Sheep Guarding Llama

Back in the office today.  Didn’t even remember that yesterday was my birthday until I started writing today’s post.  I’m feeling a little tired today, probably all of the junk food from yesterday and the weekend.

Just a normal office day today.  We have a busy week coming up next week.  Our plans keep changing.  Originally March was set to be decently low key.  Now the Ralstons are coming next week, the Grices are coming up the week following and I am looking at maybe flying out to Silicon Valley at the end of the month!  From nothing to busy in no time flat.

Right now the Ralstons are expected to arrive probably on Monday night.  So we are trying to get the house into order a little bit to be ready for them.  Not too much, though, as that is still a week away.

Dominica didn’t feel like going out tonight so rather than going to Brookhaven I just picked up some Panda Express on the way home from work.

I am thirty seven today.   Thirty seven is one of those milestones that actually makes you feel old.  I am now in my late thirties.  How did that happen?  I can’t believe that forty years old is right around the corner.  I still feel so young.  Sometimes I forget that I am not a kid anymore.

Dominica went into the office early as usual on Mondays.  I got up not long after she went to work.  I am home with the girls today.  Best way to spend a birthday.  I got about an hour or more of work done in the morning before anyone else woke up too.

This morning FedEx stopped by with my birthday surprise.  Dominica got me the new Kindle Paperwhite that I have been wanting.  It is smaller than my current Kindle and, far more importantly, it has a higher resolution and a built in light so that I can read it in the dark which is very important as that is normally where I am trying to read.  She also got me an awesome orange (actually persimmon) case that is perfect for the Kindle.  Fits great, looks great and when you close it it automatically puts the Kindle to sleep making it way easier to use.  This is a touch screen Kindle rather than having a keyboard like my old one.  She also got me The Music Man on BluRay which I have been wanting for a long time.  I think that Liesl is finally old enough to watch some of that stuff.

I got my new Kindle charged up and loaded with books.  I am really looking forward to reading my collection of electronic technology books that I have amassed now.  With my old paper book library mostly going away, having a really nice Kindle for reading my growing collection of eBooks is important.

The girls were angels today.  They spent tons of time playing together.  It was so cute.  They really did a good job playing together today.  Luciana took a four hour nap for me too.  That is very unusual.  I am sure that she is completely exhausted from her weekend in Houston.  She is not used to that level of activity.

After work Dominica hit Walmart to do some shopping then went to Eat St. to get Indian take away for dinner and we ate at home while watching some of Arrested Development which we have only ever watched once and I get that that was in around 2006 or 2007 (I am too lazy to look it up.)  That was a great show and we are really excited to find out that Netflix bought the rights to it and is bring it out for its fourth season, ten years after the original aired, exclusively on Netflix and with the entire original cast.  Very cool.  It is incredibly rare for something like this to happen and it is amazing to finally see the Internet television providers, Netflix and Hulu primarily, commissioning full scale new television programs to be made.  Now if we can only convince Netflix to buy the rights to continue Firefly!  So anyway, we are watching our way through Arrested Development again to get ready for the fourth season which should be releasing in May.

I woke up at seven this morning feeling great.  Apparently sleeping outside really works well for me.  I knew that it would.  I slept wonderfully all night.  I am going to do this more often.  Maybe I should try sleeping in the atrium at home.  That would be pretty cool and I don’t have to worry about being completely outside there.  It is even more enclosed than it is in Joe’s backyard although his backyard is practically completely enclosed.

I was the first one up this morning by thirty minutes followed by Luciana.  From about eight onwards people woke up a little at time until nearly everyone was awake around ten thirty.

I ran out to Donuts, Kolaches and Tacos and picked up a huge breakfast for everyone.  Then I hung out in the theater with a group of the girls as they watched Sinister again and then we watched Blink from Doctor Who.  That wrapped up as the last of the party goers was getting picked up and heading for home.

We didn’t hang out for too much longer, but a bit too long considering the traffic problems in Houston, and then hit the road to drive back to Dallas.  The drive took way too long as we were in stop and go traffic for a while in Houston.

Got home and I spent the evening doing some work that needed to be done that I was unable to get to over the weekend.  But was off to bed before too late.  I got the work done.  Tomorrow is my birthday.

Today is Madeline’s birthday slumber party down in Houston.  We didn’t know when I would get out of work last night and late Friday night drives down to Houston are exhausting so we decided that we would just get up early and try to make it down there this morning.  That often works out better and is far safer since I am not driving so exhausted.

We were up really early and on the road before seven.  The drive was fine and we got to the Grices’ around eleven.  I worked just a little bit and then we headed over to the Toccos’ where the party was kicking off in the mid-afternoon.

