Sheep Guarding Llama

Friday. This morning is the dollar days at Once Upon a Child. Dominica has had it on her calendar and had them text her this morning. So once up she and Paul took a trip there to go shopping. That took a few hours and Dominica came home with loads of new clothes for the girls. Major haul today and they should be set for a little while.

So I was just watching the girls and working this morning. The girls got the day off from school between Dominica needing to shop this morning and plans for going to see their friends in Addison this afternoon.

At twelve thirty, Paul and I had a meeting for a while with a vendor that we worked with earlier in the week.

After the meeting, I took the girls down to Addison to play with Isabella and Juancho. They stayed there until five thirty. It seemed like no time at all to me back at the house working. Seemed like barely an hour. But it was about three. Not a long afternoon, but they did just see them a week ago, at least. We are going to try to get together again this week as they need a lot more time together and are so upset whenever they have to leave. While they were over there they watched the Ninjago movie from Lego.

Dominica, Paul, and I watched some Star Trek: Voyager while eating dinner. Two episodes. Then I sneaked in a little Star Trek: Enterprise and when the girls were ready we all watched our evening’s planned event The Incredibles 2! This is a movie that I have been waiting many years to finally see, mostly because it took them so long to make it. One of my favourite movie franchises. Dominica, Liesl, Luciana, and I all watched it together. Not as good as the first movie, but still really good. It is free on Netflix now.

After our movie we watched some more Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. We only have three episodes left now before we have completed the series.

Thursday. Paul went out and got donuts this morning at Luciana’s request. From WinCo. He had to go out anyway as we were out of milk. And milk is kind of an emergency need around this house. I’m the only one of the five of us that doesn’t use milk every day. I actually almost never drink milk or use it anywhere. I use half and half in my coffee, but milk is only for my cereal which I do not eat very often. But everyone else is big on milk and has it all of the time.

Work was a little busy today. Nothing too strenuous.

For dinner tonight I made frozen pizzas. The girls prefer them, because of the crust, to the ones that I made for them myself. But I don’t make the crust, so I don’t feel bad about that. The frozen pizzas are really cheap, too. So it all works out and it stops them from demanding Dominos so often, which is much more expensive. It is like five dollars compared to twenty five dollars.

I spent a lot of the evening working with someone in Cameroon, working on opening an office there. It is a potentially great opportunity to work in the Middle Africa region. Very few American companies venture there, for mostly obvious reasons. There are a lot of challenges trying to do anything there. From logistics to corruption to communications to the expected war about to break out.

The girls and I made a night of it tonight. The three of us bundled up on the couch and first we watched Full House for a while, then we started the new Netflix series Carmen Sandiego which is much more than a remake of the 1990s television shows. This one is pretty serious and starts with a hard core origin story of the elusive thief. We watched the first several episodes tonight and are really enjoying it. There are nine episodes in total made thus far, but it is very good so I am thinking that Netflix will be making a lot more of these. Liesl is really into the show. Luciana is liking it, but not nearly as into it and she stop watching part way through our last episode for the evening. Each episode is set in a different country and teaches a little geography and culture.

Wednesday. I had to be up by eight and watch an hour of video training to prepare for a nine o’clock meeting that we had this morning that ran until ten. So the first few hours of the morning were all dedicated to that.

Today is forty two years to the day that the crazy Blizzard of 1977 hit Western New York, when I was just about to turn one year old. “The start of a five day event that shut the region down. Snowfall totals reached 100 inches in some areas, wind gusts peaked at 69 MPH and snow drifts towered 40 feet high. The devastating winter storm resulted in 23 deaths in Western New York”, according to dad.

Dad had a very good visit with his oncologist today, but had a very scary drive home. He said that it was the worst driving conditions that he’d driven in for the past twenty years.

Work was not too bad today. We got some bad news that we did not get a big contract that we had been hoping for, however. But work was generally good and I was at my desk until evening.

Around six thirty I knocked off of working at my desk and came out to watch Star Trek: Voyager with Dominica and Paul. Paul was cooking his dinner as we started, then I cooked for myself and Liesl who had decided, after having tasted one of my hamburgers a week ago or more, that she would have one for dinner. So I made her an Earth Grown Soy Burger. I had to make it with mayo on the bottom side and ketchup on the top side because she likes both but is not okay with them touching, even on a sandwich. I accidentally included a slice of cheddar, but I don’t think that she noticed, she didn’t say anything. I even toasted the bun for her. She liked it and let Luciana try it and then she wanted one as well.

So I ended up cooking through two episodes of Voyager for the girls until just after eight. We were out of that kind of patty so Luciana got an East Grown Soy Cheese Burger with cheese included in it. I have not tried this variety yet. I made hers with the same mayo and ketchup, and with double cheese on a toasted bun.

This is amazing as neither girl has ever been willing to have a hamburger previously! This is a big step. So many more food options opening up for them. We eat this kind of stuff so often and have a fridge full of it and they always refuse to even try it. I am so excited. They both said that they were okay, but neither really liked it all that much. But it is a major step.

Luciana did not finish her burger, but she did like it. She found it very hard to hold together.

Tonight Ciana requested donuts and asked if, since we can’t get them tonight, if I wouldn’t go out in the morning and get them for her.

Dominica and I watched some Golden Girls before bed.

Tuesday. Today was a crazy busy day with MangoLassi. It was wild posting going on all day, it has been a long time since I have seen it get so busy. That kept me engaged all morning, very little time for anything else. But it was good, great to see this kind of activity.

I had a noon meeting that went well. Then right back to the busy day of posting.

We have a huge winter storm hitting the whole country over the next few days. We will get cold down here, but it is supposed to be really insane farther north, including back home in New York.

This evening, Dominica and Paul went out and I watched the girls. I made the three of us homemade pizzas and we put on Full House all evening. It was really nice, the girls were very happy.

We discovered that Netflix has remade Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego and that it just released. So Liesl has asked that we watch that together really soon.

Monday. Back to work. Nothing very special happening today. Kids were back to school and work went well. My really boring and entirely pointless Monday afternoon meeting has been removed from my scheduled which is awesome. That was a lot of time spent and nothing getting done. I don’t mind it, since customers pay for it, but it still is a lot of wasted time and something that I always have to schedule around.

Dinner tonight was salmon. The girls love their fish and Luciana asks for salmon regularly. It is one of their favourite foods. We watched Star Trek: Voyager while we ate.

Dominica and I watched some of The Orville tonight.

This evening the girls decided on a long shower and I read two chapters for them in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. We are almost one third of the way through the book now, we are around Chapter XIII where Huck and Jim are about to start raiding the steamboat that has been caught up on a rock in the river. It’s quite a struggle for them to follow the story, but they are doing such a good job trying and they are enjoying the book even so. I am constantly explaining what is going on to them. So many words, culturisms, and accents that they can’t follow. One really confusing part is the use of the texas and texas deck as parts of a ship.