Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

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.