Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is our one day to actually hang out with Grey.  He arrived yesterday and tomorrow is the class (and I need to go to the office anyway) and then Tuesday he flies back to Denver in the morning.  So today is the only really clear day and there is plenty of work to be done while he is in town too.

We pretty much did not leave the house today at all.  But we did get a lot of work done and Grey managed to get everything ready for his class tomorrow evening which Dominica is going to be taking as well.

We did a little setup today and played with the kids a lot.  They really do go crazy when there is someone new in the house to harass.  Liesl especially expected Grey to play with her non-stop all day.

We were decently busy but did not really do all that much.  For dinner Dominica made apple dumplings and Grey made cheddar cheese biscuits and two pineapple upside down cakes.  Probably not the best round of dinner choices but it was all really delicious.

At eight Grey and I went out to Redneck where he had arranged to meet some of his friends from the line game Eve that he plays.  We hung out with them for about an hour and I learned more about Eve then I ever would have guessed that I ever would before Watson arrived to join our group.  Watson and I ended up spending more of the evening out on the patio, the weather was really nice tonight so with a light fleece it was perfect to be outside.

Grey and I stayed until nearly closing time.  It was a fun night.

Lots of house cleaning this morning and moving Luciana from her bedroom into Liesl’s for a few days.  Luciana will sleep in Liesl’s room and Liesl will sleep in her portable cot in our room.  Liesl kind of likes this even though she does not like the bed as much because she likes sleeping in the same room as us.

I got some work done this morning but not much.  The house is looking good, though.  We’ve actually kept it clean, basically, this whole week.

Grey’s flight was supposed to get in at five minutes until four.  I am used to dealing with DFW where that means that there is no need to leave the house until after that point as it takes forever to get through baggage claim and out to the curb.  Love Field is also much closer to us than DFW.

So Grey was actually walking to the curb even before I left the house!  Oops. In theory Love Field is incredibly close to us too.  But, of course, with traffic and lights it took nearly forty minutes to get to him.  Ugh.

So the total round trip was nearly an hour an a half to get down to the airport, collect Grey and get back up to the house.

We spent the afternoon hanging out at the house.  Liesl and Luciana were kind of crazy having someone new to play with in the house.  Grey had work to do, as did I, so he put in a bit of time working from his colossal laptop in the living room.

This evening, for dinner, we all went out to eat at Eat St. on Trinity Mills which, as always, was excellent.  Liesl loves going there and getting rice.  Luciana loves eating naan dipped in a little curry.

We were all off to bed a little on the early side tonight.  Tomorrow will be a busy day.

Today is my day back in the office after one day in Austin and one at home with the girls.  Today is also the last day of work before going into the winter freeze so this is one of the really busy days of the year.  My requests were coming in starting early in the morning and going continuously all day long.  It was pretty exhausting.

Surprisingly I was actually able to take lunch today. A short one, but lunch all the same.  Dan was in the office too so we went out and got something to eat.  Had to be a little bit of a rush, though, and we were on Blackberries the whole time making sure that nothing bad was happening at the office.

Every time that I write that today it makes me realize just how weird it is that we still have Blackberries.  It sounds ridiculous to say.  Who uses a Blackberry today?  Just looking at the Blackberry it looks old and outdated.  It works fine for what it is but it is so dramatically less useful than my iPhone, except for the battery life, which is only good because it doesn’t do anything.  Having to carry around a second device just to get email for the office is very 2008.  That isn’t that long ago but it already feels absurd to have to do it today.

It was pretty late when I finally got home.  We hung out for just a little bit.  Luciana stayed up late so that she could see me before going to bed.

Grey arrives tomorrow early in the afternoon.  So we are getting up and cleaning before I have to run to Love Field to pick him up.  He is staying with us until Tuesday of next week.

I was supposed to be at Dell World today in Austin but came back late last night as there was no WiFi at the conference and I was unable to work effectively.  No way to be there again today so I am home.  I was already off for the day so I stayed at home and worked from there so that I could get some time with the girls.

I had tons of work to do having been away yesterday and with Grey coming to visit this weekend.  The house was actually decently clean so that was not a major issue but we did  continue to do a little cleaning to get it ready but mostly I was holed up in my office getting work done.

Dominica went to work this morning and was supposed to just work for a few hours but it ended up being a full day of work for her so it was really good that I had stayed home with the girls because that would have been unnecessarily expensive and I would not have gotten to see them.  We had a good time being home together and I am getting used to being the lone parent on these days when I watch them.

Getting up this morning was not an easy task.  I slept in longer than I should have but still, only four hours of sleep or less.  Not much at all after a very long day and today was certain to be a very long day no matter what.

