Sheep Guarding Llama

Danielle is staying with us today and flies back to Rochester in the morning.  I got up and got into the office pretty early.  We have errands to run today and so I needed to get things done so that I would be free to do what needed done.  We had tried to do cell phone errands yesterday but were unable to complete everything.  Danielle got the Verizon stuff done over the phone last night so Dominica is completely off of my plan now and today I am free to move to T-Mobile.  I am pretty excited.  I haven’t had good service or a new phone in a really long time.  I’m looking forward to the new phone and 4G LTE service.  And the new camera – that is a major feature for me as I take a lot of pictures of the kids with the phone and the iPhone camera is okay but leaves a lot to be desired.

Work was fine this morning.  This is a very slow week, it seems.  Still under a freeze so a lot of work in cancelled.  Had a meeting with the boss’ boss today.  Had a good talk about the future and plans and stuff.  We are all on the same page now.

At noon I ran up to the T-Mobile store by my house and met Danielle there and we kicked off the process of moving my Verizon plan over to T-Mobile and switching from the Apple iPhone (which I have been very happy with) to the Nokia Lumia 925 Windows 8 phone which is much faster, bigger and higher end.  We got things started but phone transfers always take a while.  Danielle was so impressed with how good their plans were that she decided to switch on the spot from Verizon as well!

We had time to kill so we ran down the street to see Dominica and then went to a meeting at her office.  It was perfect timing because by the time that we got done with the meeting the phones were just ready for us.  So back to T-Mobile and about another forty-five minutes and they had the phones set up and we were good to go.  Danielle and I now have matching Lumia 925 phones.  It is going to take me quite some time to get used to that phone.  Very different than the iPhone but way more polished than any Android I have seen or used.

It is weird for me to be on anything but Verizon.  I have had the same account on Verizon (Frontier became Bell Atlantic became Verizon) since 1992!  This is a big step for me.  I never imagined that I would leave but Verizon really went out of their way to push me out the door the last few years and their latest issues were just too much.  So we will see how T-Mobile does.

Once I had my phone it was back to the office to finish up the day.

After work I came home, dropped off my stuff and picked up Dominica for a dinner date.  Danielle offered to stay at the house with the girls so that we could go out.  We have a lot to do this week so we are just doing dinner someplace nice and then going back home.

We decided to go back to Remington’s, the seafood place that we went with dad when Luciana just only about one month old – so over two years ago!  They have great food, I have no idea why we have not been back in all of this time.  Dinner was very good.  Traffic was awful down on Beltline, though, tons of construction going on in Addison.

We came home and mostly spent the evening talking with Danielle.  We had a lot of planning to discuss and a lot of decisions about Dominica’s job to make.

Just before going to bed Danielle got an email that the second leg of her flight was cancelled.  So she still had a first leg from Dallas to Newark but no connector from Newark to Rochester!  They automatically rescheduled her for a later flight…. two days later!  You could drive from Dallas to Rochester in half that amount of time.  This was a pretty big emergency since they were tricky and kept her super early morning flight so she had to react really quickly and had no flexibility.  Luckily she was able to cancel the flight completely and American Airlines had a better flight, for about the same money, that was even better.  So we eventually got it resolved but it was really quite a panic for a little bit.  No one is very happy with United now.

As seems to be becoming a pattern, Luciana got up at six this morning and climbed into bed to snuggle.  But the snuggles only last a few minutes, then she wants food, an iPad, My Little Ponies or whatever and is all over the place.  There is no way to get back to sleep once she is up.  Luckily, sort of, Dominica and Liesl can sleep right through Luciana climbing on them, talking, playing and doing whatever.  It’s truly amazing what they can sleep through.

I stayed in bed as long as I could but was up and about by seven.  Liesl got up just after eight able to sleep through less than Dominica can.

Danielle is coming into Dallas this morning.  It was a last minute trip planned on Friday.  We were up a bit before she arrived and got a little cleaning done in the house.  We managed to get the toilet fixed this morning.  It was yet another trip to Lowe’s to exchange the wrong pipe for the right one, then home and repairing the toilet.  Now it totally works.  Pheww.

Danielle’s flight got in and she rented a car and came out to the house.  That means that we have to get the guest bedroom cleaned up today.  That will be rather a task.

I had to work today, as I do every Sunday now, from twelve thirty to three thirty.  Danielle and Dominica took the girls to go thrift shopping while I was stuck on that call.

Once they were back and my call was over we drove up to the mall in Lewisville and hit the Verizon store.  We moved Dominica’s phone account over from our family plan to the Ralston’s family plan.  That meant that she was not going to assume all of the legacy from our account if my line was cancelled.  Verizon had technical issues and could not get that done while we were there but got it started and said that we could do the rest by phone this evening.  So that meant that we could not do T-mobile today regardless so our phone dance was over pretty early.  We need to deal with that tomorrow now.

So once the phones stuff was as done as it could be we went to BJ’s near the mall and got dinner.  The little girls, or course, ate almost nothing.  The adults love their avocado rolls.

