Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica and I were both up early this morning, around seven, so that we could deal with the outage that happened last night.  So it was a busy morning.  Conference calls and whatnot before I was able to

Dominica worked from home all day today.  It was a very busy day for her.  Like a full day or work, maybe more.

Today is one of the hottest days of the year.  This is supposed to be our peak week.  This year has been super mild.  It is still crazy hot and part of it is that I have simply adjusted to the whole Texan heat thing, but it really is not as bad as past years have been.

Didn’t eat today, was too busy, had to wait until I got home.  After work I ran to Brookhaven and picked up dinner for Dominica and I and brought it back home.   Dominica had the halibut special and said that it was the best thing ever from Brookhaven.  She was really impressed.  She wants to get it again if possible.  That will be tough with our schedule.

I used the new treadmill for the first time tonight, got a half hour workout in.  It is awesome being able to just do our normal television watching and get exercise at the same time.  I barely noticed that I had worked out.

Our adventure tonight was that as I went into my office in the evening I almost stepped on a tiny gecko on my office floor.  It is unusual for me to find lizards in the house.  It was hard work capturing it and getting it safely onto some paper so that we could carry it outside.  Took nearly an hour but we got him outside safely and he seemed no worse for wear.  Hopefully he grows big and eats lots of bugs in our yard.  It is a gecko haven out there.

We got the kids to bed at a good time tonight and were in bed at a decent hour ourselves.

Woke up on my own at seven.  Got to the office just after eight.

For lunch today Dan, Doue and I went to Rockfish again.  I did better today with cedar plank salmon.  So yummy.

Dominica ordered a new treadmill today from Walmart.  We’ve been wanting one for forever and it is so hot out that we are never able to exercise at all so we finally broke down and bought one.  We are pretty excited.  That is something that we really have needed.  I have no idea why we have never bought one before.  Space, I guess.

We were really excited that Walmart down the street from us had the treadmill that we had both independently picked out in stock and we could pick it up at seven this evening for $369.    Before I left work, though, we got a message that our treadmill that had been in stock and was ready for us, was no longer available.  No longer available?  Does that imply that someone walked into the store and they sold them the unit that we had already bought and paid for?  We were not happy.  Dominica thought that maybe it was an inventory mistake but Walmart really does not make those – they RFID every product.  They know exactly how many they have, where they are… everything.

So Dominica did some calling around and found the same treadmill, in stock, in Lewisville’s Walmart so instead of buying online we decided to just drive over there after I got home.

I got home around five thirty.  We loaded up the girls and drove to Lewisville and did some Walmart shopping.  Luciana fell asleep on the way there and was so tired and warm that when I picked her up out of the Acadia she stayed asleep completely and just snuggled on my shoulder so I had to carry her around the Walmart for quite a while with her like that.

We got some groceries and got some shoes too.  Liesl got new shoes because her feet are growing so much and I got some sandals.  Back in the sporting goods department we were in for a pretty big surprise.

The treadmill that we had paid $369 earlier today was actually on clearance here in the store.  And not a trivial clearance either.  Instead of $369, it was an even $200!    That’s 46% off!  That’s huge.  $169 savings over what we paid earlier today.  We figured out that they sold our unit at Carrollton’s store because they didn’t want us to come in to pick it up and see the $200 sticker on it so delayed our picked until the sale was over so that we would get a full priced one.  Not very happy about Walmart corporate’s behaviour there but we are pretty thrilled at the incredible savings.  We were ready to spend so much more money.  What a deal we got!  We picked up some dumbbells and a chin-up bar too while we were there.

Getting the very heavy and very large treadmill out to the Acadia was non-trivial.  We needed a pallet jack to move the thing.  While trying to get it loaded onto the pallet jack the jack jumped up onto my foot and then Dominica stepped onto the pallet jack to “steady” it putting the full weight of the jack, the treadmill and much of Dominica onto a blade of steel running over the bone on the top of my foot.  Wow did that hurt.  (I’m writing this update around noon on Wednesday, the following day, and my foot is still in active pain even when sitting idle!)

