Sheep Guarding Llama

After being so tired yesterday everything thought for sure that I would be sleeping in super late this morning.  But not so much.  I got up around seven thirty and at nine went in to Brookhaven to go work out at the gym.  I didn’t do a huge workout but I got around forty minutes in.  I feel good about it, I am just getting back into the swing of working out so taking it a little easy.

I got home and pretty soon thereafter Chris came over and he, Dominica and I spent about two hours working on some brochure designs.  We made good progress and almost have something that we can use.

Because Luciana’s nap we decided to go to Oktoberfest in Addison which we tried to go to the last two days.   We made it with only minutes to spare before the price doubled at five o’clock.  This is Dominica’s first time really being in Addison, she had no idea what the town was actually like other than the restaurant row on Beltline.  It is really a neat community.

It was blazing hot today, though.  Nearly one hundred degrees which is pretty ridiculous for going to an outdoor event, and one with just thousands of people.  It was way, way too crowded for us, not really fun at all.  It took us at least half an hour, if not an hour, to find Brian Watson and meet up with him.  We tried going in the beer hall and it was packed beyond capacity.  We got one beer each and gave up on getting more as it was too hot.  We split a red velvet funnel cake.  That was it.  We decided that we would call it a day.  The crowd was too much, the food too limited and unhealthy (and not German at all) and it was just too hot.  And honestly, we were just in Munich a few months ago at the actual beer hall that they are mimicking here and at the actual beer garden that they wished that they could match.  So this was a pretty sad imitation.  And in Germany there is a farmer’s market and a fish restaurant serving the beer garden, not funnel cake and meat on a stick stands.

We were hungry and needed actual food so went to Antonio’s, or something like that, right on the main circle in Addison across the street from the Oktoberfest.  That was a really good meal, completely off diet, but good.

We got home and Luciana took a nap right away.

This evening Dominica went out dancing in Las Colinas and I stayed home watching the kids.  She had a really good time and got a serious workout.  She was sweating like crazy, as if she had been running.  They danced for about four hours.

Today is our last day with renters in our house in Peekskill.  If anyone wants to rent a house there, let me know super quickly because we are putting it up through the real estate office on Monday and it will be even more expensive at that point.

I am absolutely exhausted today.  I only got two hours of sleep last night and I hurts just to keep my eyes open today.  I feel like I could just keel over at any minute.

I’m in the office for my third day at the new facility.  I got stuck in a meeting over lunch but went later with Doue to get sandwiches at Potbelly.  I have not had a Potbelly sandwich in quite a long time, that is SO good.  I forget how good they are.

Work was, overall, pretty slow today which was really good since it was all that I could do to keep my eyes focused on the monitors.

Dominica discovered this afternoon that our garage door doesn’t close anymore.  The wheels have popped out of the track.  There is little doubt that this is caused by the unbelievable amount of foundation shift that has happened in the garage.  There is a two millimeter crack splitting the garage at this point with one side a little lower than the other.  We are really getting into a panic that our foundation is failing.

We ended up deciding that the cost was too high and that there was too little food, if any, for us to eat at Oktoberfest so we skipped it tonight and instead just took the kids to Waffle House for a nice, relaxing evening.  Other than that we just stayed in.  Chris came by later on in the evening to do some work on a brochure.

Dominica and I went to bed early, around eleven.  I’ve been running on almost no sleep for weeks and got nearly none at all last night so really need tonight to do some catchup.

I did not go to the gym today because Brookhaven didn’t bill us correctly and our account was suspended for the day.  Argh.  It is all set to be back on tomorrow.

Today is my first day back in the office this week.  With two days at home taking care of the girls it barely feels like a work week.  Except, of course, for the fact that I ended up working long day and the girls completely wore me out not giving me any amount of time to myself to relax or even to hear myself think.

I finally got two nights now of decent sleep and I am feeling a little better.  It has been a marathon of no sleep for weeks and I was getting really run down.

For lunch today I ate at Redneck.  I had been thinking about going to the gym but food won out in the end.

On the way home from work tonight I stopped off at Frys and picked up The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under on BluRay for Liesl as she is really enjoying Disney movies now and we want her to have good stuff to watch.  They were a double pack for just thirty dollars.

