Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica was up sometime around six this morning.  I slept in until seven and only then realized how early it was and that she had been up and doing housework for a while.  The plan was for her and the nieces to be on the road at eight so that they could drive down to Centerville and transfer them to Francesca.  So, like last week, Dominica should be back home around one and I am home watching Liesl and Luciana.

We did a bit of cleaning of the house today.  What a disaster it is currently.  That was an all day project.  We also did a bit of looking at apartment and rental options up on the Connecticut Gold Coast.  We are toying with being right next to the office or maybe a place on the beach.  So many options and we don’t know the area all that well.  So we are kind of flying blind and since we don’t really have a great idea of what our lifestyle is going to be like up there we are kind of loss.

This evening we decided to take it easy.  Watched some Rules of Engagement and ate our dinner, which Dominica just made at home, and when the sun went down and it was dark enough for a real movie we bought Star Trek: Into Darkness on the AppleTV and we spent the evening watching that.  Before we started the movie, Dominica ran to Aldi’s to pick up their evily delicious popcorn mix which we ate a ton of while watching the movie.  We also made some cheese bites that been hiding in the freezer.  Not exactly on diet but at least we are clearly stuff out of the freezer to make it go away.

The movie was very good.  Liesl watched it with us and Luciana was up for much of it having taken an early nap around three and sleeping till nearly eight.  So the girls ended up being up very late.

Luciana was not very sleepy but it was getting late.  She had such a long nap.  So tonight, for the first time, she was allowed to take the iPad to bed with her.  We will see how that goes.  It worked great with Liesl at Ciana’s age so we are hopeful.  Liesl slept with us tonight.

Today is the day, got scheduled first thing this morning for “the call” with the news at two thirty this afternoon (central time.)  So most of the day was spent just waiting for that.  Lots of phone calls today, not related to anything in particular, just seemed a really busy phone day both work related and personal.  Was on the phone all morning, it seemed, and all of my deployments today seemed to want to be live on the phone while doing them.

For lunch today I finally, after four years, went to Terra, the Mediterranean place around the corner from our old apartment that we’ve been interested in trying since we first moved to Texas.  The food was quite good, the line was very long.  Too bad Dominica did not get a chance to try it.  I went with Doue and Bryant who were already going there and invited me along.

While we were there Kim called me because she needed help getting Armando’s truck from his work because he had kidney stones this morning and had to be rushed to the hospital via ambulance so he was all drugged up on pain killers and could not drive but his truck was stranded.  So Doue drove me back to work and I grabbed my car.  Luckily it occurred to me that if I didn’t pick up Dominica to help move cars, I’d be stranded too there.  So I called her and sent her home from her long day of thrift store shopping with Emily and I drove home and got her then we went over to Lewisville and picked up his truck and brought it back to our place.

I made it back to our house with only minutes to spare before the call came in officially offering me the job that I have been hoping for.  We got everything that we asked for so the job has been accepted.  I still have to go through a background check so that will take a few days.  Then from there we will determine the start date.  So it will be a minimum of three weeks, four seems quite likely.  But they do want us as soon as is comfortably possible as there is a ton of work to get done and the want me to help to deal with that load right away.

I went back into the office and immediately had the meeting with my boss to discuss the plans for me leaving work.  So they are prepared but don’t have the final date yet.

This is quite the change.  I am leaving a job of nearly eight years, by far the longest single normal job of my entire life.  And we are moving from Texas to Connecticut, which in itself is a big change, but living in our current house is the longest stretch in a single residence since I lived with my parents and being in the general vicinity is the longest that I’ve ever lived in the same area since leaving home.  We were rather settled here in a way neither of us has ever been before.  And Dominica has been at her current job for nearly a year too, which is not a record or anything for her but is nearly as long as almost any job that she has had.

Did deployments till around six thirty.  It was a decently busy evening.  Then came home and we all just stayed in. Tonight is Madeline and Emily’s last evening in Dallas.  Dominica will be heading south with them at eight in the morning.  So all four of the kids were off to bed on the early side, Liesl was the last one up by a bit.  She stayed up to snuggle with me on the couch even after Dominica had gone to bed.

A big day.  I feel pretty tired.  Had to get my iPhone backed up and wiped clean so that Madeline can take it tomorrow.  She is getting it now that I am on the Windows phone on T-Mobile.  We have no need for non-international phones now.

It’s Thursday.  The office was pretty much completely empty today.  There was a major outage last night and a lot of people worked through the night so there was no one in today.  Seriously empty office.

We have been waiting on pins and needles for news about a possible new job.  Waited all day but no news.  Finally this evening, just before reaching home, I got the call that the unofficial word was that everything was set and approved officially but the official call to me was not going to be until later tonight or possibly tomorrow.  So we have to hang tight and just hope that all is well.  Not quite a nerve wracking as before, but still, we just really want this to be official and done and not have to worry about it anymore.  Decision made and start making plans.

So to semi-celebrate we went out to Joe’s Crab Shack for dinner.  The nieces claimed that they had been there before and liked it but Dominica and I have never been to one.  So we thought that we would try it out.  It seemed likely to have good seafood options for us.

Joe’s Crab Shack is right on up 35E in Lewisville, so really easy to get to just hard to find it you don’t know that it is there already.  Dinner was good, there were a lot of options for Dominica and I.  Madeline actually got crab so she had to crack some shells.  No idea why she did that as she hates cracking shells.  All of the food was quite good and there is a lot of stuff that we want to go back and try.  After we were done eating the girls went out and played on the playground for a bit too.

No calls this evening.  Fingers crossed that the call will come in tomorrow.

Came back home and finished watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off which Emily enjoyed.  Her mother will be proud that we made her watch it.

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.