It was pushing seven by the time that we were all done with the shopping trip and back home.  Danielle was exhausted having gotten up super early this morning, traveling all day and then dealing with the time shift.  So she went to bed really early.  We got Luciana to bed pretty early as well.

I finished watching The Music Man with Liesl and after she went to bed I watched the first quarter of Into the Woods which is now available on Netflix.  It is the original Broadway performance that I remember from PBS in 1991 when I was in early high school.  That has always been my all time favourite Broadway show.  I’ve had that 1991 performance (with Bernadette Peters as the witch) on Laser Disc and DVD I believe.  I’ve seen it so many times.  Dominica loves it too.  I’ve seen it live in high school performances and Dominica once bought me Broadway tickets to see the revival with Vanessa Williams long ago when we used to live in Geneseo.  I am so incredibly excited that next year they are making a movie of it.  I have high hopes.

Got paged out this morning.  Nothing major.

More to do today.  I spent a bit of the day making trips out to Lowe and Home Depot in an attempt to get parts so that we can fix the toilet in the master bath which has now been broken for a week.  Dominica completely replaced everything the other night but the seal failed and we need to figure something else out.

So my first journey was to Home Depot where I discovered that they did not have the part that I needed.  Weird.  I hit Albertson’s in Josey Ranch for bread and orange juice and then went on to Lowe’s to see if they had what we needed.  They did not.  So I decided that I would go home and try rigging something up.  I had a guess at what might work but wasn’t sure.

Came home and attempted to work on the toilet but broke the pipe.  Argh.  So another trip back to Lowe’s to get a replacement pipe.  Lot’s of driving today.  This time I picked up Panda Express to bring back home since I was out getting stuff in that plaza anyway.  We are really hoping to have this toilet fixed today because Danielle is coming in the morning and staying with us so it will be pretty convenient to have two toilets working in the house again.  As it is it is a little tough with just Dominica, Liesl and I needing to share.  I’m not particularly looking forward to Luciana needing bathroom time too.  That is not too far off.

Morgan and Jose came over this evening and watched the girls so that Dominica and I could have a date night.  That was around eight thirty.  We went out to a club and had a good evening.  It is really rare that we get to really go out for an evening without the kids.

 

Friday.  It doesn’t really feel like a Friday.  I kept thinking that it was a Tuesday all day today.  No idea why.

Luciana got me up at six this morning.  That was no fun.  Around six thirty I heard something in our bathroom and went into to discover that the hose feeding the toilet had sprung a leak (the gasket wasn’t holding up) and there was a bit of water to clean up.  Argh.  So I cleaned that up and shut the water off.  More repair work needed there, apparently (said in a Susan from Coupling voice.)

Off to work.  Very busy day today.  Barely had time to do anything at all.  You can’t tell that we are under a partial freeze at all.  I worked all day, very solid.  Had a call at the tail end of lunch.  That went well.  More travel happening most likely.  Ver good news happening, I hope.

After work I went to Brookhaven and picked up dinner, again, as they still have the halibut that Dominica is now completely addicted to.  Came home and we watched some shows and called it an early evening.

After Luciana went to bed Liesl and I watched the first half of The Music Man which I have on BluRay.  I love that movie.  One of my favourites.  Liesl sat through the first half but was not particularly thrilled.  She might be too young yet for that.

Nothing very exciting to report for the day.  Went into the office and worked.  It is Thursday so Dominica was in the office as well.  I worked from home for a few hours since I had to wait for Morgan to come to watch the girls.  I probably headed in at ten.

It is hot, very hot.  This is the hottest stretch of the year we are told.  Watson and I went to Rockfish for lunch.  So yummy. Now that I am back on Medifast (unofficially) there are very few places where we can eat easily.  Rockfish and the country club are about it.

After work I ran over the country club to pick up dinner for Dominica.  I got her the halibut special again that she had last night.  It’s her favourite thing there ever.  So we ate and then I had to do some work and she set about attempting to fix the master toilet which broke last Saturday and has been sitting for days waiting for parts.  She had gone to the store today and got an upgraded everything for it and is attempting to repair it.

The toilet repair was a bit of an adventure.  At one point the hose blew off and there was water all over.  Dominica did 90% of the repair and eventually got it all back together and working. It’s a brand new water saver Korky unit that should also prevent continuous running scenarios like we had last week.  It was a $3 upgrade over a normal Korky unit but that’s only one time with the water running to pay for that and these things last for years and years, so hopefully it is a really solid investment.

Got the house cleaned up and there was some question about whether or not we were going to play Dungeons & Dragons tonight as Morgan got called into her new job tonight.  We scrambled a bit trying to figure out if we were going to play or not but ended up having it work out and those that could came over around nine and we played for four hours till one.  Dominica made some pizzas that she had picked up from Aldi’s earlier today.

We had a good game tonight, pretty low key.  Not so much adventuring but more story.  We are playing Tuesday of next week as it looks like Danielle might be coming to Texas over the weekend and it looks like I am going to New York later in the week.  A busy week indeed.