I got home this evening and we were into house cleaning mode.  We put on the first Rescuers movie for Liesl and got to work picking things up, vacuuming, etc. We had some friends over this evening for drinks and we got to host at our bar, one of our final times using our existing bar before Art completely overhauls it in two weeks.

Dominica ordered the new windows for the back wall today too.  We are replacing the three little slit windows with two large 48″ x 36″ sliding windows that will give us more light and a ton more air in the house.  These will be the only east facing windows that open in the house at all.

We can’t wait for the bar and atrium to be revamped.  What a difference that will make in our house.  So much more usable once that is done.

Our friend Rachael whom we’ve barely seen in months just got a new job today up near us and so is moving very soon to someplace just a few minutes away!  We are very excited as we don’t really have that many friends in Texas, especially outside of work, so having one of our close friends live about an hour away was rough.  Now she will be just minutes away.  Yay!

Liesl woke me up at three thirty this morning needing me to take her to the bathroom.  Nothing like a little disruption in the middle of the night.  Then Dominica had to get up at five thirty this morning so that she could head out to Arlington as she is staying with Casen in the hospital this morning.  So I am going to stay home with Liesl and Luciana during the day.

I managed to sleep in until eight thirty.  Having the CPAP again is really helping.  And the exercise is helping too, I am sure.  Liesl and Luciana both slept in a bit with Liesl not getting up until around nine and Luciana even later.

Working from home and being the sole guardian for the two of them is a stressful day, however.  It is great to be home with them and Liesl mostly respects that I am working and cannot be bothered continuously but Luciana does not understand that and screams all of the time for me to entertain her, get her food (that she throws on the floor) or whatever.

It was a long day and a very busy one but at least I got to spend it with my girls.  Dominica got home around one thirty but was completely exhausted and went down for a nap in about half an hour.  That didn’t last too long, though, because Liesl did some screaming and woke everyone else up.  So Dominica wandered around like a zombie for the rest of the evening from lack of sleep.

I worked until after six for the office and Dominica and Luciana both went to bed at a quarter till eight.  So we had very little evening together.  Only Liesl and I stayed up past that point.

I managed to get some of the heavy stuff cleaned up in my office today.  It is slowly improving.  It has been a total disaster recently with lots of heavy items getting dropped in there for me to “deal with” in one capacity or another.  I am trying to bring the mess back from the brink.

After I got Liesl to bed Chris and I went to Redneck for dinner.  I hadn’t managed to eat all day.  It was a long day.

It is Monday and today I am going into the new office for the first time to actually work.  My desk and everything was set up there on Thursday night but I worked remotely on Friday (and over the weekend) so today is my first time going in as if I actually work there.

The drive in proved to be just fine.  In fact, it might actually be easier to get to my new office than my old one.  Either way, it is pretty inconsequential.  There isn’t much food around the new office but that is fine since I never eat there anyway.  I still have a Racetrac gas station just up the street like I used to so that changes nothing at all.  The new office is closer to the airport and really close to the Frys that we use so that is exceptionally handy for computer shopping excursions in the middle of the day.

My new cubicle is a lot smaller and the walls are lower than my old one.  Overall I think that I prefer this as it feels less like working in a cave and more like being with other people.  I dislike it because it is noisy and engenders a ton of disruption.  It is nice for feeling like a team but not good for getting work done.

At lunch today I went over to Brookhaven Country Club for my first time checking out the gym there where we now have memberships.  I am excited because I have wanted to get back to using a gym for a while and we have not had a membership since I was working in Manhattan and our country club membership at Brookhaven is cheaper than my gym membership was in Manhattan.  Of course, in Manhattan I had a swimming pool and that was primarily how I used it and I don’t have an indoor lap pool at Brookhaven which is really too bad.  I really get good use out of a pool.

I got the tour of the facilities and managed to get in a pretty good forty minute workout on the elliptical machines before showering and returning to the office.

After work I came home and did some cleaning in the kitchen and around the house.  I was feeling very productive today.

Later on Dominica made dinner and we ate while watching the second season of Melissa & Joey which we finished up this evening.  That is actually a pretty good show.  Funny that we discovered it because it was on randomly at La Cima one night about a year ago while we were there and just felt like watching something.  It is very much a nineteen eighties sitcom made today.

We were all in bed decently early tonight.  Tomorrow morning Dominica has to be up at five thirty so that she can get out to the hospital in Arlington where she is going to be staying with Casen for the morning.