Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

I got up only about fifteen minutes after Dominica this morning and was in the office working before she was out the door.  So I got a good, early start.  Probably about six thirty.  We’ve been moving both our and the kids’ bedtimes forward dramatically.  Luciana is in bed just a little after eight and we were in bed before ten.

We had a dark and gloomy morning.  There was a light rain when I first got up and it got moderately heavy for much of the early morning. Ciana was up before eight and Liesl not long after.  I set them up in the storm-darkened living room with the big screen and let them watch The Fresh Beat Band there which they really liked.

The morning flew by but I wasn’t able to get very much done.  The interruptions were just often enough to keep me from being able to be productive.

Dominica left work at noon and did some shopping before coming home.  I was able to do a little bit more in the afternoon with her around.

Today is dad’s first full day back home in New York.  So far the girls aren’t doing too badly.  But it’s not been very long yet.  We will see how they come, say, the weekend.  Although we are going to Houston this coming weekend so that will distract them until next week.  It is amazing how packed our schedule is, we seem to just have one event running into another.

I was into the office early today.  Worked through lunch.  Back home at a good time.  Mostly uneventful workday.

This evening was mostly hanging out as a family.  We used the new home theater a bit.  We are really liking that, as are the girls.  They are getting used to having it now and Luciana especially thinks that it is really neat.

I am home tomorrow as my work from home day.

I was ready earlier than I had expected to be so started walking and dad picked me up out about half a mile from the house.  So I got a tiny bit of exercise in this morning and cut off an unnecessary part of the drive that he would have to have made to have picked me up.  Dominica and the girls were still asleep so we weren’t going to wake them up anyway – they all said goodbye last night.

It was an easy drive into the airport.  Grabbed my morning Monster energy drinks on the way past the office, since my office is right next to the airport, and got dad in a few minutes earlier than he had been hoping so he had plenty of time for a relaxing, leisurely check in for his day of flying.  He is leaving “no jackets needed” weather to return to the heavy snows of New York.  At least he managed to miss the really big blizzard that hit this year.  That worked out really well.

I got into the office on the early side and managed to leave just a little on the early side so that I could run home, meet up with Dominica and the girls and immediately drive them to Brookhaven for the annual Dallas Zoo Night.  Liesl had so much fun last year that we definitely wanted to make it tonight too.  Luciana is old enough to enjoy it now so we are hoping that it works out well.

We are having a whole day of the Miller Family being early.  We were the very first family sitting down to eat for what was eventually a full house.  We got there minutes before the official start of the evening at five thirty.  The food was quite good and a nice departure.  That’s one of the reasons that I really like making an effort to do the special events is because of the additional food variety.

The zoo show started at six thirty with the same girls from the Dallas Zoo and a few of the same animals, but mostly new ones, from last year’s show.  Liesl tried going up on her own to sit with all of the children but quickly got anxious from there being too many people packed too closely together and came back to sit on Dominica’s lap in the front row of the seating area rather than on the floor with the kids.  Luciana sat on a chair next to me.

It was a nice evening and made it a lot easier for it to be the first day with dad having left as there was plenty of distraction for the girls.

Today is dad’s last full day in Texas.  Dominica was up early and off to work.  I slept in a bit more though not nearly as late as you would think.  The girls really don’t let me sleep in all that much even at the best of times.

Dad and I got a lot more time to hang out today.  He also got most of our new receiver shelf built and put up in the bar.  We’ll need to finish mounting it and paint it but I think that it is going to work really well.  I am hoping to give a go at running some cables through the room overhang to make the projector connect transparently to the receiver through it.

This afternoon, while Luciana was sleeping, Liesl wanted to play catch for the first time ever.  I had shown her that Dominica had found a velcro mit and tennis ball catch game in the garage on a recent cleaning spree and Liesl was very keen to try it out.  The weather was awesome – bright and sunny and plenty warm.  So in just t-shirt and jeans we all went to the back yard (which with all of the new mulch and tiles is dramatically cleaner than it used to be) and spent quite some time playing Liesl’s first ever game of catch.  That was a lot of fun.

Dominica brought home Panda Express at dad’s request for his final meal.  We were still outside playing catch when she got home.  We watched Grace and Favour while we ate.  Then we hooked up dad’s laptop and we watched a video that dad had made of Jenny Case being interviewed about and then performing a song that she had written about mom. It was incredibly touching and Luciana climbed onto my laptop to watch the whole thing.

After dinner, everyone but me went up to Ikea in Frisco so that dad could do some shopping.  Dominica got stuff too but it was really a trip for dad to check out some furniture options.  This is his first time ever going to an Ikea, so this was a bit of an experience for him.  Dominica got tables and chairs for the girls’ school room and a new shelving unit for the kitchen area to help get some of our non-stop house mess cleaned up.

After that trip dad was pretty tired and wanted to get to the hotel early to be sure that he could be packed, rested and out the door early in the morning.  I’m taking him to DFW airport on my way into the office tomorrow morning.