Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is Monday but it is Memorial Day so I am home with the family and hopefully because I put in four hours working yesterday I won’t need to be doing any work for the office today, or at least I sure hope so.  I have a lot of test work to do today so I hardly have the day as a free day but I should, again in theory, get to focus on that.

Liesl and I played a lot of The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles today and made it very close to the ending.  I’m pretty confident that we will be able to finish it tomorrow.  She is getting so good at playing the game that I don’t necessarily even have to sit with her while she plays it anymore.  I can sit across the room, walk around and do other things and just check in on her every few minutes to help her along.  This is a great learning experience for her.

I got a bit of work done today and had some time to relax too.  Back to work tomorrow.

It was eleven this morning when we finally pulled ourselves out of bed.  I was the first one up and I was showered before anyone else was getting up.  So it was probably closer to noon for the rest of the family.  I can’t believe that the girls managed to sleep in so late.  They both got to sleep in the car a lot last night and they both tend to have pretty strong internal clocks that get them up around the same time regardless of how late they end up going to bed, Luciana especially.

Liesl got up and immediately wanted to know when we would be playing “the game” – The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles – again.  So we started playing that pretty early this afternoon and got several hours in on it today.

For “breakfast” in the early afternoon Dominica was in the mood for breakfast tacos like we get in Houston so she sent me out looking for some.  We got lunch from Fuzzy’s Tacos which is pretty nearby and tried out their breakfast and fish tacos.  They were okay but nothing to write home about.  Except my dad reads this blog, so technically I sort of just wrote home about them.

We watched some of Arrested Development.  We are going back and watching the entire series again from the beginning to prepare for the fourth season which, after being off of the air for a decade, released early this morning on Netflix.  This is a major change of how television is made.  Netflix actually found a show that people loved and that was cancelled for no good reason, bought all of the rights, paid for all of the actors to return many years later and fired the series back up!  It is a major win for consumer-driven television choice and we are going to seriously support Netflix for doing this.  We have high hopes that this will signal a fundamental change to how shows are selected and financed.  This could be, and should be, a turning point for network television.  Never has such a high profile, mainline show been exclusive to non-network television.  The Internet is finally the new mainstream for shows.

This evening we tried to relax a bit but I can paged out and had to put in four hours working on a conference call for the office.  That kind of ruined the last portion of the evening.  Liesl had wanted to hang out in the living room together and I totally had to bail on her.  At least I got to read her her bedtime stories before she went down for the night.

While donig other things, at least, I managed to get completely caught up on SGL today.

We are in Ottawa, Kansas this morning.  This is Dominica and the girls’ first times in Kansas.  I’ve been in Kansas twice before, once just as a technicality with Francesca when we drove over the border just to say that we had been there and then once for SpiceCorps Wichita a year ago.  This is the longest that I’ve been in Kansas and the deepest into the state that I have been.

We got a late check out for noon, got mostly ready to go and then went next door to the Old 56 Restaurant (or something like that) and got breakfast with the girls.  The food was really good.

We checked out of the hotel and drove out to Vassar to make sure that we could find the house.  That really took only about thirty minutes so we had about an hour to kill.  So we went in search of some sun screen for the girls.  Turns out that Vassar isn’t big enough to have a gas station or anything so we ended up back tracking many miles to find a Dollar General so that we could pick up some basics.

Got to the wedding on the early side.  It was great seeing people again.  Steve, John and Joey from York’s class of 94 were all there.  Only four of us from school but considering the distance necessary to get there, that’s a pretty impressive turn out.  Four out of sixty four who graduated in our class is pretty impressive as this is eighteen hours drive from back home and it was eight hours for us.

We had a really good time at the wedding.  The girls loved playing in a bouncy house that was set up in the back.  I got to meet a lot of people and do a lot of catching up with friends I haven’t seen in forever.  Steve and I have barely seen each other in nineteen years!

