Sheep Guarding Llama

Today was a crazy interview day for me.  We had thought that there might be two interviews today but I ended up getting scheduled for a practical marathon doing three this morning and three this afternoon!  What a day.  I got up and ran into the office this morning but was only there for about an hour.  Then I had to run home to be able to do the interview barrage.  That was intense.

So the morning leading up to the lunch hour was at home.  Then I got to relax at home for just a little bit but the family all left while I was doing the interviews so I was just stuck home alone for all of my efforts.  Then, before they returned, I went into the afternoon interviews and did that till nearly three.  Then I ran back into the office to finish up the day from there.  There was hardly anyone in the office anyway.  It seems to be the trend this week.  Things are slow and no one is around.

After work I came home and Madeline and Emily watched Liesl and Luciana so that I could take Dominica out to Rockfish for her birthday.  She got them fast food to eat at the house.  We didn’t go out for very long, the perils of being older.  But we made it out on the early side for dinner before the rush began and had a nice dinner.  We had heard, already, that the job that I’ve really been wanting has basically said that the money that we are asking for is all set but there are some officially sign offs needed and that cannot be done until tomorrow.  So we think that all is well and we are pretty sure that we are going to be moving very soon but we don’t have anything official yet.

Dominica’s present was the treadmill that she got a few weeks ago.

Today was decently busy for me.  I had two interviews this morning.  I wasn’t sure how they went at the time.  The first one was pretty weak but the second one went really well and really built up my confidence in going after storage engineering jobs rather than systems administration.  I was told by the nation’s most profitable and sought after investment bank that I, talking about storage on the side while looking at UNIX positions, was the strongest storage candidate that they have spoken to yet!  That was pretty cool.  I definitely need to consider diversifying into enterprise storage too.  I’ve already got some serious Windows background and UNIX, of course.

Work remained incredibly slow.  Today was Nicki’s last day at work.  So on my way in to the office I swung by her place and picked her up and brought her into the office as her ride had fallen through.  So we went into the office but just for half an hour or so then we grabbed the boss and went to La Cima for lunch.  I haven’t been there for lunch in likely two years or more!  Nearly everyone working knew me instantly so I had a lot of people to talk to.  We had a nice lunch and a good send off for Nicki.  She has been with the firm only a few months longer than me.  (Likewise, she has 27 years in IT and I have 24, so we are very similar in a lot of ways.)

After lunch it was just a slow day at work.  Very slow.

Got home and Dominica and and the girls had decided that they wanted to go to Genghis Grill.  I thought that they had discussed it and that the girls had been there before.  Nope.  So it was pretty much the disaster of stress and arguing that you would expect from making the nieces go to a high stress, lots of choices and doing things that aren’t explained well food environment.  It’s hard enough to make decisions from a normal menu, GG is high stress and even I stressed out the first time as it wasn’t clear what to do and you have to do everything yourself.  So I was stuck watching Liesl and Luciana while everyone else tried to figure out what to do for food which took easily forty minutes.  The little girls got their food, ate it and were already restless and causing problems trying to run around the restaurant before Dominica, Madeline and Emily were even done putting in their orders and before I even got to get started at all.  I had to take Luciana out to the car and sit for a while until everyone else finished as everyone was just too restless.

Got home pretty early.  Didn’t have real long to hang out, though, as Rachel and Jaiden came in to town via Southwest this evening and needed to be picked up at Dallas Love Field.  So I left around eight thirty to drive down to the city and get them.  That went pretty smoothly then we drove up to Jaiden’s house, dropped off their stuff then the three of us headed to the square in downtown Denton and hit the back to school bar scene up there for the evening.

We went to Hailey’s for a while which was way too packed.  Super hot and everyone was sweating like crazy and it was full of kids there for ’90s night.  It was pretty sad.  Later on we switched to the cocktail bar at Paschall which was really nice.

This waking up super early thing is weird.  But I managed to stay in bed for a while.  I got up at a quarter till seven when Dominica left for work having been awake already for an hour or two probably.  My new phone is getting two full days out of a charge, I am pretty impressed with that.  I charged it Friday night and it died after I was in bed last night!

Got up and worked from the house for a bit this morning.  Waited for Morgan to arrive and then turned the household over to her and was off to the office.

Today was pretty slow.  Hung out with Doue and some of his friends a bit today.  I can’t believe how slow the office is.  This afternoon we went out for Subway.  I got a salad.  I’m not liking being back on the diet.

Got home this evening and we just stayed in.  We have the nieces and Dominica is always tired on Monday evenings so we just took it easy.  Introduced Emily to Are You Being Served?  She actually liked it.

Liesl was the first one up this morning, rather unusual for her.  As always, it is straight into our room to get me up and have me get her “chocolate milk” for her which she still has twice a day… once when she wakes up and once when the “orange sun comes out” meaning that it is getting to be nearly time for bed.  Luciana was the next one up.  Our girls apparently sleep a lot less than the Grice girls.

I did some work this morning and played with the girls some.  At ten thirty everyone except Luciana and I headed out to go to the salon for a group hair styling.  Liesl has been asking for a hair cut for months as she feels that her hair is too long.  Luciana was not at all happy about being left behind with me, especially as she had dressed herself, packed a backpack and was the first one ready to go.

It is Sunday and I am back from my furlough time so I am on the Sunday afternoon support call for the office.  All kinds of fun there.  Three hours on the phone in the middle of my Sunday.  Can’t wait to not have to deal with that anymore.  At least today it coincides nicely with the girls being out getting their hair done.  The call was very slow today, nothing went wrong and I only had to monitor things.  After the last few weeks I figured that it would be one issue after another today.

Everyone got back from getting their hair done. Dominica and Liesl are trying out new hair styles with bangs, this is Liesl’s first time getting styling done, previously she has only had a trim once and it was just to even up the back of her hair because it was getting so long, this time she got a real hair cut.

Watson texted me today and wanted to hit Redneck for dinner. With the house full it is a good day for that.  Haven’t been to Redneck in two weeks or more.  And I spent pretty much the whole day at my desk working on one project or another.  Got a ton of work done.  Fixed a lot of longstanding issues.

Watson picked me up around seven thirty and we went to Redneck for a bit.  First time there in a few weeks.

Came home and pretty much was off to bed almost immediately.  Dominica has to work tomorrow so need to get to bed.

Dominica was up at seven and on the road by eight to head towards Houston. So I am home watching Liesl and Luciana this morning.  They are very excited that their cousins are coming to see them and spent the entire morning asking how much longer until they would arrive.  The girls slept in a bit this morning as they were so exhausted after being up so late last night waiting for me to come home.

Dominica’s drive went well and they were back to Dallas before one.  Not bad at all.

Not long after they arrived we packed up and went to Brookhaven Country Club for an early dinner.  We’ve attempted to cancel our membership there but haven’t been able to make contact with the finance department so we were unsure if they had cancelled it already or not but we are fine.  I’m really hoping to keep it for maybe the next six weeks, so we are trying to figure that out.  Maybe on Monday I will get a chance to speak with them and figure some of that out.  Dinner was good.  We nearly all got salads with salmon.

Back to the house and I made a quick run up to Arctic Liquors on 121 for sambuca and ouzo.  Then it was mostly a quiet evening at home.  Liesl and Luciana were very excited to have their cousins so they all played together all evening.

Liesl ended up falling asleep in the guest room with Madeline so Emily went in and slept with Luciana.  Dominica and I did not stay up very late.  We watched about half of a newer Bollywood film and called it a night.