Sheep Guarding Llama

Tuesday. Last night I managed to catch up on SGL all of the way through the end of November of last year. I am getting really close now, I am just a total of eight days behind.

Paul had to leave for the airport at three this morning. Dallas was reporting longer than usual wait times for flights and being an international flight it seemed prudent to be there super early. He is flying Spirit from DFW to Fort Lauderdale to Medallin. He will be there early in the afternoon.

Luciana was up early this morning. She asked me to set her up with Steam in their bedroom on the new television. Gaming in their room is going to be great now.

One of my main projects today was getting a new SAMIT video published to YouTube. And setting up my office as a place where I can do effective videos going forward. I rearranged everything and now have LED strip lighting on my monitors to light up my face, and my Lumix DSLR on a small tripod on my desk so that it looks at my between my monitors. A bit of a complex setup, but it seems to solve a lot of problems. I am hoping to be making more videos very soon, maybe even tomorrow.

I worked until five, then had a phone meeting for another hour and a half, but it was a good one. Hopefully will see some fruit from that in the next month or two.

Paul arrived in Medellin, Colombia in the middle of the afternoon and has already reported back that I definitely would love to live there. My kind of place, apparently. He sent lots of pics to show what the Poblado neighbourhood was like. He has an AirBnB there. He managed to already make some good business connections, too. We are very hopeful that we will be able to pick up some business down there.

After work was all done this evening, Dominica and I watched some One Day at a Time together until we were able to rally the troops and the girls came out to join us for a family movie night of Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service which I have always loved. Liesl was very excited to watch it all together. Luciana was willing to watch it, but not so excited. I made two rounds of popcorn.

Liesl really enjoyed the film. Luciana only watched ten or fifteen minutes before deciding that she felt that it was too boring, and left us.

After the movie, Dominica went to bed as she was exhausted and had had essentially no sleep last night. Liesl, Luciana, and I played Luciana’s “figure out what you are holding” game that she had introduced last night.

The Liesl, Luciana, and I finished watching Disney’s remake of The Parent Trap together. The girls both liked that movie. Liesl had seen it before, maybe a year ago or less. Ciana has never seen it. After that movie Luciana decided to return to her room for some quiet time before bed.

Liesl wanted another movie, so at midnight we put on Princess Mononoke, which was too much for Luciana when she had tried to watch it, and Liesl and I watched that together. It has been a Studio Ghibli week around here!

While we were watching our movies tonight, I worked on SGL and managed to completely catch up! Finally, after more than a year, SGL is not behind. This is a huge weight off of me. Now keeping up will be so much easier.

Monday. Today is Presidents’ Day, so work was pretty slow. I was able to do a little work this morning, then move to the living room when Luciana woke up and she played Darkness and Flame: Born of Fire again for a while with me watching as she played.

Around noon Dominica and Paul went out shopping for groceries and to check on a television for the girls’ room. They did shopping around on Amazon before they went, and then went to multiple Walmarts and finally found a 55″ 1080p TV for just $150. We had originally been thinking of a 50″ 4K TV for $230. But the extra size is a big deal, they need a pretty big TV for their room, and in reality 1080p might not just be okay for them, but might actually be better because they will be watching tons of video games and those play better if they are not trying to render on 4K. The cost savings isn’t too bad, either. They got a television, the wall mount, and a Roku to hook to it so that they can watch all the same stuff as in the living room making it nice and easy for them.

While they were out shopping I did a round of dishes and made lunch for the girls. I made a double order of Mac and cheese. Both girls ate it and I had it too, mine with added guacamole and Serrano pepper salsa!

Work was slow so during lunch I watching some Family Matters and Full House with the girls.

Dominica and I have really been wanting to show the girls the Studio Ghibli film Kiki’s Delivery Service which is both of our favourite film from that studio, but for some reason it is the one movie that is not on our house server. We have been mostly convinced that the movie was lost or something. But today dad was able to show us his spreadsheet of all of our movies and it told us which box that movie was packed into and I went into the garage and, of course, it was the bottom most box of the deepest stack of boxes, but we found it and got it out and sometime this week we will be watching this classic film with the girls.

Paul got the new television hung in the girls room and it was up and running by around five. It is huge.

We got their new Roku hooked up and set up as well. They got a small $30 version that does not do 4K, but that is fine for them in their bedroom. We have it set up with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, YouTube, and access to the house movie server. The television works amazingly well in their bedroom, this is going to be so nice for them. Luciana set herself up and watched it for much of the afternoon.

Paul had to get to bed really early tonight, around eight. He has to be up at three in the morning to get to his flight to Medallin, Colombia where he is going to be all week before then flying back and up to Missouri for a few days.

I spent a couple of hours on the phone with a friend from the industry discussing some recent events going on.

This evening I played a blind guessing game that Luciana had come up with where we have to find household objects and give them to a player with their eyes closed and they have to guess what they are. We played for at least forty minutes.

Tonight, the girls and I tried to watch Princess Mononoke but we only made it ten minutes in before Ciana decided that she could not handle it. So we switched to watching the 1990s remake of Disney’s The Parent Trap which Luciana has never been willing to watch before, but now she is interested in it and asking to watch it. It was too long for her to keep paying attention to so we saved it to finish tomorrow.

Very funnily, independently both girls asked if the younger girl in The Parent Trap was a gold digger. LOL. Where do they learn this stuff?

Then Liesl did Legos for a little while. Then it was time for a shower for the girls and some reading of “Huckleberry Finn”.