I showered and got ready to go out for the day.  Dominica got up and packed for me so that I could leave more quickly and then went back to bed as quickly as she could so that she could get some sleep.

It was after eight when I left the house to drive down to Austin.  Of course, being so tired, I forgot my cell phone so I did a loop around the  block and drove back to the house to go and get it.  What a pain.  The car was nearly out of fuel as well so my first stop was at the 7-Eleven in Josey Ranch to fuel up and pick up a Monster Ultra Zero to kick start my day.  Then, after that, finally I was on the road.

I really made good time driving south.  But I had not been forewarned that today was the FOMC call so I had to find a way to work before eleven thirty which did not give me enough time to get to the conference center in Austin.  So I stopped just north of Georgetown, Texas and grabbed a bite at the McDonald’s there and set up the laptop so that I could work.

Of course, my laptop has a new, but not quite working, installation of Windows 8 on it and took a full half an hour to start up . That was not good.  I nearly missed the call.  I worked from McDonald’s for about an hour before packing the Folio 13 back up and getting back on the road.

While I was at McDonald’s I managed to watch the NYC timer count down to the time and date hitting the quadrice in a lifetime number of 12.12.12 12.12.12.  The next similar sextet of repeating numbers in the time and date will not come again until the inconvenient time of one second past one minute past one in the morning on January the first, 2101.  What was cooler was eight hundred years ago when they had 12.12.1212 12.12.12 but very few people would have known it.

Since I had to stop I had already accepted that I was not making it in time to hit the opening keynote speech done jointly by Michael Dell and President Clinton.

I got into Austin around one.  I found the convention center easily enough and did one big loop around and managed to find some parking not far away for five dollars.  Not bad at all.  So I parked and walked to the convention center.

I got registered and it was lunch time so I took a quick loop of the trade floor which was nicely done, grabbed a vegetarian boxes lunch and settled in at one of the little demonstration areas to listen to a talk on SharePoint 2013, which was decently interesting.  Then I found a place where I could set up with the laptop and get to work.

To my chagrin, and surprise, there was no working WiFi at Dell World!  I would never have guessed.  I tried several access points and spent thirty to sixty minutes trying to figure out how to get online so that I could work.  I was on my iPhone and BlackBerry all day but I did need to be on my laptop too.  This was not good at all.  Without the ability to work, I can’t stay in Austin.  I will have to go back up to Dallas.

There was nothing that I could do right away.  So I searched around and found where my next session was scheduled to be and I went in there.  I managed to catch a different session that wasn’t very interested or informative that spilled over the session that I was supposed to be in and then they kicked us out of the room.  It made no sense to me.  I checked the schedule over and over again.  I gave up trying to figure out where to be or what was going on.  The organization was poor and nothing was labeled.

So since I had neither Internet access nor did I have a way to find sessions that interested me or that had space available for me to just pop in I decided to just bypass rush hour traffic and head up north out of town to Andy and Miranda’s house and wait for them.  That took me just under an hour to get up there.  I have never seen their house here in Austin and, in fact, I have not seem them in person for just over two years!  The last time that we saw them was at Liesl’s second birthday party right after we had moved into our new house in Carrollton.  Liesl’s fourth birthday party was a few weeks ago.  It has been a very long time.  I was supposed to meet them around five thirty but got up to the house just after four.

I actually wrote today’s post in MS Word with the laptop on my laptop while sitting in the Chevy Spark in the West’s driveway waiting for Miranda to get home to let me in.

Miranda got home about an hour before Andy did so we got to hang out and she gave me a tour of the house.  That was around five thirty.  Then Andy got in around six thirty.  It is crazy that I have not seen them in two years, not since Liesl’s second birthday party when they last came up to Dallas and saw our new house.  They still have not met Luciana!

We hung out at the house for about an hour.  Their house is really nice.  Dominica would be very jealous is she came down to see it.  Our house seems so tiny by comparison.  And it is, about half the square footage.  They have two living rooms and a dedicated theater room.  Then we went out to dinner; we got Mexican.  We just hung out at the house till a quarter after ten then I got on the road and drove the long road back up to Dallas.  That should be just under a three hour drive coming from their house in Cedar Park but between being exhausted and not having cruise control on the Spark it took me much longer.  I had to make several stops and just walk around to make sure that I was staying awake as I have been running on no sleep at all.

So it was after two when I finally got home and plopped into bed.  At least I am home a day early and instead of going two whole days without seeing my girls I will actually get to spend the entire day with them tomorrow rather than sending them off to daycare like we had been expecting.  So a double bonus of saving money and getting to be home with the girls.  Dominica is going to work as usual tomorrow.