Sheep Guarding Llama

Went into the office today.  It is Friday and a busy one fitting between the election, storm and the Thanksgiving holiday.  So we are packed with deployments today.  I spent the entire morning rushing from one deployment to another as quickly as I could coordinate them.  That was exhausting but it does cause the day to fly by quickly.

It was nearly one when Dan and I made our regular Friday run up to Lewisville for lunch.  We didn’t have much time today, just too much going on but we didn’t want to sit around the office all day unnecessarily either.

After work, which ran pretty late because of a huge load of deployments, I rushed home as best as I could loaded the kids into the Acadia and we were off for Houston.  We thought that we were going to make great time being on the road before seven but almost immediately hit really heavy traffic and it took more than two hours just to cross Dallas!

It was nearly midnight when we pulled into the Grices’.  Straight off to bed for us.  The drive went fine, it just lasted forever.

Today is my work from home day for the week.  This was a bit of a pain since the Spark was down at the office because Dan had to take it back to work yesterday and he still had my keys.  So after getting up this morning we had to orchestrate getting down to the office to pick up the car and bring it back home.

So I started off the day working for a bit then once Dominica and the kids were ready we went down to deal with the car.  Dominica ended up taking the Acadia in to have the tired filled and the inspection done before getting it back home. She was home about the same time that I was, though, as I stayed at work for a little bit plus dealt with the air in the Spark’s tired too.  Getting the cars and getting them back to the house was a multi-hour exercise so there was a ton of wasted time this morning.  That wasn’t fun.

I spent the rest of the day working from home but was very busy so we barricaded in my office for the bulk of the day.

This evening I hung out with the family for a little bit.  Tonight is our salsa class in Arlington.  No luck on a babysitter tonight so we had to choose who would go.  I wanted Dominica to go because she has not been out dancing in a while but she made me go even though I wanted the evening at home.

So I drove out to Arlington and danced for a few hours.  I spent most of the evening teaching as we had a number of new people and I have a lot more experience than most anyone else that was there tonight.  I am teaching more and more often.

I came home in time to help put Liesl to bed.  I rushed home so that I would get there before she fell asleep.  Our bed time routine is our favourite part of the day.

I went into work this morning at the office.  The day started out about as typical as can be expected.  The weather has been wonderful – slightly crisp but bright and sunny, just how I love an autumn day.  We’ve had that for several days now.

This morning in the office wasn’t too bad.  I was pretty busy just trying to keep up with my normal work.  I have been fasting so no lunch for me.  Dan brought a lunch but we were both in the mood to escape the office for a bit so we went out for a liquid lunch rather than just sitting in the office all through the lunch “hour”.

Dominica went out and did some shopping today for custom framing for our paintings that we brought back from Madrid.  We have really been looking forward to getting them framed and up on our walls.  Michael’s is having a huge sale on custom framing so we are trying to take advantage of that.  Sadly the custom framing was still over seven hundred dollars even with two major discounts!  I always forget just how expensive this stuff is.

While Dan and I were at “lunch” Dominica called to say that she had left a cupboard door open over her desk and she had stood up and the door had caught her on the upper part of her nose between her eyes and she was in really rough shape and thought that she might need to go to the emergency room.  So we rushed to the house and I gave Dan the car keys and he went back to work with the Chevy Spark that I will have to figure out how to retrieve later.

Jim ran over to the house, he was off work today, and watched the girls while I ran Dominica to urgent care until Kayla could get to the house as she was just getting off of work.  They were able to get her in pretty quickly and got her wound cleaned out, glued shut and added some tape strips to hold it together for now.  They didn’t feel that the scarring would be bad at all and likely would not be noticeable unless someone was really looking for it.  Dominica has been terrified that it would really scar since it is right in the middle of her face.  But it really does not look like it will be too bad.

We had to run to CVS to pick up some antibiotic for Dominica just as a precaution so that the wound does not get infected.  Then we came home, relieved Kayla of the girls and had a quiet evening at home just the family.

For dinner Dominica had me run over to Eat St. Kabob Factory to pick her up some curry, paneer tikka masala with rice and naan, for dinner. We are loving having them right around the corner.  This is a huge improvement over the food options that we have known about in our local area thus far.  It really makes living in Carrollton that much better.  Simple, delicious, affordable Indian right around the corner.  As we piece together the food and other options in our area we are really liking where we chose to live.  We lucked out.

We finished watching Thunderball tonight and started watching You Only Live Twice, but like last night, we were ready for bed before we had a chance to make it all of the way through it.  Dominica was falling asleep on the couch.  Liesl stayed up until after eleven!  Even Luciana was up decently late tonight.

I will be working from home tomorrow although I need to figure out how I am going to deal with getting the Spark back since I have neither the keys nor the car in my possession at this point.  The day after tomorrow we are heading down to Houston for the weekend so that we can celebrate the “Siblings’ Thanksgiving” down there and also celebrate Liesl’s birthday.  I can’t believe that my little girl is turning four!

I love short work weeks. Today is Tuesday but it seems like my Monday since I had a three day weekend.  I went into the office today.  Things are picking up after the last freeze that we had and the long weekend.  Everyone is in a rush to get things done now in the few weeks before the big winter freeze goes into effect.

At lunch I had to run up to Carrollton to give a storage presentation and talk about risk analysis, costs, etc.  That went really well.  Then back to the office.

A relaxing evening with the family tonight.  We hung out for a while watching reruns (if you can call anything on Netflix a rerun) of Family Guy until later on in the evening, around eight, when Luciana headed off to bed and Dominica decided to sent me out to Target to get her chocolate covered almonds which she had been craving.  We wanted to watch a movie too and I had been in the mood to watch some James Bond so she agreed to get a Bond film on BluRay so I set out to find one.

At Target they had one boxed set of the entire James Bond collection, twenty-two films, all on BluRay.  We currently only own two and there are many in the middle, the ones that I like best, that Dominica has never seen.  So I went crazy and bought the boxed set.  I came back home, got dirty looks and we set about watching about two-thirds of Thunderball.  In the not too distant past I have watched the first three Bond films so am picking up where I left off on a quest to watch the entire series from start to finish which should be interesting.

Liesl seems to like them.  Not as much as she likes watching Doctor Who, which she requests regularly, but she does like them.

Today is a holiday so I am home from work even though it is a Monday.  I have a ton of backlogged work that really needs my attention so today was one of those days where I moved into the office at the back of the house and camped out for the entire day.  The girls would make regular trips in to visit with me, but it was mostly like I was stuck at the office.  Not all that exciting.  I did get just tons and tons of stuff accomplished today, though.  Very productive, so I feel good about it.

At seven I ran down to Las Colinas for my Monday night dancing lessons at the Studios at Las Colinas.  This evening it was almost entirely people that I have not seen before.  That was very surprising.  None of the regulars, except for Chris and Kim, were there at all.  This is the first time that I have gone to a lesson and had almost everyone be new, other than the very first time.  I learned the basics of the jitterbug, also known as the east coast swing, tonight.  Dominica learned how to jitterbug one evening that she attended lessons that I could not be there so hopefully we will be able to try jitterbugging together soon, now.

I left dancing a little early, knowing that I had tons of work to do and hoping to make it home in time to put Liesl to bed, but Dominica had just put her to bed when I left the studios so I did not get to read her her stories or tuck her in tonight.

This evening I was up until around three in the morning working on test assessments that I am writing for four certifications.  I am working on Linux, UNIX, Windows 2012 and Red Hat Linux 6 exams currently.  I enjoy the work and am extremely thankful to have it but boy does it make me busy.