Sheep Guarding Llama

I went to the airport, DFW, from the office at four thirty.  Traffic was light and I got there very quickly.  It is only one exit up the highway from the office so that makes things very convenient.  I parked the Spark and was through security in no time.  Leaving over two hours for the process really was not necessary.  I figured with the parking, not having the gate number and having the flight be arranged through a third party might cause some delays but even having to walk all over to find the Delta desk I was at my gate without the slightest hiccup by five o’clock leaving me more than enough time for anything that I might want to do.

I set myself up at the Tequileria where I have eaten while awaiting a flight before, March, 2011 according to Foursquare although I swear that it is far more recent than that and I can’t imagine where I must have been going to have been flying alone two and a half years ago but who knows, I had thought that I had eaten there while waiting for my flight to Chicago but that was much more recent.  I’d look it up on SGL but do not have the energy at the moment.

I ordered a beer and then had a second and got the Mexican style crab cakes. I wanted the salmon quesadillas but they were out of them.  That is what I ate last time, though.

That killed about one hour and gave me a chance to get to know my new Nokia Lumia 925 a bit better as there was nothing else for me to do.  No one looked interested in talking at the bar.

Sat for about an hour waiting for the flight.  We boarded and the flight was nearly empty.  I was seated in the back with Joe, a salesman heading to NYC for LeedCon or something like that and we chatted a little bit and the stewardess talked to us a bit too.  It was a very easy flight and I managed to listed to maybe the first hour of The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond on the flight.

We arrived at La Guardia in Queens in three hours to the minute after departing from Dallas.  That is a very quick flight.

I got off of the plane and my limo was waiting right there for me.  That was easy.  Just got right in and John Mark, my driver, took me the relatively quick trip up into Westchester and over to Greenwich, Connecticut and dropped me off at the luxurious Delamar Greenwich Harbor.  I was the last one to check in for the night arriving around eleven thirty.

I went up to the room for just a little bit and got settled in.  Then I decided to go out for a walk and see the harbor, see where I am going tomorrow and explore town a little bit.  I ended up talking an hour and a half walk or maybe a little more.  It was just slightly chilly but once I started climbing the hill in town that wore off quickly.  I walked up Steamboat and that turned in Greenwich Avenue, known as the “Rodeo Drive of the East Coast” and it definitely was.  The array of shops reminded me of Bern, Switzerland.  Very high end shopping and really interesting restaurant choices.  I walked all the way up to Route 1 at the top of the strip.  The walk was almost exactly two miles.  A nice walk for a quiet evening.

It was a really nice walk.  A very quiet night.  I saw hardly a soul out and about.  It gave me a chance to acclimate to New England a little bit.  It is amazing how the smells brought be back to the Northeast.  So many normal plant smells that I don’t smell in Texas.  And how much the town was unlike anything in Texas.  I have been forgetting what it is like to live up north.  Everything is so different.  Towns laid out so much differently.  It was a very nostalgic walk through this sleeping village reminding me of late night walks through Erie, Williamsport in Pennsylvania or Auburn, New York.  I love walking around these small towns up north.  There is something magical about them once they have shut down.

I had been hoping to find something open somewhere so that I could grab a snack.  I tried up and down Greenwich top to bottom and along several of the side roads but nothing was open.  Only one pub, that was packed with kids dancing, in the whole area and that was down very near the hotel.

Overall Greenwich was a very cool town.  Great history and architecture. Founded in 1640 it is one of the truly ancient colonial towns.  The streets definitely remind you of how old it is.  Nothing makes any sense.  There is a Metro North station right in the middle of town which is extremely handy.

The walk was good and I got myself very well acclimated and oriented so that I am ready for tomorrow.  I know exactly where to go and what to do.  My meeting for the day is only one block from the hotel on the same road so this will be super simple for me.

It was just after two when I returned to the hotel.  I got my CPAP set up, hung up my clothes for tomorrow and got to bed around two thirty.  My meeting is not until noon so I get to sleep in and relax in the morning.

Woke up at six thirty.  This “no caffeine” thing that I have been doing for nearly two weeks now is really making me not sleep very much.  It is amazing how much of my need for sleep is induced by the use of caffeine.

Liesl had a tough morning and got in some trouble and had to go back to bed but it really isn’t fair for her because she and Luciana have completely different sleep patterns and Luciana makes Liesl unable to sleep much of the time.  Luciana has a terrible time going to bed but is bright eyed and bushy tailed the instant she wakes up at seven in the morning.  Liesl goes to bed easily but needs to sleep in and wake up slowly.  Having them share a room is a little challenging.

Left for work at eight.  Very, very slow day.  Was at my desk and my foot was really hurting this morning.  It was driving me crazy (this is the damage from the pallet jack ending up on it last week while we were buying the treadmill) so I was getting concerned that maybe something was broken so I made an appointment and run to CareNow to get X-rays taken of it.

This is my first time doing anything with our new insurance and I had forgotten to have the card with me.  So I ran home first to pick it up since CareNow is not that far from the house and is a bit past it.  So not really out of the way at all.

