly.  It’s a nice upgrade so far. I only played one game to test it out this evening.  Liesl and Luciana spent a lot of time on my lap watching me play.

I made two fires in the fireplace tonight.  Kept in going most of the evening.  Actually started getting caught up on SGL a little tonight.  My first chance to actually work on it was tonight with the desktop working.

Got the girls off to bed and Dominica made me watch Sharknado one of the worst movies ever made.  It isn’t funny, I guess people have been saying that it is so bad that it is entertaining, but it really isn’t.  It’s just a cheap, poorly made zombie movie with sharks with no thought or effort put into it.  Not entertaining at all.

Long day for us.  Slept in this morning as much as we could.  Ended up having a run in with a group of homeowner association vigilantes that made for a stressful day – actually had to contact the management company and threaten restraining orders.  We are not happy at all.  Not a good way to start the day.  Now we remember why we will never buy a place with an HOA ever again.  Can’t believe that we didn’t learn that lesson after Geneseo.  But here we are with the same issues again.

We had to make an emergency run to the city dump, which we didn’t make in time because we didn’t have any information about it, but they let us in anyway because they felt bad.  So we got to drop off the trash that wasn’t ours to placate the evil HOA scum.

From there we raced back to the house since we had something at one that we needed to do.  So spent the next hour trying to get Dominica’s computer working with audio which ended up being a disaster that we never got working.  We had to resort to using an iPad instead.  How silly.

Once we were done with the work stuff we made some plans and, more or less, just went out shopping.  The big ticket item for the day is to find furniture for our completely bare house.  We did a bit of online shopping but we know that we want to buy from Bob’s Discount Furniture because their prices are so good and the quality is so high.

So we drove out to Rockland County which takes about an hour.  We headed right out to Bob’s and spent the entire evening testing out couches and chairs.  We had a pretty clear picture of what we were going to get before we got there but, if you know how we are, that all fell apart once we started actually sitting on couches.

The one couch that we swore that we were not going to get that we had liked in the catalogue so much, the enormous Dutch modern white leather… is what we decided on.  About as impractical as it gets with little kids.  It is huge, though, and is everything that we need for our living room.  We really wanted the matching chair but it would not fit and to be practical, just the couch and the huge matching Ottoman is all that we could do.  But that one thing completely takes care of the living room and will be delivered on Wednesday finally giving us a place to sit!  The couch is absolutely gorgeous and completely our style.  It is so large that all four of us can easily use it and reasonably it probably seats six or seven people.

While we were couch shopping the girls spent a lot of time checking out the huge goldfish pond inside of the store.  The fish were really big and the girls thought that it was all great fun.  They even “befriended” one of the little fish and named her “Pink.”  The girls would still be talking about their friend Pink the Fish for weeks to come.

While Dominica and I were looking at basement seating options the two little girls went off to look at seating on their own.  Dominica and I were looking at all kinds of stuff and thought that we had a really good idea of what we wanted when Liesl made us come with her to show us what they had found.

The girls had discovered an amazing three person couch that converts into a two person theater setup with lighted cup holders, built in lights and power supplies and places to put food and stuff and storage in the arms.  It was actually pretty amazing and surprisingly practical for us.  The girls were so excited about it that we decided to just let them pick it.  So our shopping was done.

It took about an hour to complete all of the paperwork.  So I worked on that while Dominica took the girls to the Bob’s Cafe where they got free ice cream and sweets and had a good time while waiting for me.

I got everything wrapped up.  The living room furniture arrives on Wednesday and the basement furniture on December 10th.

Dominica wanted to get dinner at Red Lobster which was right across the street from Bob’s so we went there.  And then back home to our empty house.  Only a few days to go now.  Seating very soon.  We can’t wait.

I had to drive out to Westport this morning rather than going in to Norwalk. So I got to do some additional Connecticut navigation that I have not done previously since I am coming directly from Peekskill this morning. I did, however, get lost en route and that wasn’t very helpful. So I was running late when I finally got out to Westport. It is going to take me a while to have a good internal feel for how to get around the Gold Coast.

Left work around five thirty and immediately got caught in a traffic jam caused by an accident out on CT15. So I did not get home early at all. As soon as I did get home we ran out to Walmart to go shopping. We went looking for a monitor for the desktop in the basement but Walmart had nothing. We did manage to grap an Ethernet cable that we needed but that was about it. On well. On to Best Buy.