Once we got it through the store and out to the Acadia the real adventure began.  It didn’t fit in the car so we had to tie it down and hope for the best.  We crawled home with Dominica facing backwards to watch to make sure that it did not slide out of the back of the car.  Not fun.  But we made it home without incident.  It only moved an inch or two the whole way.  It is so heavy that it did not want to move too easily.

Once home, I had to carry the treadmill alone into the house.  That was a workout on its own.  But I got it in and the rest of the evening was spent assembling it.

By the end of the night we had a working treadmill in our living room and Dominica did a 2.5 mile walk too.  The unit that we got folds up and is roughly mobile, but only barely so.  It has workout programs, nice safety features, a heart rate monitor and an automatic motor for changing the incline.  So it is a pretty good unit.  Hopefully I will get to try it out tomorrow.

We kept the girls up way too late.  Luciana did not get to bed until eleven thirty.  We are into the groove of me reading her stories before she goes to bed now, just like I did with Liesl at the same age.  Luciana is loving that.

Liesl was up until a bit after midnight and got to sleep with us tonight.  So she and I went to bed at half past midnight and Dominica went to do a little work before coming to bed.

It wasn’t long before Dominica got me up to go help her and we ended up working until after two in the morning.  That wasn’t any fun.  I had wanted to have been in bed around ten thirty and ended up not getting to sleep until more like two thirty.  It is really a struggle to get good sleep no matter how much I plan for the best.

We’ve known that she was leaving for a few weeks but officially found out today that our friend Nicki is moving to Silicon Valley in three weeks to go to work for Apple.  The team at the office is dwindling and dwindling.  We are losing roughly one person per month and it is mostly the people who have been around the longest.  That is two people at eight years with the team and one with nearly four years all in three months.  Everyone wonders who is next.  There really are no new people with the team, the newest is like two years or so, and most are three years or more.  It is weird, though, because when I started I was the new guy for a really long time.  Now suddenly I’m the non-manager with the most longevity!  I’m officially the old guy.  Very odd.

Dominica was off to work and I was awake by seven.  This going to bed early thing is really throwing me off.  My body doesn’t know what to do with so much sleep.  I was a little soar when I woke up this morning after having lifted yesterday.  My right arm is especially soar after Chris tried to treat my carpal tunnel.  It feels like my arm was in a car accident.

I was able to get ready for work nice and leisurely today, plenty of time since there was no need to leave early since I needed to wait for Morgan to arrive anyway.

Morgan came over and I filled her in on the latest with the girls… like Luciana now sleeps in Liesl’s room and she doesn’t use bottles anymore!  Luciana is not very happy about that, but she is getting used to it.

Off to work.  Another hot day.  One hundred and five by the end of the day.  Pretty hot.  No breaks expected all week.

Work was okay.  Doue and I went to lunch at Rockfish.  I did pretty well eating healthy but could not resist getting the chicken fried tuna again.  SO good.  He has never been to Rockfish before and was very impressed – and he used to work at Red Lobster too.

The afternoon went by pretty quickly.  I managed to get out of work at a decent time and got home to see the girls.  Tonight is a “hang out with the kids” night.  We didn’t turn the projector on at all, except for a little My Big, Big Friend for the girls while they ate some yoghurt while getting ready for bed.  All family time tonight.

We had about an hour then Dominica was off to the salon and to go shopping for a while so she was gone most of the evening.  So it was just the girls and I.  We played quite a bit.  We did our “daddy lying on the bed while the girls jump on my back” game which, perhaps, is what keeps me from getting sciatica.  Maybe I need my back cracked that way all of the time.

Getting Luciana to bed was quite a chore.  Took a lot of effort.  I read to her for a while.  She loved that.  She will happily climb into bed and pretend to sleep while I read.  But the moment that I stop, she is wide awake.  Liesl ran in and sat on the bed with Luciana to hear stories too.

Once I finally got Luciana off to bed Liesl and I played an hour of Ankh 3.  We are nearly done with Chapter 6 now.

Dominica got home and it was time to get Liesl off to bed.  I was off to bed as quickly as I could be.  It was nearly eleven by the time I got into bed.  A lot of Walt Disney World planning going on.  We are trying to figure out where we are staying, from where we are flying, where we will eat, etc.  Any trip to Disney requires a lot of planning.  Even just for nine days.

