Sheep Guarding Llama

Got up decently early this morning, around seven thirty.  Did not spend the day working, though.  Mostly today is a day to relax.  I’ve been working like mad for the last several days and am feeling a bit over-taxed.

The Grices packed up this morning and were on the road by the middle of the morning.  Dominica and I set to cleaning the house for about an hour.  It made a dent but only a dent.

I put in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune in the PS3 and played for maybe forty-five minutes.  I am only about two hours into the game, total, if that.  Apparently I never actually get time to really play it.  It is a good game and I move through it at an acceptable pace and I like the story.  I just never get a chance to play.  I would have played a bit more today, I might even had made an attempt at completing the game as it is pretty short, but Luciana could not stop climbing on me as I attempted to play after a certain point and there was just no way for me to make it through some of the more challenging portions like that so I gave up.

This evening I told Liesl that we were going to watch a “daddy movie” because I wanted to relax for a while.  I put in The Man with the Golden Gun and as soon as she saw it was a Bond film she said, “This isn’t a daddy movie.  This is a Liesl movie.  It is a Liesl and daddy movie!”  I am so proud of my girl.  Liesl, Luciana and I all watched The Man with the Golden Gun while Dominica read.  When that movie was over we moved on to The Spy Who Loved Me.  Luciana went to bed pretty early on during the movie after snuggling quite extensively and practically falling asleep on the couch.  Liesl made it to the very end when they were blowing up the secret hideout and then fell asleep on the couch between Dominica and I and had to be carried off to bed.

Liesl is not sick at all, as far as we can tell.  Luciana actually got sick a little this evening during the movies.  I was in the kitchen and she walked in and just threw up a little.  It surprised her, I think, and she suddenly pointed to her feet, which she had gotten, and got a little upset.  Dominica has been rather sick for days and just spent the day on the couch.

So as soon as Liesl was put to bed Dominica went to bed herself.  Way too early for me.

Another full day of Dominica and I having tons of work to do.  When she wasn’t working on the email migration she was helping Bennie as he did work around the house.

People are starting to feel better but there is still a bit of sick going on.  Dominica is definitely the worst.  She has been in rough shape for day.

As we were the stay in and watch the kids people last night, Bennie and I got to go out tonight while the girls stayed home and hung out with the kids.  They were all pretty exhausted anyway and only went out last night because they had been determined to see that movie all week and it was their only chance to do it.  So around the time that Luciana went to bed Bennie and I headed out to Redneck for the night.

We were there for about two hours before Watson decided to join us as well.  The three of us, Watson and Bennie know each other from Liesl’s second birthday party two years ago, had a really good time just hanging out.  We stayed out until they kicked us out 🙂

Just mentioning when Bennie and Watson met makes me realize just how long we have been living in this house now in Carrollton.  This is Liesl’s third birthday being celebrated here!  I can’t believe it.  We have lived in this home for half of Liesl’s life.  She turned one in Walt Disney World, but while we were still living in the Peekskill house.  Then we moved to Texas and lived in the apartment in Las Colinas for so long but apparently not long enough for her to have had a birthday there.  That is what really surprises me.  We managed to always be living in a house when Liesl had a birthday.  This house that seems so new and recent to me has had three of four Liesl birthdays and, of course, every Luciana birthday in it.

Liesl’s actual birthday is not for another few days.

Everyone is still feeling pretty sick around here today.  No one is feeling terrible but no one is feeling particularly great either.

Officially today is not a holiday but, in reality, there is just about no work going on and no one goes into the office today.  So I am home with the family but in the office most of the day.  There is tons of work for me to do and Dominica was completely unable to work yesterday because she was so sick that she never got out of bed so today she is stuck working on that email migration for a large chunk of the day.

Bennie came up and worked on the house a bit today.  He is getting the trim done around the floors so that we don’t have the gaps between the flooring and the walls.  And he trimmed in the new windows in the bar that Art put in last month.  The house is really coming together now.

