Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

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.