My first full day with my family back home with me.  It is nice to wake up to the kids bouncing all over the place.  I miss that.  My new sleep schedule means that I am awake before they jump on me, though, so that is good.

Today is mostly a day to relax (and to clean up all of the stuff from the vacationing.)  We did very little this morning, just spent time together as a family.  It wasn’t a lot of time as I have to work at half past twelve every Sunday now anyway.  That is not very much fun.  They reduce our pay because we aren’t supposed to have scheduled weekend work anymore, just emergency escalation, then they ask me to “temporarily” take on a weekend rotation when someone quit a year or two ago, now on top of a weekend rotation I take on a schedule three solid hours of work in the middle of every Sunday afternoon because it is too important for the people they took my pay away for to handle.  I’m not very happy.

So I signed in and worked from twelve thirty to three thirty.  Eric McAlvin, who is the first person that I hired at my current job and whose wedding Dominica and I attending on Long Island years ago and who is now back at work for his third go-round, was on the call too so at least we got to hang out.  There are about thirty of us that do this call now every Sunday afternoon.

Dominica went out and did some grocery shopping today as the cupboards are really bare.  There is practically nothing left in the house.  Between her taking food with her to the lake house and me working on eating stuff that was left behind, the food in the house has really run low.  So we needed a lot of the food for the girls or they were going to mutiny.

At four thirty I went to the Rosemeade Recreation Center with Chris and lifted for about an hour.  Did dead lifts and flat bench press.  Got a decent work out in.

We watched some Rules of Engagement this afternoon while we ate our dinner.  Then Ciana went to bed – we’ve moved her mattress from her and Liesl’s old crib to the floor underneath Liesl’s bunk bed so that the two girls can really share the room now.  Now we hope we can get the crib packed up and probably up to the attic so that we can turn Luciana’s old room into a dedicated play and guest room.  The girls like living together, it works out well.

After Ciana went to bed, Liesl and I settled in and played forty-five minutes on Ankh 3.  Made it through another chapter.  We are on Chapter Six now.  She is still loving our gaming time together.  I’m still happy with our investment in our Steam games.

Liesl went to bed at ten thirty.  Dominica and I were off to bed immediately thereafter.  Tomorrow is Monday and she has to be back to work early in the morning.

I got up this morning and did some cleaning but mostly played Knights of the Old Republic as this was my last stretch of time at home alone so wanted to get in what I could.  I wanted to do more around the house but my sciatica is quite bad again this morning and any movement really hurts.

Much to my dismay, I discovered that the master bathroom toilet was running continuously today (explaining a sound I’d been hearing for a few days) so I did some research and tried to take it apart.  It turns out that the Korky valve in it is broken and I need to at least replace the cap.  That will be a trip to Lowe’s.  Hopefully nothing more serious than that.  I really do not want to replace all of the guts of the toilet too.

Dominica and the girls arrived home around two in the afternoon having left pretty early in the morning from Lake Livingston.  Their trip went pretty well. Not a big traveling day so the roads were pretty clear. They did make a rest stop that took forever, though.  Doing a rest stop with just one adult and two little girls is not a fast affair even at the best of times.

 

They got home and we unloaded the car and the rest of the day was spent catching up.  Boy have I missed my girls.  We were all very excited to see each other.  The little ones just couldn’t get to all of the things that they wanted to tell me about.  So much to fill me in on.

Dominica wanted Rockfish for dinner and was going to send me out to get it and I decided to see if Liesl wanted to come with me but once Ciana heard she started putting on shoes so Dominica decided that we would all go together since both girls were so keen to go.  So a family trip down to Rockfish in Irving for an early dinner.  It was an empty restaurant as we got there around four on a Saturday afternoon.  Dominica was very excited about their new Texas-themed menu items.  We tried their cold smoked salmon appetizer which was amazing and then we split two of their entrees, the chicken fried tuna and the seafood Frito pie.  The chicken fried tuna was especially good.  We also tried their fried Smore’s tacos or whatever they were.

We came home and just relaxed for the rest of the evening.  Off to bed early, everyone needs their sleep.  The girls were especially really tired.