Sheep Guarding Llama

Today was decently busy for me.  I had two interviews this morning.  I wasn’t sure how they went at the time.  The first one was pretty weak but the second one went really well and really built up my confidence in going after storage engineering jobs rather than systems administration.  I was told by the nation’s most profitable and sought after investment bank that I, talking about storage on the side while looking at UNIX positions, was the strongest storage candidate that they have spoken to yet!  That was pretty cool.  I definitely need to consider diversifying into enterprise storage too.  I’ve already got some serious Windows background and UNIX, of course.

Work remained incredibly slow.  Today was Nicki’s last day at work.  So on my way in to the office I swung by her place and picked her up and brought her into the office as her ride had fallen through.  So we went into the office but just for half an hour or so then we grabbed the boss and went to La Cima for lunch.  I haven’t been there for lunch in likely two years or more!  Nearly everyone working knew me instantly so I had a lot of people to talk to.  We had a nice lunch and a good send off for Nicki.  She has been with the firm only a few months longer than me.  (Likewise, she has 27 years in IT and I have 24, so we are very similar in a lot of ways.)

After lunch it was just a slow day at work.  Very slow.

Got home and Dominica and and the girls had decided that they wanted to go to Genghis Grill.  I thought that they had discussed it and that the girls had been there before.  Nope.  So it was pretty much the disaster of stress and arguing that you would expect from making the nieces go to a high stress, lots of choices and doing things that aren’t explained well food environment.  It’s hard enough to make decisions from a normal menu, GG is high stress and even I stressed out the first time as it wasn’t clear what to do and you have to do everything yourself.  So I was stuck watching Liesl and Luciana while everyone else tried to figure out what to do for food which took easily forty minutes.  The little girls got their food, ate it and were already restless and causing problems trying to run around the restaurant before Dominica, Madeline and Emily were even done putting in their orders and before I even got to get started at all.  I had to take Luciana out to the car and sit for a while until everyone else finished as everyone was just too restless.

Got home pretty early.  Didn’t have real long to hang out, though, as Rachel and Jaiden came in to town via Southwest this evening and needed to be picked up at Dallas Love Field.  So I left around eight thirty to drive down to the city and get them.  That went pretty smoothly then we drove up to Jaiden’s house, dropped off their stuff then the three of us headed to the square in downtown Denton and hit the back to school bar scene up there for the evening.

We went to Hailey’s for a while which was way too packed.  Super hot and everyone was sweating like crazy and it was full of kids there for ’90s night.  It was pretty sad.  Later on we switched to the cocktail bar at Paschall which was really nice.

This waking up super early thing is weird.  But I managed to stay in bed for a while.  I got up at a quarter till seven when Dominica left for work having been awake already for an hour or two probably.  My new phone is getting two full days out of a charge, I am pretty impressed with that.  I charged it Friday night and it died after I was in bed last night!

Got up and worked from the house for a bit this morning.  Waited for Morgan to arrive and then turned the household over to her and was off to the office.

Today was pretty slow.  Hung out with Doue and some of his friends a bit today.  I can’t believe how slow the office is.  This afternoon we went out for Subway.  I got a salad.  I’m not liking being back on the diet.

Got home this evening and we just stayed in.  We have the nieces and Dominica is always tired on Monday evenings so we just took it easy.  Introduced Emily to Are You Being Served?  She actually liked it.

Liesl was the first one up this morning, rather unusual for her.  As always, it is straight into our room to get me up and have me get her “chocolate milk” for her which she still has twice a day… once when she wakes up and once when the “orange sun comes out” meaning that it is getting to be nearly time for bed.  Luciana was the next one up.  Our girls apparently sleep a lot less than the Grice girls.

I did some work this morning and played with the girls some.  At ten thirty everyone except Luciana and I headed out to go to the salon for a group hair styling.  Liesl has been asking for a hair cut for months as she feels that her hair is too long.  Luciana was not at all happy about being left behind with me, especially as she had dressed herself, packed a backpack and was the first one ready to go.

It is Sunday and I am back from my furlough time so I am on the Sunday afternoon support call for the office.  All kinds of fun there.  Three hours on the phone in the middle of my Sunday.  Can’t wait to not have to deal with that anymore.  At least today it coincides nicely with the girls being out getting their hair done.  The call was very slow today, nothing went wrong and I only had to monitor things.  After the last few weeks I figured that it would be one issue after another today.

Everyone got back from getting their hair done. Dominica and Liesl are trying out new hair styles with bangs, this is Liesl’s first time getting styling done, previously she has only had a trim once and it was just to even up the back of her hair because it was getting so long, this time she got a real hair cut.

Watson texted me today and wanted to hit Redneck for dinner. With the house full it is a good day for that.  Haven’t been to Redneck in two weeks or more.  And I spent pretty much the whole day at my desk working on one project or another.  Got a ton of work done.  Fixed a lot of longstanding issues.

Watson picked me up around seven thirty and we went to Redneck for a bit.  First time there in a few weeks.

Came home and pretty much was off to bed almost immediately.  Dominica has to work tomorrow so need to get to bed.