The party got started around four, I believe.  There were probably a dozen girls there for the party.  We had all thought that they would hang out inside and use the hot tub outside later on once Joe had a chance to warm it up.  But before anyone knew what was happening everyone was in swimsuits and out in the main pool – which was relatively cold.  I can tell that everyone is getting old that they’ve forgotten how warm you are when you are young and that the continuous “it’s so cold” feeling that we always wondered about with adults doesn’t exist for them.  Now that I am older I see why adults always feel cold, I’m in a fleece nearly around the clock, but I remember when I was young telling myself never to forget that as a child, adults are always cold and kids do not need anywhere near the thermal protection that we project onto them as needing.  But, as expected from my own childhood observations, all the adults have completely forgotten this and feel that rather than being colder themselves, the world itself is now colder and children must, as an artifact of that, be cold too.

Nearly the entire evening of party was out in the pool.  Later on, after there was food, the hot tub was warm and Liesl went out and got into it with the other girls.  Liesl was totally in her element.  She loves having a party and she loves hanging out with older girls.  This is totally Liesl’s scene.  She just had a blast all night and older girls always love having her around because she is so much fun.

After the pool portion of the party was done, Joe set up the theater and we all packed in to watch Mall Cop which Dominica and I have seen before, although I can’t remember where.  It is a cute movie and was one where the little kids could stay and watch too.  Liesl had a good time in the theater with everyone.

After the family friendly movie was over the little kids headed off to bed and the older girls split into three camps… the horror movie in the theater group, the horror movie upstairs group and the sleepy group.  I will never understand the preoccupation that tween and teen girls have with nonsensical, gory, violent films.  The adults mostly moved into the house and watched Clueless together.  Benny and I stayed out in the theater to watch over that group while they watched the relatively awful movie Sinister.

After that all of the girls were terrified and needed me to escort them to and from the house to use the bathroom.  The girls who had watched a horror movie inside the house wanted to join the group in the theater (which is an unattached building) but needed me to escort them out to there as they were scared too.  Bennie ended up going to bed and stealing the room that I was going to share with Liesl.  Liesl ended up camping out in the one slumber party room with some of the other girls.  So I was left with nowhere to sleep except on a couch in the living room (Dominica and Francesca were using the other two couches.)  But I can’t sleep on couches very well.  So I did some thinking about it and was considering sleeping in the theater because I was the last person awake and there was going to be no chaperon watching over that building and being separate didn’t seem like a good idea, but there was no way that I would get sleep in there as they were loud and watching movies all night and giving makeovers and they wouldn’t want me in there.  So I thought about it and took one of the pool lounge chairs, put some towels on it as it was soaked, and moved it over next to the house so that I could plug in my CPAP.  And with just one blanket I curled up outside by the pool and went to bed where I could watch over the theater while not having to intrude on them.

I got up early and got out to downtown Addison where I had breakfast with the Drobo guys.  We had a really good time and I ended up hanging out with them for about two hours.

This was my first time ever doing breakfast down in Addison.  There was a little sidewalk cafe, very New York in style, that had good food and coffee.  It was a nice change of pace and the Mediterranean breakfast that they had is perfect for us vegetarians.  I need to take Dominica down there sometime soon.  A slice of the life that we miss from being back in the north east.

Into the office, then, for a normal, long Friday.  Nothing too remarkable.

I got home far earlier than we had expected.  Often I don’t get home until eight or later on Fridays but today I was home around six which caught Dominica off guard a bit.  I texted our babysitter to let her know that I would be home early so we moved her up from seven thirty to eight so that we could go out earlier.

So at seven thirty Kayla came over and Liesl was very excited, as usual.  It is nice that she got to come over on the early side so that they got three hours or so to play together before Liesl had to head off to bed.  Liesl has so much fun with her.

Dominica and I went out to Redneck for the evening.  The parking was completely insane with people parking on lawns all over the place.  In fact, both Dominica and I experienced our first even parking spot stealer, ever.  Having grown up in the north east where public rudeness of this nature is unthinkable, we find that here in Texas the attitude is a bit different.  People just aren’t as generally friendly in the south as they are in NYC.  They say “hi” more and make more eye contact, but that’s not actually related to being friendly or helpful.  Not that people aren’t friendly or helpful, just not to the same degree.  In the north, we spend our time around people a lot more.  In Texas, the trend is to lock yourself in a car and avoid human contact as much as possible so that things become very antisocial as a result.  Then you act friendly during the tiny slivers of human contact that you are forced to endure day to day.  I’m so used to being ‘around people’ so much more.  I don’t like the antisocial lifestyle here at all.

The wait line to get a table was up to three hours tonight!  Luckily, being regulars, we had a whiskey each and Vanessa found us and took us right to a table bypassing the line.  That was awesome.  After an hour or two some friends joined us.  We had dinner and hung out till around midnight then went to Waffle House as Dominica had been craving a waffle all afternoon.