As I approached the house I noticed that one block over all of the neighbours were out standing on the side street.  I thought that they must be having a barbecue or something.  It was very strange.  It was about ten thirty, so way too early to find everyone out on the street.  This is Texas, people don’t stand out on the street and talk to each other just as a general rule.  I came around the corner and could barely get through, cars just were not moving.  Then I noticed the Denton County Sheriff blocking the street at my corner.  I was able to get to the house but go nowhere else.  Then I saw the street behind him full of police and emergency vehicles and a fire truck sitting on our street.

I pulled up to the house and Dominica met me at the door.  The house directly behind ours, the one that comes onto the alley square on with us and the only one that has windows that can see into our windows, was being raided by the Denton SWAT team!  The SWAT truck, or at least one of them, was parked directly against our back fence so looking out the back door meant looking right at the truck.  Dominica had been hiding with the girls in the front bedroom to keep them away from the windows and the back of the house.  She had been startled by SWAT having sneaked into the alley and suddenly blasting away on the megaphone telling people to come out of the house.  After a bit she heard some explosions, likely smoke bombs or some sort of tear gas to make people exit the house.  There are several dogs that live in there, hopefully they are alright.

We don’t know the neighbours there at all.  They moved in pretty recently replacing the Softlayer Engineer who used to be there for most of the time that we have owned the house (the one with the crazy barbecue wagon setup.)  These new ones have likely been there a year at most and probably a bit less.

Not much news.  So that was happening as I left to go to CareNow and get X-rays.

It took about forty-five minutes at CareNow.  Got X-rays and the doctor agreed that it could be broken and X-rays were needed, so I had done the right thing.  It turned out that there was no breakage.  Likely just a very deep soft-tissue contusion.  So all is well, I just need to take it easy.  No real damage of any sort.  Basically a non-surface bruise.  So that is a relief.  No idea how I would handle this week with a broken foot.

From CareNow I drove down to Irving and stopped quickly at Men’s Warehouse and grabbed two new dress shirts as none of the ones that fit me have been laundered so I needed new ones.  Really need to find a dry cleaners!

Then to Subway for a salad that I ate at my desk back at the office where I worked a very slow afternoon until four thirty.  It is just four thirty now as I am writing this update and I am going to go ahead and post for the day.  I am leaving in a few minutes to head to the airport and off to NYC and then to Connecticut.  I won’t have much time to post so I will do my best to add any trip details to tomorrow’s posting.

I was pretty restless last night and did not get to sleep for a really long time.  Once I finally did I was awoken by Luciana who had snuck over from her room and wanted to climb into bed.  So I made some room and she climbed into bed and snuggled with me sleep on top of my left arm making me rather uncomfortable so I was unable to even think about falling back asleep.  It was pretty warm with Ciana sleeping on one arm and my back against Liesl’s back.  I can’t believe that Liesl never woke up and Ciana just fell right back asleep.  This was around four thirty, so I just lay like that for two hours before attempting to get up.

I needed to be up early this morning as I had paperwork stuff that I needed to deal with today.  So I was up doing that this morning.  Luciana did not want me to get out of bed.  When I got up she said “no” in her groggy little voice and got out of bed and followed me.  I sat on the foot of the bed and she climbed up into my lap and put her head on my shoulder falling back asleep immediately.

Work was extremely slow today.  I took a late lunch and met Dominica and the girls at Rockfish in Irving.  That was a nice change.  Both girls were determined to sit with me while we ate which always makes actually eating pretty hard to do.

Got back to the office but it was a short afternoon.  Got home a little early and then had a phone meeting for an hour and a half.  That kept me busy until six thirty.

After that we watched Into the Woods and finished it up.  Got the girls to bed on the early side.  They are both sleeping in their own room tonight, no one is sleeping with us.  I need sleep before the rest of this week gets started.  I have way too much going on.  And Dominica is going to be pretty overwhelmed too.

I had to try on suits and make sure that I had everything that I needed.  Dominica got me all packed for my trip and we had everything done before we sat back down and watched the two latest episodes of Hot in Cleveland on Hulu+.  Then right off to bed.

Tomorrow morning I head to the office and work all day.  I have to leave at four thirty to run to the airport (DFW) to catch my flight to La Guardia on Delta.  I actually don’t believe that I have ever flown through La Guardia.  JFK I have used for trips to Europe on several occasions and Newark Liberty we have used for years.

I get to Queens around eleven thirty tomorrow night and then up to Greenwich, Connecticut where I have never been before.  I’ve driven through, once, when Andy and I made the coastal drive from NYC to Boston around 1998 but it was just zipping by on the highway.  And I’ve been to other parts of Connecticut before, especially having lived just a few miles off of the border for about a year, but along the Gold Coast will be new to me.

I will be in Greenwich on Thursday and then in Westport on Friday.  Friday night I will be flying back down to Dallas.  Everyone wants to see me while I am in town but, sadly, I don’t have any free time so can’t really do anything at all but hang out in my hotel.  At most I only have a handful of free hours in the entire time that I am up there.

I will be essentially out of contact, completely, Thursday and Friday.  I am using furlough days so I am not on call for the office and my phone will be mostly off during that time.

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.