Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Another day of being on top of SGL.  I could get used to this.  Once upon a time I was on top of these posts every day.

I got into the office at nine this morning.  Not too busy of a day but I wanted to get as much done as possible as Dominica and I are going to a place in Carrollton today where I am demonstrating a MediaWiki installation on CentOS while she is “interviewing” for a part time desktop support position.

I ran home at lunch and picked Dominica up and then we ran in so that I could work and she could interview.  We ended up being far busier than I had planned but did the MediaWiki install, even though they were not ready for me at all without knowing their IP addresses, user accounts or anything.  And Dominica’s interview seemed to go really well and, if all goes well, she should be getting scheduled for work starting next week.  Fingers crossed that everything gets approved.  It is only ten to twelve hours a week but that would be really helpful and nice for her to get some time out of the house too.

Back to work and the afternoon was actually decently busy.  I wasn’t able to get out of work until nearly six.  It was already dark and I was running really late for meeting up with Dominica and Francesca and the kids for dinner at Brookhaven so I drove straight there.  Traffic was pretty heavy since it was rush hour but I got over there just as they arrived as well.

It turns out that Brookhaven was completely packed and our reservations were lost.  So we had to find alternative plans.  No one but me had thought to bring a jacket so sitting outside was not an option.

We decided to go try the new Diner of Dallas up on Beltline.  On the way there we stopped for a while and checked out the massive Christmas lights display that we saw last year too.  It is a little larger this year and mostly set up.  The guy who runs it was running the trains tonight and the kids got to ride the train for a while.  We got some pics and video and got them uploaded.

Dinner at the diner was good.  We ate then came home.  I spent the evening working in the office.  Got a lot done.  I will be working from home tomorrow.