Sheep Guarding Llama

Dominica and I were both up pretty early this morning.  I woke up around five thirty then Dominica got up around six.  The curse of going to bed on time, I guess.  Jim came over for about an hour this morning just to hang out.

The girls got up around eight thirty and then at nine or so I drove to Braum’s and got some breakfast for everyone. On my way to pick up breakfast I had a blade frame go down at work and had to deal with that by phone.  I thought that I had a good idea what was wrong and had the datacenter dispatched to look at it before I even got to Braum’s.  I was right and thankfully the fix was quick and easy and handled shortly after I got back home.  Never a true day off, though, it would seam.

Dominica went out this morning and did some shopping at Ikea and got new bar shelves and a few things for the girls.  So we spent some time this afternoon hanging three new Ikea shelves in the freshly painted bar so that we can now move the liquor that is all over the counter up on to the shelves as “top shelves” as opposed to the well that runs behind the bar itself.  We have a lot of people coming over in two days who will be using the bar and Allie is going to be bar tending for us so we want to have everything set up as well as possible.

Once it was all done the shelves really looked great.  They make the bar look so much more like a nice bar and they make the counter clear now.  So kind of a double whammy of improvement.  It makes the whole living room look better.  The next major project is getting the theatre equipment all installed and off of the bar so that the main bar is completely clear again.  That has been a problem for quite some time but it is such an undertaking that it never happens.

We did some cleaning tonight to get ready for Tuesday.  This is going to be a really long week and once it starts there aren’t any breaks so if we don’t get the house cleaned up now, we don’t have any chance to do it later.

It seems inevitable now that I will get drastically behind on SGL updates and fight like crazy to catch back up.  Luciana got me up this morning having soaked through her diaper.  It was seven thirty so I had less than four hours of sleep.  I got up with her so that Dominica could sleep some more and I put Ciana in the shower.  She didn’t want to stay in for too long so I laid down on the bathroom floor and napped there while she played.

Luciana and I finally got really up at eight thirty and Kyler was up a few minutes later.  Not much sleep for anyone.  Dominica was up before nine.

Made coffee and it was time to get to painting.  Dominica took off to go to Lowe’s to get last minute painting supplies and then to Subway to pick up breakfast for everyone.

Kyler is working on painting the bar today.  The goal is to have it fully painted before the even here on Tuesday night when we have twenty or thirty people coming to the house for SpiceCorps DFW.

I put in a ton of time working today.  I worked nearly a straight eleven hour day before even taking a break.  I got caught up on SGL too today.  That was a bit of work.  With so many readers now, it is important to really keep the site updated.

It was eight when Kyler took a break from painting and I took a break from closing tickets and Dominica made some dinner and we all sat down to watch an episode of Doctor Who.  Then it was back to do more work.  So much work to be done.  There never really is an end to it all.

One of our goals for tomorrow is for Dominica to run to Ikea to get shelving units so that we can set up the bar without all of the liquor having to sit on the wet bar.  The well isn’t big enough to hold even half of the stock and if we don’t have shelves it is nearly impossible to work the bar area.  Dominica put in a lot of time today trying to pick out the right shelves to get.  It is tempting to get a huge amount of shelf space but if we are not careful they will overtake all of the space on that side of the bar.  Instead we are trying to go for three shelves vertically to make maximum use of the otherwise blank wall.

Altogether I worked for about fourteen or fifteen hours today.  It was a very long, but very productive day.  I was quite happy to have so much taken care of during the day.  Kyler worked a ton today too.  Probably ten hours of painting and stuff.

Kyler went home after the painting was finished as he needed some sleep.  Dominica, Liesl and I watched a few episodes of The New Girl and went to bed a little after midnight.  Luciana had gone to bed earlier in Liesl’s room.  They love being roommates and we are starting to try that out more and more often.  We are really hoping that they will decide that they want to room together all of the time and the back room, Luciana’s old room, can be turned into a permanent guest bedroom and extra office space.

