Sheep Guarding Llama

This is our quiet weekend at home.  Knowing that we are all going to be traveling this week, Dominica and the girls to Houston and me to Chicago, we wanted to just spend time together as a family.  Plus we were out last night so didn’t get much time with the girls.  Watching Dr. Who and staying home is our main activity.

It is so awesome that Liesl loves watching Dr. Who.  It is great that we have broken through that entertainment barrier to where she likes to watch the same shows that we do.  She still likes her kids shows, of course, but she actually requests our shows.  I think that what she really likes is being able to watch them with us knowing that when we watch our shows that we stay and hang out with her whereas when we watch her shows we tend to stop in and leave pretty quickly to do something else.  So to get solid time snuggling on the couch she has to choose one of our shows instead.

Normal day at the office.  Nothing particularly worthwhile to report.  Our only real thing today was that a whole slew of us all went out tonight for a full evening out on the town.  The “town” being Lewisville, of course, which is a funny place to use the phrase “out on the town”, but I digress.  We had a really good night.  About seven or eight of us all went out.  Watson, Tim, the Vielmas, Chris, Dominica and I – way more people than we normally get for an evening out.  We didn’t do anything exciting, just did dinner and drinks and hung out all evening.  It is really rare that Dominica and I both get to go out at the same time and especially on a Friday night.  Having a babysitter finally is really great.

Worked from home this morning for just a little bit because I needed to go give a talk on, and review some storage recommendations, for a small network overhaul project.  This was one of those “everyone you have spoken to is crazy and trying to take massive advantage of you” talks that actually went over exceedingly well and everyone was able to understand the actual business implications of what I was saying and appreciated me bringing a technical, rather than a sales, approach to the entire process.  I left feeling very good about the process and feeling appreciated for having actually saved someone money and protected them from both overspending and from overall technical risk.  A major win on the personal success scale.

Then it was into the office and I worked through the lunch hour.  No food for me today since it is Thursday and I have to go to Medifast this afternoon for my check in.  I always avoid eating on Thursdays so that my weight in isn’t so bad.

I had my Medifast meeting at twenty till three, then back to the office.  This evening, after work, I drove down to Arlington to go to the Brickhouse to do salsa dancing for the evening.  That went pretty well and, for the first time, I was introduced to people as a trainer!  I spent almost the entire night not learning salsa but actually teaching the steps to others, mostly new people but some of the existing students as well.  That was really encouraging that they felt good enough to have me introducing new people to salsa dancing already.

Another “nothing in particular” day.  I worked from home today so got to see the girls all day.  Pretty slow day.  Work has been super slow recently.  I like that.

I am heading to Chicago in less than a week.  That should be fun, flying up and back in 24 hours.  I haven’t been to Chicago, except the airport, more than twice in my life.  Once for a weekend when I was about twelve and once for just a few minutes in my early twenties doing a quick drive from Rochester to Gary, Indiana and back to help someone move stuff from their apartment really quickly – that trip was twenty hours total including both legs and all of the time loading the truck.  So it will be nice to get to spend a little time, very little, in Chicago and see it again.  It has been at least twenty two years if not twenty six since I stood downtown.

Went to Redneck early tonight.  Not sure why I was there early.  I don’t remember at this point.  But according to FourSquare I was there just after nine which means that Liesl was still awake but Luciana was not.  I don’t normally go out that early because I wait for them to be asleep and normally for Dominica to be heading to bed before I go out so I was probably meeting someone like Watson for drinks but I honestly can’t remember.  So I’ll just speculate that I was hanging out with Watson tonight and was home early.

In the office today.  It has been nearly seven years that I’ve been with the same firm, so “going to the office” is pretty awfully generic.  Every day is basically like any other.  It is nice because it is low key and not stressful in any real way but it is bad because there is no adventure or excitement.  For the most part, it is really quite boring.  Even busy days are only busy, not challenging.

At lunch, Dan and I went to Redneck, big surprise.  After work I stopped off at Our Place, which comes highly recommended for their Indian cuisine, and got takeout to bring back home to Dominica. She really likes it when I bring home dinner – which I really should not do because it is never as healthy as eating at home but it is so hard to resist.

So we ate our Indian curries and watched Dr. Who this evening as a family.