Sunday. A lazy Sunday at home, no plans, no one visiting, and the kids are feeling like being on their own today, for the most part.

Dominica and I watched some Fear the Walking Dead this morning. We managed to get in several episodes. Then early in the afternoon Dominica and Paul went to Ross to go shopping for luggage for Paul’s upcoming trip to Colombia which is now just forty hours away.

Paul and Dominica went out to practice playing snooker for a few hours. I made pizza for the kids.

I did some catching up on some shows today. I caught up on The Orville, which is on episode seven of the second season now. And I watched some of Perro Amor to practice my Spanish. Then I discovered that a movie that I have been waiting for a long time to come out turns out to be released on Netflix today: Yucatan with Stephanie Cayo. I’ve been waiting quite a while to see that, so started it right away.

Tonight Luciana came out and said that she wanted to play a video game with me. She and Liesl have both competed Darkness & Flame: Born of Fire, and she wanted to play through it with me. We played for an hour before it was time for bed. We will play more tomorrow.

Saturday.

Dominica and I spent the morning watching Fear the Walking Dead season three while the kids were still asleep. Paul had a pool tournament today. Last night he was tenth on the wait list to get into the tournament so he did not know if he was going to get to play today. But by eleven he had made it into the tournament.

Dominica’s grandfather was taken to the hospital mid-morning by ambulance. Very little change from last night.

Dominica is binge watching The Walking Dead to try to catch up. She tried to wait for me for a while (this is for the original series, not Fear the Walking Dead which we are currently watching together), but was already ahead of me so was rewatching with me and I don’t like the original series all that much. So we are four seasons apart already and I am not really into it. So we decided that she should just watch it on her own, she watches so much more television than I do anyway, she needs things to watch. She is now working through season six.

This afternoon was a movie afternoon. Kristen came over and brought a selection of Disney and Studio Ghibli films with her. So we first watched Wall-E which only Dominica has seen before. Liesl and I had never seen it. Luciana has not seen it, but was not interested. It wasn’t bad. It has almost no dialogue and yet told a pretty complete story without it, which was a challenge. Better than I had been expecting, but nothing special, either.

Next up we watched Spirited Away which I am the only one that has ever seen it. A very good movie and Liesl really liked it. She likes cartoons and loves anime, so perfectly up her alley anyway. It is a hard one to follow, such a weird concept and so steeped in Japanese spirit culture that it is very hard to understand from a Western perspective. But so well done and a good story with a nice ending.

We played two games of Clue, Liesl’s Christmas board game, tonight. Liesl won the first game, and I won the second one. The girls are getting very good at understanding how to track what everyone has guessed and know what cards people have that they have not seen directly. I’m so impressed with them. They both are constantly showing adults how to actually play the game and take it seriously.

Friday. Today started out warm. Yesterday was incredibly warm. The sun was bright today and it was a perfect day for going outside. But it is not to last.

I tracked down my GoPro Hero 5 Black and GoPro gimbal today and got that charging up. It has sat idle for a very long time and I need to condition it. I hope to be using it quite a lot pretty soon. Rachel and I are starting to work on plans for a travel and beer show.

I worked until maybe a quarter after five. Stephanie texted to say that they were going to the playground that is between us. I got the girls ready and we ran out the door to go meet up with their friends. When we stepped out the door, it was clear that it was way colder than it had been during the day. It had to have dropped ten or even twenty degrees since anyone had checked outside. Liesl ran and grabbed a jacket and Luciana a flannel shirt to wear over her normal shirt and we were out the door. My girls are pretty responsible with checking the temperature and being willing to be prepared. Maybe because they know that just because they have a coat they know that I won’t make them wear it if they aren’t cold.

They played for maybe an hour or a little more with Isabella and Juancho, but it was very cold and got dark pretty quickly. A short day on the playground. But they had fun. And exercise.

From there we went to Walmart to do some more Lego shopping for Luciana who still had Christmas money left to spend because she had held some back a few days ago when we last went. The girls and I looked at some hot sauces first and picked up four new ones, we have been pretty short on spicy sauces at home and I have been wanting something with some kick. Liesl loves getting hot sauces and found it great fun.

Luciana struggled for a while with choosing what Lego set(s) to spend her money on, but finally decided on getting two smaller sets because one smaller set she really, really wanted and it was just the right amount to let her get two. She did a very good job of managing her money.

Before we left Walmart we happened to go by the scented candle aisle and since it was just us three we stopped for a bit and I let the girls smell all of the candles. Not something that they ever get to do and they thought that that was quite fun.

We had been thinking about getting tacos, but we have done that a bit recently and it has been a while since we had a real party night with just the three of us, so I offered to get Domino’s delivered and they were super excited. We came home, ordered pizza, and put on Full House which we watched all evening.

While we watched our show, Liesl snuggled with me on the couch and Luciana took over the bar (she loves sitting at the bar on the “new” bar stools, she does it every chance that she can get) and worked on her Lego sets all evening. It took her all night, but she managed to do both of them all by herself with my only assistance being to do the stickers for her on the second set (the first one had no stickers.)

This evening we found out that Dominica’s grandfather had an incident and we spent much of the evening waiting for news. We found out while the girls were at the playground but we have not told them anything is going on. By late tonight the status is simply that the family is staying with him at the house and will likely go to the hospital in the morning.

By the time that we went to bed tonight, the temperature had gone from the seventies, to just one degree above freezing! Totally crazy.