At Best Buy we did well. We found a pair of twenty seven inch LED LCD monitors for Dominica’s basement office (my office will eventually be in our upstairs bedroom.) We realized while out that we did not have a power cord for the computer in the house. So bought two computers today so that we can cannibalize the power cord from the one for the computer until next weekend when we are at dad’s house and can pick up some of our stuff (and possibly my monitor for my desktop too.) That way no wasting money on an extra power cable that will just be another one of scores of them that we have in boxes here and there.

Came home and got the monitors hooked up. They are pretty nice, I am very happy with them. The price was good and now Dominica is going to have a much better setup than she has had in the past. This is very impressive and better than I have ever had anywhere that I have worked, including currently. Dual 1920×1080 27” LED LCDs is not bad at all. She should be very happy once we get the power for the second monitor.

Our plan is to have two mostly neutral desktops in the house, one in the basement that is officially her office and one in our bedroom that is officially mine but really set them up with the intention that we will both be going back and forth regularly and need to have them both working from either location for whatever we need. Then we are getting (building) a video game system as well that is going to be hooked up in the basement and will be attached to our main television. That’s probably not until around March or so. My own office in the bedroom needs a desk so that is probably going to wait on Art to build a built in one.

Today is the big day, we get Internet access in Peekskill. This is the single, most important event that we have happening in association with getting into the house. We just can’t live without Internet access and with phones basically not working in the house it is that much worse. We are looking into getting a T-Mobile repeater, though, which are free, to put at the house so that we have good signal inside of the house. We haven’t decided on that yet.

I am in the office today, which is probably obvious, so Dominica is home to deal with the cable Internet delivery. It got delivered this afternoon without any problems. And they not only showed up on time, installed without incident but they also provided a free switch and wireless access point for us to use so we don’t need to deal with getting equipment to the house right away. That is awesome as we were up and running immediately.

The cable Internet boxes were installed underneath the stairs in the basement which is very handy. We still have in-wall runs of Ethernet to Dominica’s desk from there and we can make connections directly to the future “den television” area where we hope to have the gaming PC set up and it is very central for running Ethernet to the rest of the house.

When I got home this evening I did a speed test via the laptop which is on the wireless and even there I got over 50Mb/s down and nearly 25Mb/s up with a ping time of just 10ms. On Ethernet it should be even better. Mostly in ping latency. A great connection. I have so missed the amazing Internet of the NYC Metro.

We are very happy knowing that we are back in communications now. Dominica can be online all day long, the girls can watch their shows and I can work when I get home. Pheww. We really needed that to be done.

When I got home the girls were upstairs on the iPads. I asked Liesl if she had checked Netflix and she said yes, that she had checked that right away. And then I asked if she had checked Disney Junior and she said that she had checked that too. A few days ago, when we were still at the hotel, she had told me that she was going to check the one and then the other to make sure that they were both working.

Our first morning waking up in the Peekskill house (well, since 2009, at least.) Pretty nice waking up here and having our own home to live in. I have felt like a vagabond for a while now. Dominica did some shopping yesterday while I was at work and we have towels and soap and stuff and a little food. Very basic stuff, but we can actually live in the house at this point.

Today was my first commute into the office from the new house. Took longer than I had hoped based on the Monday night drive home – there is a lot of construction out on 35 and traffic just sits for a long time. Getting to Yorktown is very slow going.

After work I drove back home, for the first time, from Westport rather than from Norwalk. That is a bit farther away and a different path so I ended up taking 95 to 87 to the Taconic rather than going the backwoods way that I normally go. That actually worked pretty well. Traffic was heavy but not horrible.

The snow is gone, it was only around yesterday morning. Back to green again and it looks more like you expect November in Westchester to look.

Quiet evening, still nothing to do in the house. Internet access gets hooked up, hopefully, tomorrow afternoon. We cannot wait!! That is such a big deal. The girls cannot watch Netflix or Disney Junior on their iPads, and we cannot communicate from the house.

We had a fire this evening again. The girls are loving this. They think that a fire in the fireplace in the evening is a grand way to relax and pass the hours. We almost never did this in Texas so they are not used to it at all.