We stayed as long as we could but really wanted to be on the road around six.  Luciana had essentially no sleep and I had even less plus had to drive yesterday and today.  If we weren’t on the road early the kids would be unbearable.   We didn’t make it out at six.  I was pretty surprised when I realized it was after eight.  So we managed to leave more like eight thirty.  I’m glad that we stayed as long a we did but it made for a really long night.  We had considered stopping in Oklahoma City on the way home and splitting the drive up but really didn’t want to take the time and money to do that so played it by ear to see how the drive went.

The drive went pretty quickly.  Traffic was very light and we zipped down I35 through Wichita and down through Oklahoma City.  We got to see a little of the destruction in Moore too.

It was nearly four when we got home to Carrollton.  Boy were we tired.  Straight to bed for us.  Liesl is still sleeping in our bed.  That’s almost ten straight days of not needing to sleep on her own.  She is loving this.

Into the office this morning.  Nothing special.  Had an incredibly busy morning, probably related to the early market close and three day weekend (Monday is Memorial Day.)  Dan and I tried to go to lunch and it took until almost two before we were able to leave because of so many people requesting work during the normal lunch hour.  That’s one thing that I hate about working for a global organization – someone always wants you to work and no one knows when you would normally be starting, lunching or leaving.  It gets to be pretty obnoxious some days.  And if you even so much as use the restroom some days people will escalate to management and say that you aren’t around.  It’s ridiculous.

So we got to lunch and ended up working all through lunch and I had to leave Dan there (luckily we had driven separately) and ran back to the office to work like mad the rest of the afternoon.

Luckily I was at least able to leave decently early, just a little after four, so that I could run home, grab the family and get on the road.  Steve Romano’s wedding is tomorrow afternoon in Vassar, Kansas so we need to drive up there tonight to be able to make it.  So we got on the road as quickly as we could which was nearly six by the time we were actually loaded into the car and moving.  We hit Sonic around the corner to get some food before getting onto the highway.

Because of the holiday traffic and the disaster area in the Oklahoma City area we decided to avoid Interstate 35 and instead take the US75 route through Tulsa which is shorter but takes forty-five minutes longer.  That is a long, boring drive that we do a few times a year because it is the route back home to New York as well, at least as far as the Tulsa area.

The drive went well.  We were really concerned that we would hit rain but we did not and no tornado warnings either.  Clear sailing the whole way.

It was two thirty when we pulled into Ottawa, Kansas where we stayed the night at the EconoLodge there.  We got a king room that was actually pretty nice.  We were very happy with our room there.  Slightly more expensive than an EconoLodge normally is but the room was a bit better too so that explained it.

Unfortunately Luciana decided that she didn’t want to go to sleep and so she kept us all awake until four in the morning.  That is going to make tomorrow really hard as we are tired as it is.

Dominica had to go to work today and the girls are headed to daycare.  So Dominica was up and out the door early.  I slept in a little, got the girls ready, dealt with a bunch of crap for the office from home and then ran them up to Corinth for daycare getting there just after eleven.  I worked from there on the phone for another half an hour or so.  What a stressful morning.

Dan needed to carpool in today because he had left his truck at the office yesterday and so needed a ride.  So he and I left Corinth around a quarter till noon.  I was supposed to be meeting Watson at Redneck at that time so Dan and I drove straight there and met him.  We did lunch and then Dan and I headed into the office from there.

I had a stressful afternoon at the office too.  It has not been a good day.

Came home and we just spent the evening at home hanging out.  Liesl and I played more of her game and it turns out that there was probably only thirty minutes of it left so we finished it and installed the prequel: The Book of Unwritten Tales – The Critter Chronicles and started playing that.  We only got, at most, one hour in on it today.  We won’t be able to play again until Sunday as we are traveling tomorrow and Saturday up to Kansas but we will play more over the weekend.  So far it looks and feels just like a continuation of the original.  Liesl is still loving it.