September 20, 2013: Rain Soaked Drive

Got up this morning and got to work.  Put in a few hours before we left for Houston.  We had thought about leaving first thing this morning but wanted to drive mid day so that a lot of the drive would happen during “lunch” and I was hoping that the rain would die down.  It did not.

We left at a quarter after ten, leaving AJ at the house – he is heading back to New York early tomorrow morning by plane so has today to himself to relax in Carrollton.  He will be in California on Thursday and through the weekend.  Then back to New York and then Spiceworld in Austin at the end of October.  Then as soon as that is over he is doing his final relocation to Texas.  He has a very busy month going on.

We got on the road and quickly discovered that the rain was much heavier than we had thought and that it was going to be a pretty horrible drive down to Houston.  It ended up raining heavily the entire way.  There were some light breaks but mostly it just varied between light and almost blinding rain.  Not fun.  We often couldn’t drive above thirty miles an hour and there were several big accidents that we got stuck waiting for.  It was a very fatiguing drive down.

It was almost six hours of driving to get to Houston.  It was awful.  We were all very tired and worn out.  It was four and the office needed me so I had to leap out of the car and sign in and work for several hours immediately upon arrival.  But at least we made it down safely as the degree of rain really made it a dangerous drive, especially in Texas.

I spoke with Pertino in California tonight now that we have all of our schedule and stuff and they are bringing me out to California again later this week.  This will be my second time to Silicon Valley this year (and ever) but only I am going out this time and I am making it a quick in and out trip…. leaving Thursday morning pretty early and returning very early Saturday morning.  No spare time at all.  If we didn’t have to pack up the house and get ready to move I would have hung out for the weekend but no way to do that this time, sadly.  But at least I am making it out now.

After dinner I took Madeline and Emily out to the movies to go see the new Disney / Pixar movie Planes which was really good.  One of the best Pixar movies that I have seen and we all thought that it was better than Cars.

September 19, 2013: Last Day with AJ

Today is our last day with AJ.  He’s been with us for two weeks.  He doesn’t leave for a few days but we are all leaving for Houston first thing in the morning.

AJ went into work today, he is training the new guy today so he has a busy day.  I went into the office at normal time.  Not super early, no reason to be early anymore 🙂

Worked all morning.  It was  a little busy but not bad.  So much has already migrated off of me that it isn’t too bad now.

For lunch, Dan, Doue and I went to Mooyah Burger to be quick and cheap.  Their food is awesome.

After lunch I headed over to Dominica’s office to check in on AJ and his trainee.  I brought them a huge bag of French Fries too.  Worked there for a few hours and then back home to work from home for the rest of the afternoon.

 

September 18, 2013: Surprise Visit to Spiceworks

AJ and I were on the road early, leaving around eight, to get down to Austin to drop in on Spiceworks.  What a busy day.  The drive down went fine.  We got down to Round Rock just in time to go to Round Rock Donuts and do a conference call from there via Skype with Bahrain.  That actually went really well.  We got ourselves a dozen donuts from there and then drove on to Spiceworks headquarters.  It is really impossible to state just how excited AJ was to get to go there.

We made decent enough time and hung out in the offices all day.  It was fun and AJ was ecstatic to get to just run around meeting people.  It was a very busy day.

After the day at Spiceworks AJ, Nic, Agent K and I went to “My Place”, a bar across the street, and got dinner before AJ and I got on to the road to make the trip back north.  The drive back was fine, traffic was not too bad.  It is always a bit of a boring trip – the road from Austin to Dallas is a long, flat boring one.

We got back to Dallas and stopped at Jack in the Box so that AJ could eat again.  Then back to the house getting home around eleven.

Didn’t go to bed until after midnight.  Took a while to wind down from the drive.

It is going to take me forever to get caught up from the backlog of emails an posts that I missed while I was out today.  It is amazing the volume of stuff that I handle on a daily basis and any amount of being out really causes me to back up most horribly.

September 17, 2013: Busy Morning

Well now we are into the process of really trying to figure out what we are going to be doing as we have to move pretty soon.  We are on a counter now.  The days are ticking down and we have a lot to get figured out.

This morning I had to be up really early as I had an on site visit to do at eight this morning.  That was a bit of a mess.  My Windows phone has a horrible mapping system for the GPS and took me to completely the wrong place.  That hasn’t happened in a long time.  Not too impressed by the phone at the moment.  Ended up being very late finally getting there and had to have Art give me directions over the phone while I drove since the GPS was useless.

Had a good meeting and got into the office around ten.  That was an exhausting way to start the day.  I was worn out before even getting started.

 

September 16, 2013: It’s Finally Official!

Monday and into the office.  Dominica and AJ were both at work today too.  So I had to wait for Morgan to arrive before going in to work.

Work was pretty uneventful today.   We’ve been on pins and needles waiting for my background check to clear and everything in our lives is pretty much on hold waiting for that.  So we aren’t doing any preparing or anything.  Work was slowish but I had to work through my normal lunch and no one in the office was available to get lunch because there was so much work to do so I was going to go by myself but convinced Dominica that since AJ was in the office that she didn’t need to be there all afternoon and so she could leave to get lunch.

So I swung into the office and picked up Dominica and we went to Redneck for lunch.  While we were there we got the email that my background check was all approved and everything is official.  My start date in Connecticut is October 7th so I officially gave my notice this afternoon.  Nearly three weeks notice, but not quite, but more than two.  We are definitely pretty excited.

Took Dominica home and I worked from home for the last hour of the day.  We spend a lot of the evening planning as we now have definitely plans to try to make and a real timeline to work from.

Late this evening AJ decided that he was hungry while we were out running errands.  He wanted to go to Redneck but we got there and it was completely packed because a game was on – it is not a good place to go during a game.  Instead we walked next door to TGI Fridays and got a quick bite there then back to the house.