Dominica was up at seven and on the road by eight to head towards Houston. So I am home watching Liesl and Luciana this morning.  They are very excited that their cousins are coming to see them and spent the entire morning asking how much longer until they would arrive.  The girls slept in a bit this morning as they were so exhausted after being up so late last night waiting for me to come home.

Dominica’s drive went well and they were back to Dallas before one.  Not bad at all.

Not long after they arrived we packed up and went to Brookhaven Country Club for an early dinner.  We’ve attempted to cancel our membership there but haven’t been able to make contact with the finance department so we were unsure if they had cancelled it already or not but we are fine.  I’m really hoping to keep it for maybe the next six weeks, so we are trying to figure that out.  Maybe on Monday I will get a chance to speak with them and figure some of that out.  Dinner was good.  We nearly all got salads with salmon.

Back to the house and I made a quick run up to Arctic Liquors on 121 for sambuca and ouzo.  Then it was mostly a quiet evening at home.  Liesl and Luciana were very excited to have their cousins so they all played together all evening.

Liesl ended up falling asleep in the guest room with Madeline so Emily went in and slept with Luciana.  Dominica and I did not stay up very late.  We watched about half of a newer Bollywood film and called it a night.

Slept well, alarm went off at six thirty Eastern which, to my internal clock, was five thirty.  Too early for me.  But I didn’t get bad sleep, just not as much as I would have liked but I feel pretty good.  Being about two weeks now completely caffeine free has really allowed me to sleep a lot less than before.  Less control of my hour to hour tiredness but much more control of my overall need for sleep.  Mostly a win.  Probably much better for my health, though, which is what is actually important.

I didn’t actually have as much time as I might have to get ready this morning as my morning meeting is at nine and to be safe I really need to be out of the hotel by eight to be ready to make it safely since traffic last night was horrible and I really do not have a good idea of how long it will take to get from one place to another in this area nor am I completely confident where I am heading today (as in the address.)  So a little complication there.

Got all ready and left the hotel just a little after eight.  Had a taxi waiting for me and it ended up only taking fifteen minutes to get to the location so I was very early.  Better early with time to relax than racing, though.  I have to have my luggage with me all day because I don’t have a chance to return to the hotel this afternoon.  My flight is at five out of La Guardia this evening which is pretty early, but thankfully that means that I can get home to my girls in time to see them both before they go to bed tonight.  My flight is scheduled to land at eight (it is a three hour flight from DFW to NYC and four hours in the reverse, which is pretty easy to remember) which means that I should be home at the house before nine.

My day of meetings went very well.  We actually ran over and I was racing to get to the airport after it was all over.  I was originally planned to not leave until two but ended up having an additional meeting at the end of the day and going until after two thirty.  Given that I needed to get from Norwalk, CT to La Guardia in Queens, NY to catch a flight that boards in exactly two hours – there was just a little bit of a panic.  They had a limo waiting for me (a whole week of being limo’d everywhere is pretty nice) and he drove like crazy to get me to the airport.  Traffic was light and it went really well.

Got to La Guardia and through security in no time.  Had enough time to grab a tuna wrap and a slice of real NYC pizza before getting on to the plane.  I had been given a catered lunch today but it was very small as much of it was meat.  I didn’t want to burden anyone with running around to find me other food, which they definitely offered to do.

The flight back to Dallas was completely full.  I was stuck sitting in the bulkhead, which I hate, because it is the tighter seats.  I like the leg room in front but the lack of side to side space makes it very uncomfortable.  I prefer normal seats much better.  The flight was uneventful.  We sat in silence nearly the whole way.  I listened to a few hours of The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond and took a few minutes of naps here and there too.

I got to DFW and had to wait probably half an hour for my luggage. Because the flight was full they were picky about the size of the luggage and my carry-on was too large to go on the plane.  So it had to be stowed and I lost a lot of time there.  After getting my luggage I had to get from terminal A29 where I arrived to E1 where the car was parked.  That took nearly an hour.  DFW airport is a construction mess and they don’t have their shuttles working well to handle it at this point.  It was so bad that people were really concerned that there was no way to get out of the construction zone that we had landed in.  Very poor planning and zero information for people wondering what to do.

Finally got to the car and drove home.  It was after nine when I got there, closer to ten.  My phone had died while on the flight and so I was unable to communicate with Dominica to let her know what was going on that entire time that I was on the ground since they don’t offer charging stations or anything for people waiting for luggage or for shuttles – both places where it would be highly beneficial, maybe even more beneficial than for people waiting on a flight since it is on arrival that your phone is most likely to be dead and where you probably need it most.

Both girls were up and waiting for me and so excited to see me.  It was hours of screaming and running around.  Eventually we all just piled onto the bed and the girls just jumped all over me for a very long time.  Once Luciana went to bed we watched a little Netflix and Liesl curled up on the couch with me snuggling very close.  In no time she fell asleep there and I eventually carried her in and put her to bed.

Tomorrow morning Dominica has to be up early so that she can drive down towards Houston to meet up with Francesca so that they can transfer our nieces, Madeline and Emily, who are coming up to spend the week with us in Dallas as they do every summer.  The round trip takes roughly five hours if all goes well.  Dominica will leave at eight and is hoping to be home around one.  I will be home watching Liesl and Luciana.