November 9, 2012: Out Dancing at Cool River

It is Friday and I am in the office as usual.  Went to lunch with Dan as we are want to do on Fridays.

After work I came home and hung out with the girls all evening.  Around ten I headed out to Cool River to go dancing with Chris and some of the other ballroom folk.  Dominica has been out to Cool River before so tonight was my turn.  I was not very impressed, though.  The dancing was pretty lame.  No one does any formal dancing whatsoever and the dance floor is smokey and nothing but a bunch of people jumping up and down.  It was pretty silly.  We did our best to dance and I did manage to do some salsa, cha cha, calypso and latin hustle but there was no room and no one appreciated the moves.  Not my scene.  I’m not sure why they try to go to Cool River.  This seems like the worst possible place to try to dance.  It was kind of fun but overall, it wasn’t very entertaining.

November 8, 2012: Dominica’s First Symphony

I left work on the early side this evening and drove up to Lewisville to pick up our babysitter and then down to the house to get ready as quickly as possible.  Liesl was so excited to see her babysitter.  They get along great and have a lot of fun playing together.

I got into my new olive green suit and Dominica and I were out the door.  We drove over to Trinity Station and took the Green Line downtown to Akard so that we could walk over to the Tower Club for dinner.  This was, surprisingly, Dominica’s first time going to the Tower Club!

It was around six thirty when we arrived so we did not have a lot of time for dinner but the Tower Club is used to people needing to make shows as the Arts District is a short walk away.  We had a really good dinner and Dominica really enjoyed getting to go to the Tower Club, finally.  The food and the view was excellent and we pretty much had the dinning room to ourselves.  It was  a really nice evening.

We did really well on time and got over to the symphony without any problem.  I had forgotten to bring the tickets so had to hit will call to pick up reprints.  Our seats were excellent, though, six row center.  Tonight’s performance was Britten’s War Requiem which is a very famous but very depressing piece.  Not necessarily the best piece for Dominica to have experienced for her first ever full symphony performance.  They did an excellent job with it but it is a hard piece to sit through, that is for sure.

After the show we headed back to the train and rode back up to Trinity Mills Station and went home.  Dominica drove Kayla back home and I stayed to watch the kids who were already asleep.

We had a really nice time tonight.  It is great being able to get out to have a nice night out like this once in a while.  We are so thankful to have a real babysitter now too!

November 6, 2012: Dinner with the Vielmas

I was in the office today.  Nothing special, just another day.  After work I came home and helped Dominica get the girls out the door to go to kids’ night at Brookhaven Country Club.  We have been trying to coordinate going out to dinner with the Vielmas for several weeks and have not been able to pull it off.  Finally tonight Kim and the kids were able to meet us at Brookhaven for dinner.  Armando tried to make it but got stuck late at work so had to call off at the last second but at least the rest of us managed to get together.

We tried eating outside and thought that that would work well as there were so many of us (seven) but it was chillier than we had realized and no one, except me who plans better, was dressed warmly enough to be outside so we changed plans and ate inside instead.  I did a really good job and only had the really healthy blacked salmon salad tonight.  Kim and the kids seemed to really enjoy eating at the club too.  They had a good time.

November 5, 2012: Lunch at Ernie’s

I woke up nice and early this morning.  One of the few benefits to Daylight Savings Time.  Of course, Liesl and Luciana were up early as well.  So maybe it is not all that much of a benefit, lol.

I got into the office and Dominica was trying to schedule me to come home to watch the kids but we had both forgotten that I had a lunch appointment today.  Thank goodness for my online calendar that keeps me on track.

So after a long and productive morning (because I made it in early) I was off to North Richland Hills to have lunch with a friend from Spiceworks so that we could talk about Elastix-based PBXs and VoIP concerns that he has as he works on a VoIP migration for his company.  We got lunch at Ernie’s Seafood out there which is excellent.  I love their food there.  They are like a family dinner come seafood restaurant.  Good prices and excellent food in a casual setting.  I get the grilled salmon which is really tasty.

We had a good lunch meeting and I think that I was able to impart a lot of good information.  I earned my fish.

After work I came home for a bit and saw the family.  Then it was off to Las Colinas for ballroom dancing lessons.  I keep trying to get Dominica to go on Monday but she always sends me to do the lessons.  It is hard to get her out of the house even when I offer to stay home and watch the kids.

Ballroom is going well and I am teaching more and more of the time.