This evening Dominica ordered in some pizza for Bennie and I and the little ones and she and Francesca took Madeline and Emily to go out and see the last of the Twilight movies in the theater while Bennie and I stayed in and watched the kids and a couple of James Bond movies.

We started with Diamonds Are Forever which was playing when the pizza arrived.  I am loving that I have the entire James Bond collection now.  These are movies that I strongly associate with my childhood.  It is great getting to see them and be able to see them in order and associate them in ways that I couldn’t do very well when I was young because I was always seeing them in an arbitrary order.

The girls were not back yet so we went ahead and watched Live and Let Die.  Liesl joined me for some of the first movie and all of the second one.  She loves snuggling and watching movies finally.  The girls got back before halfway through our second movie.  Most everyone went to bed leaving just Dominica, Liesl, Bennie and I finished up Live and Let Die.

I managed to actually sleep in pretty dramatically today.  That was nice.  It is really rare that I get to do that.  Normally I am up with the girls.  Today the kids all came and climbed into bed with me but Dominica and Francesca were both awake so I didn’t need to get out of bed.  So “slept” in might not be correct, but I didn’t have to actually get out of bed.  Good enough for me.  Madeline managed to go the entire day without getting out of bed at all except to use the bathroom once or twice.  Weird.

Everyone except for Madeline, Luciana and I ended up getting sick at some point today.  Dominica had to go back to bed before noon and never got back up again.  Francesca went down for a three hour midday nap.  Liesl was doing great all day and was playing outside as it started to get dark and all of a sudden, without any warning, she ran into the kitchen and threw up.  Whatever this is, it seems to come very suddenly and without any kind of warning.

I worked like crazy all day. Very busy.  This migration is a huge pain and seems like it will never end.  So much work and this has been going on for nearly a year.  There have been some huge gaps but this is a major project demanding a ridiculous amount of my time for some pretty silly stuff.  But it is all Linux and MySQL stuff that no one else can reasonably do so that leaves me dealing with all of it.  not fun, but what can you do?

This whole day was pretty much dominated by the sick family and the migration work.  Nothing else really happened at all.  At one point Emily and I ran out to McDonald’s and picked up a small amount of food for the few people well enough to eat.  Then Emily came into the office and I talked her through our huge slew of vacation pictures as she had never really seen them.

Once everyone had gone to bed I took the laptop and headed off to Redneck Heaven which is always open and set up to work from a table in the back.  I had some barbecue shrimp as my Thanksgiving Dinner since I didn’t have anything for Thanksgiving all day.  This is

Bennie is coming up tomorrow at some point and is going to help get the flooring and bar work completed that Dominica and I cannot do.  Dominica and I have a ton of work to do tomorrow as well.

After working very late, till nearly three, last night, I was up at seven thirty and starting the day early today.  I am working from home today and tomorrow is a holiday.  As far as I know I will be home on Friday too although I am not certain of that.  I have to work Friday but I think that nothing will be going on, going into the office would be silly.  So for all intents and purposes, today begins a five day weekend.

My first project of the day was to upgrade my desktop from Linux Mint 13, which I have been running for a couple of months, to Linux Mint 14 which just released and to document the process.  I like running on the latest all of the time.

Katie got a new job today and is working on her paperwork this morning.  She is moving from New York City down to Tampa Bay and moving into a more senior role there.  She is very excited.  She has been job hunting for a while trying to find something that was a good job, had good pay and were relocate her someplace that she wanted to go.  A tough combination.

It was a super slow day at work today.  It was awesome.  I got to be home and it effectively felt like it was a holiday.  I am sure that I am home on Friday as well.  So this is like a five day weekend!  There will be nothing happening on Friday whatsoever, that I can be sure of.

This afternoon Dominica and I have tons of work beginning as we each begin migration projects so our evening was super busy as well be the next few days as we work on that.  So starting at four this evening we started our work and were super busy.

Late tonight Dominica, Francesca and Emily watched the last released Twilight movie (I know, I’m embarrassed for them too) so that they can go to the theater tomorrow to watch the last one that just came out.

I ended up working very late tonight, till probably two in the morning.  I am very anxious to get this project over and done with.