Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is our first real day in California.  The weather was great.  I got up very early and got working on my laptop in the hotel room.  My foot is still killing me.  Dominica got to sleep in for quite a while.

We ordered breakfast in the hotel room.  We didn’t want to deal with going anywhere and I needed to get work done so that was just easy.  I got locks on a bagel.  Very New York of me.  Can’t get that in Texas really.  Salmon in California definitely tastes different than it does back in New York.

Mark was the first of our friends to get into town getting in this morning.  After he was settled in I went down and attempted to meet him for drinks in the bar.  But we discovered that the hotel bar was not open until late afternoon so we decided to go down the street for beers instead.  I would have taken Dominica with me but she was very sleepy all day, jet lag I guess, and so I just left a note with her as she was asleep and let her get some rest.

Mark and I ended up at a really excellent pizza place just a few doors down from the Tollhouse where we are all staying.  We got some beer and I skipped food as I had had breakfast already.  Mark ordered some food and Rich emailed us to say that he had landed and would be getting to the hotel shortly.

Rich ended up meeting us before Mark’s food arrived so Rich ordered a beer and a pizza and we all hung out for a bit.  Rich let me try some of his pizza and it was really amazing.  I can’t believe that we found pizza so good out in California.

After lunch the guys went back and napped in the hotel and I got back to work.  Dominica thought that it was pretty entertaining that she had slept through the whole thing.

This evening we were having dinner with the Pertino guys at a restaurant just down the street.  We walked down, it was a really nice evening for a stroll in a little town in Silicon Valley.  What a gorgeous area.  I had no idea that Silicon Valley was anything like this.  It is really nice and has a real small town European feel about it.

We had a really nice time at dinner with Pertino executive management.  We had some great California food and after dinner went down the street to one of the local bars.  Mark, Rich and I went back to the hotel and picked up Dominica and brought her along with us and later on in the evening Jeff Pierce stopped by at the bar to visit as well.

After we closed down the bar (it was probably only midnight but felt really late) we hit another bar out by Jeff’s house and had another beer there and then went to Denny’s for some late night food.

Dominica had to get up and work this morning.  She is having a busy start to her week – seven o’clock starts three days in a row.  She was training Art on stuff today and assisting with a tablet computer migration.

Liesl and I slept in a bit.  I knew that it was my last chance for snuggles till Sunday night so didn’t want to get up.  And today is going to be a very long day.

Once I was up I joined Dominica in the kitchen and we worked all day. It was quite a busy day.  I ran out and picked up breakfast tacos and donuts from the place on the corner.  We worked from the Grices’ house (only the Millers were there, everyone else was at work or school) until two and then drove out to meet up with Francesca to hand off the girls to her.

It was nearly three when we got onto Interstate 45 north  to drive up to Bush Intercontinental for our six o’clock flight.  There was a lot of traffic but we did pretty well.  Dominica had to drive so that I could be working from my BlackBerry.

We got to the airport without any trouble and got checked right in.  We are flying US Air on the very day that US Air and American Airlines were approved for their merger.  We grabbed some Pizzeria Uno for dinner – what a let down.  I need to remember that they are never any good.  It always sounds like a good idea but their pizza is just sad.  It’s not as good as the bargain frozen stuff at the grocery store for $1.50.

The flight from Houston to Phoenix wasn’t bad at all.  This is both of our first times flying over the Big Bend region of Texas or southern New Mexico or Arizona.  There was a lot of very interesting scenery to see for much of the flight.  And neither of us has ever been in Arizona at all.  So that was slightly interesting but, of course, it was just the airport.

We had a ninety minute layover at Phoenix so we grabbed some chips and a quesadilla to split and ate that while waiting for our flight.

The flight from Phoenix to San Jose seemed to go really quickly and in not time we were descending into Silicon Valley.  This is my first time ever being north of LA in California and Dominica’s first time to California or the Pacific Coast at all.  So she is pretty excited.  She has been to Las Vegas and nothing else ever west of San Antonio.

It felt like nearly midnight to us when we arrived in San Jose but it was mid-evening local time.  We got into the hotel and were off to bed almost immediately.  From what we can tell we are in a cute little town.  There wasn’t much to see in the dark, though.  I got my laptop set up and Dominica was asleep before I made it into bed.  Have to be up early tomorrow (local time) so that I can work from the hotel all day.  Friends from Spiceworks will be arriving throughout the day and there is stuff to do in the evening so need to be ready.

Dominica was in the office today so I had to take the girls up to Corinth for day care.  So I started work around eight and did two hours from the house before driving them up.  I got into the office and was there for less than an hour before I did something horrifically painful to my ankle that has been bothering me for the past two weeks.  So at one I ran out to go to CareNow in Carrollton to have them take a look at my ankle.

I ended up getting X-Rays and the verdict, at least at this point, is that I have something like tendinitis brought on primarily by a bone spur on my ankle or heel.  They saw it in the X-Ray but I am not sure exactly where it is.  So for the moment I have some medicine to try but I need to see a specialist about this.  Not fun.

It was late and nearly the end of the day by the time that I was done at CareNow so I just went home and wrapped up the day from there.  Dominica got home with the girls about an hour after me.  We set to packing up the car and were out the door around six thirty.  We hit Subway in Josey Ranch for dinner and were on the highway heading to Houston by seven.

The drive south went really well and it was barely after eleven when we pulled into the Grices’.  They were all already asleep and we were in bed pretty quickly.  Luciana was especially exhausted having not slept well at all on the drive down.

Tomorrow is going to be one crazy, hectic travel day.  I am looking forward to it, though.  It should be a lot of fun and a nice change of pace.

Dominica had to get up and go to work this morning as it is Monday.  She is working today and tomorrow this week because we are traveling out to California on Wednesday night (flying out of Houston) so she had to change up her schedule a bit.  She is going to have a skewed schedule next week too.

I had to be in the office today so I drove the girls up to Corinth for daycare this morning.  That is an exhausting process.  Just getting them ready is hard enough and then the drive all of the way up there and then back to the office takes more than an hour.  It really makes it hard to get anything done.

Phillip Moya was in town teaching a SpiceU class in Irving today so Watson and I met up with him and several of the guys from the City of Irving who were taking the classes at El Fenix in irving.  That would have been a lot of fun but just as I was arriving Dominica had an emergency come up at work and needed me to  be on the phone for most of the meal and then instead of going back to check out the class I had to race back to the office so that I could assist them in fixing the issue.  Dominica had a really stressful day.

This evening, when  I got home, I brought home Subway knowing that Dominica was stressed out and had had a very long day.  We picked up  on the second half of The Two Towers and watched the last half of The Lord of the Rings on BluRay.  It has been nearly a decade, we are guessing, since we last watched the movies.  Neither of us can remember having watched them since we left Geneseo and I know that we have not watched them in a really long time because we never bought them on BluRay and have been avoiding watching them on DVD because we knew that we would be disappointed.  So our guess is that we watched in probably twice in Geneseo, around 2005, and have probably not seen it since.

I had to be up really early this morning to do work for the office.  Got up around six.

Today was our family day, our last real day all together before Dominica and I head out to California for the weekend.  It is Sunday and I had to work a lot of the day so it wasn’t all relaxing but it wasn’t too bad and I am going to be working remotely much of this week so it kind of turned out well that I worked all weekend and Friday is a holiday.

There was a lot to do today beyond spending time with the family.  What a busy week we have coming.

Liesl did a lot of playing with her new Wii games.  She is so good at them and is really loving having the games in her bedroom.  It is a whole new activity opportunity for her.