Still more work to do tomorrow.  It is going to be another busy day.  But overall I feel good.  Good progress, the house is looking good.  I have to be really on top of things before Monday because Tuesday and Wednesday are booked completely solid and Thursday I am going to be exhausted out of my mind.  Pretty much the entire week is completely shot.  Next weekend is going to be desperate work catchup as well and sometime next week Dominica and the girls are heading to the lake house so I will have the house to myself most of the week.  That will be my complete catch up and house cleaning week.  I’m already planning on doing my annual Rug Doctoring of the living quarters section of the house.  Hopefully this year I do not need to put up aluminum foil on all of the windows like I did last year to keep the house cool enough.

Work all day.  Had lunch at the Local Diner with Dan.  Talked about all of the latest developments at work.  Found out today that one of the main AIX administrators is leaving in two weeks.  We’ve already lost a lot of people recently so this is a major blow both specifically to the AIX that is currently overwhelmed with work and now being cut in half but also to the team in general which is running far below normal levels overall.  We are getting burned out as a department pretty quickly and there is no sign of relief.

I took advantage, again, of the Steam Summer Sale today and picked up eight more video games for $18, mostly games for Liesl and I to play soon.  Graphical adventure games.  And a couple of casual games for Dominica.

Our big set of Lenovo ultrabooks arrived today for doing the Office 365 demonstrations next week.  Now I have to work on setting them all up.  Eleven laptops.  They are really slick, touch screen models for showing off Office 365 on Windows 8.

I came home and worked a bit.  Dominica made salads and we started watching The New Girl but Kyler arrived before we had made it through a single episode.  We watched two of the best episodes from Season Four, The Silence in the Library and it’s second half episodes, because that was what Kyler was up to in the series.  We watched those because Liesl was still awake and the sun was not completely down yet.  Luciana went to bed pretty early.

Once the sun was down Liesl was off to bed and we went back and watched Blink which Kyler had been skipping so that he could watch it on the big screen with us.  Such a good episode.  It was kind of an epic Doctor Who evening with so many of the most epic episodes in one night.  We watched one more episode after that, then Dominica went to bed.

Kyler and I stayed up for a few hours, mostly looking at European photographs and some videos from our trips over there the last few years.  It was a quarter till four when we finally headed to bed.

The girls were not able to go to Ms. Melissa’s house for daycare today but thankfully, at the last minute, Dominica had been able to reach Morgan yesterday and she came by at nine this morning to watch the girls for the day.  It really is amazingly convenient for us to have Morgan come here rather than needing to transport the girls elsewhere.  Much less stress.

I had a busy morning before leaving the house. This whole week has been crazily busy.  So much going on.  Due to some changes at Dominica’s office, the Ralstons are cancelling their trip down to Texas next week.  That will help them out with being overloaded with work but makes us all scramble to figure out what all is going on now, next week.  I will be speaking on Danielle’s behalf at SpiceCorps DFW now, so I have extra work load to do there now.

I got home after work and we cleaned as we usually do trying to get ready for the Dungeons & Dragons game.  Dominica did a lot of cleaning before I got home.  Kyler was over first, around seven.  Morgan (who had gone home to change) and Jose were over at eight.  Rachel and Jaiden made it a little after eight thirty.

Really great gaming session tonight.  Very little time lost dealing with food and drinks.  We got in and really got into the game quickly.  And a ton more roleplaying than in the past.  I think that everyone is starting to “get it” a lot more.  This was a big improvement.  We did not play nearly as late tonight as we have been but the game was really intense and we made a lot of progress.  Very encouraging and after a month and a half we’ve not lost a single player, not even for a single session.  That is really an accomplishment.

In the office today.  It’s been a relatively slow week overall.  Not too bad.  At least in the office.  I’ve had so many emails and calls this week, it feels like I can’t even comprehend what all is going on.  Just a swirl of activity.  I feel like I’m on the phone all of the time.

I had to get home a little early tonight after working through lunch and was on a call for two and a half hours this evening.  That was relatively exhausting.

Later in the evening, after dinner, Morgan came over when she was done with work and we put in an hour or two going over some work stuff for her.  She couldn’t stay late as she is coming back early in the morning to watch the girls so that Dominica can get to work.