Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica’s last official day in the office is today.  She might end up needing to go in for something yet over the next month but today is the last day that she is scheduled and that we know for sure that she is going to be going in.  She is working with Ross today, his second day and first day working with her.  They have not met yet.  She was off at seven.  She is really looking forward to not needing to go to the office.  She likes working there but does not like being away from home and the girls and definitely does not like getting up early.  She has been so busy with homeschool stuff for Liesl recently who has been doing her kindergarten stuff for a couple of weeks that that is really exhausting her.  They are doing all kinds of school stuff every day now.

I worked from the house in the morning.  Morgan was over to watch the girls.  I had several conference calls this morning so I had to lock myself into the office at the house so it was a lot like I was not home at all.  It’s handy having Morgan there because I can’t take care of the girls when I need to be on calls and they don’t understand not to come into my office screaming on their own.

Once my meetings were over it was well into lunch time so I drove over to LA Burger, got lunch for Dominica and I and delivered it into the office as a surprise treat for her.  They have the most amazing burgers.  We are very sad that we only recently discovered them and now we are moving away.  It seems that one of the biggest things that we miss when moving away from an area.  We get used to places to eat and food that we like and then we leave and have to find all new food to enjoy.

I had meetings at Dominica’s office this afternoon.  It has been really busy there this week.  Lots going on and surprisingly almost none of it is related to Dominica’s departure.

I got home about forty five minutes before Dominica did.  This is Morgan’s last “normal” day of watching the girls although she and I have spoken about maybe she will watch the girls a bit over the next month to assist Dominica in getting things ready as Dominica is not going to be able to handle the girls, home schooling, packing, etc. all by herself.

Got to sleep in quite a bit this morning.  I am the only one at the Grices’ house and knew that everyone was just sitting around watching the kids down the street so wasn’t in any hurry to get moving.  I took my time and got partially packed up before heading over.  I passed Bennie as he was pulling onto the street having just left the Toccos’ house.

We hung out for a few hours at the house while the girls all got picked up and taken home.  Then it was time to get on the road.  Lots to be done.

The drive up to Dallas wasn’t bad at all.  The rain stopped today and the sun was out.  Rumor is that the rain is returning next weekend.  Texas really needs it, the lakes are all very low.  Just too bad that it has to come all at once and cause flooding rather than getting it steady.  But we will take what we can get.

On the way home we ordered take away from Eat St. nearby so that we could just pick it up as we went by to make things quick and easy since we were all tired from yesterday and all of the driving and Luciana is not feeling all that well.  But when we stopped to pick it up, they had no record of our order.  It takes them easily an hour to make food there so we gave up and left.  We just went home and had subs delivered from Joe’s instead.

Once the girls were off to bed we rented World War Z which Dominica has been dying to see (for no reason that I can imagine.)  This falls into that category of movies that seem obvious that she will not like but someone tells her that she will like and she just has to see and then doesn’t like.  And it lived up to expectation.  It’s a not very well known, but decently big budget, Brad Pitt movie but it is a zombie / horror movie which she hates.  She does not handle horror very well or heavily intense movies and I don’t generally enjoy them even though they don’t bother me.  It’s got to be pretty amazing for me to want to watching something in that genre.

WWZ started off way too intense but did improve into a moderately decent, but poorly thought through, zombie (or to be completely accurate I am told, infection) flick.  There was some okay action and some interesting takes on a global zombieism outbreak scenario but, as with most movies of this genre, the suspension of disbelief part was a bit much and it was clear that there wasn’t as much thought put into the logic of the film as there should have been.

The rain was still coming down this morning after raining all night and all day yesterday and some the day before.  So much rain.  We are definitely getting all of the water that we have been missing all summer.

I got up at six fifty and got a lot of work done this morning.  Quite productive working from my laptop.  Only Garrett was awake when I got up.  He played on his iPad all morning while I worked on the laptop.  Francesca, Madeline and Emily were all volunteering at the food bank early this morning and were gone even before I woke up.

Updated my iPad 2 to iOS 7 this morning.  Everyone has been talking about it.  I guess it is time to check it out.  Dominica did her mobile phone yesterday.  I had to plug it in to charge it, though, so I won’t actually get a chance to see it until later.

At one this afternoon we went over to the Toccos’ for Emily’s twelfth birthday party.  Just the close family today, not too many people.  It rained all day yesterday and all day today.  It was a warm but raining day in the pool.  It rained very little this evening so it was not too bad and thankfully the thunderstorms never came so everyone was able to swim all day without any problems.

It is a slumber party so all of the girls are staying over night.  We stayed until around one.  Everyone else crashed at the Toccos’ but I needed my CPAP and there were not enough places to sleep anyway so I went back to the Grices’ house alone and spent the night there.  Probably gave me a better chance to get good sleep anyway.

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.

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.