Sheep Guarding Llama

I did not sleep in this morning nearly as much as I had meant to or wanted to.  I was up by around nine.  That was not very much sleep.

I had to get on a conference call just after noon and was stuck on there for three hours.  This was a planned call.  Sunday support is now a requirement again.  That ate the entire middle of my day.  Not fun.  I thought that it was going to be a really passive call too but it was actually a pretty intense call and kept me busy all afternoon.  Ugh.

I played a little Knights of the Old Republic this afternoon and then in the early evening went to Redneck with Watson.  Kyler had just finished moving his new roommate in and so he and Jason came down from Denton and joined us as well.  We had dinner and then Watson went home and Kyler and Jason came over for martinis and BBC shows on the big screen.  We watched about half of the first season of Coupling which neither of them had ever seen previously.  They both decided to crash for the night but needed to be up at four thirty to make it to work tomorrow.

Got up this morning and it was just “get the girls dressed” and Dominica was out the door.  And I’m alone.  Thus begins my lonely week at home without the family.  This is going to be a long week.  At least the girls won’t really miss me as they will be being entertained by their cousins.

I set to doing some cleaning around the house.  Did not do a ton today but definitely made some progress.  The house is looking pretty good.  The dishes are mostly done.  The toys are put away.  It is a very good start and I have a whole week to keep moving forward on it.  That’s probably my favourite thing about everyone being away, my chance to really get the house cleaned up.

I played a little bit of Knights of the Old Republic today.  That’s a great game.  I have not had much chance to play it in quite a while and I am accumulating games via Steam faster than I am able to play them so I really need to get on the ball and knock a few of them out.  I have a feeling that when I am done that Dominica is going to want to play KOTOR as well, it is a perfect game for her.

Rachel and Jaiden invited me to come up to Denton for a hip hop competition at Rubber Gloves.  Always up for an adventure, I decided to go.  We weren’t going to meet till pretty late so I played some more KOTOR then took a shower and drove up to Denton.

I have never actually gone to Denton before tonight.  Weird that it is so close and I have never been there.  And I have so many friends that live in Denton too.  And the train runs to downtown Denton from right down the street from our house.  Dominica has even been there but I have not.

I met up with Rachel and Jaiden at Rachel’s apartment.  We hung out for about an hour.  Then we drove over to Rubber Gloves for the hip hop competition.  An odd evening, to say the least.

Kyler noticed my Facebook check in and said that he lived right around the corner from where we were so he came over to join us too.

After the competition about eight people went back to Rachel’s apartment to hang out for a while.  I took Kyler home as he had ridden his bicycle there, then off home for me.  It was about four thirty when I got back to the house.  I will get to sleep in a little tomorrow but I have work scheduled at noon for the office so I need to make sure that I wake up.

I slept in all that I could today.  Still not a full night of sleep but at least five or six hours.  Then up and into the office for the day.  Nothing special at work today.  Lunch at the Local Diner.

I got home and we just spent the evening relaxing and packing so that Dominica can get on the road with the girls first thing in the morning because the lake house that they have this year will allow them to check in anytime tomorrow so there is no need to wait until the afternoon to get in.  They want to get maximum use out of it and getting to the lake house on the first day late in the afternoon is just annoying because you need time to get set up, figure out where things are, deal with problems, etc.

Dominica was hungry so after I was done working, which was around seven thirty, I ran over to Subway and picked up dinner.  I brought it back and we discovered that a new season of Rules of Engagement was now available on Netflix so we watched just a little bit of that.  Just enough to eat our dinner.

Then Luciana decided that she was tired and went to bed and Liesl asked if we could play Ankh 3 which we have not had very much time to play together recently.  So we went into my office and she and I put in probably two hours of video gaming together.  That was fun.

Then everyone went off to bed.

The drive this morning was awful.  I was struggling all night to stay awake.  The weather was good but I was just so exhausted.  It was all that I could do to keep moving.  I was getting out of the car at nearly every rest stop just to walk around.  It was such a hard drive that I was in physical pain trying to make it.  I would have stopped at a hotel but if I didn’t make it home Dominica would have to call into work or something.

So I pressed on.  Dominica had to go in late, but only a tiny bit.  She was sitting on the couch when I dragged myself in the front door.  I was feeling awful.  I went straight to bed, it was about seven thirty when I fell asleep, and she went straight off to work.

I only managed to get one hour of sleep before the girls were awake and climbing all over me.  I was so tired that I could not safely drive them to daycare so I called Dominica and she came home, got them and took them up to Corinth.  It is too bad that Morgan wasn’t watching them today or we could have just asked her to come early and we wouldn’t have had to have run around so much.

So just one hour of sleep and I have to make it all day.  This is going to be hard.

Got into the office.  I really don’t remember much of the day.  I was practically delirious all day.  And really soar from the drive.

After work I went home and helped Dominica get the house ready for the Dungeons & Dragons game tonight.  Not the best timing but we didn’t want to cancel either since we have to cancel, or do something creative, next week anyway since Dominica is going to be out of town all week.  I considered taking a nap this evening before everyone arrived but there really wasn’t time.  I decided to take a shower instead and rather than being a bit late, everyone arrived early tonight and so I wasn’t even quite into the shower yet.

The session tonight was pretty good although I was struggling hard to stay awake and did doze off once or twice towards the end.

I was not as lucky as I had hoped that I would be and I only got about two hours of sleep last night. I had some CPAP issues that kept me from falling asleep too quickly and then I woke up at nine.  Two hours after putting in a sixteen hour day of work followed by seven hours of driving last night and needing to do the same again today plus a little extra driving.  This is not going to go well.

I got to work from the hotel at nine thirty and worked until just after noon.  then it was into the car and back on the highway.  I got up to Bob’s place in Kansas City at one thirty.

I worked for the afternoon from Bob’s.  We sat out in the Panama room with our laptops.  It was a nice afternoon.  Just before it was time to head to the SpiceCorps event to set up Francis came by and visited a bit as well.  He had flown in this morning from Austin for the event.

We got to the Overland Park Chamber of Commerce building which is where the meeting was going to be held at about five.  It was only about ten minutes away from Bob’s house making it pretty convenient to go there.

We got there on time and got set up.  The meeting had a really good turn out, more than thirty people and the presentations went well.  Francis presented on Spiceworks 7.0 which releases soon and I spoke on hosted services and Microsoft Office 365 which I had presented last night.

After the meeting we went to a local bar for about an hour.  Just had some appetizers then Bob drove me back to his house where my car was waiting.

So it was eleven, again, when I managed to get back on the road for Dallas.  This is going to be a horrible night.  I need to get to Dallas before seven if Dominica is to make it to work on time.

It is a straight shot down Interstate 35.  So I took off and was already feeling sleeping when I was still not yet to Topeka and only just getting started.  At least no storms or rain is expected tonight.  That would be more than I could handle.  Just the exhaustion will be enough to make this a horrible drive.