This morning was a morning of house cleaning. Real cleaning with furniture being moved, things being found a new home, etc. We managed to generate something like four boxes of donation stuff while cleaning, too!
Kat and Rachel are both supposed to be coming over today, so we have a lot of getting the house ready to do.
Dominica’s new food dehydrator arrived today. Francesca got one at Christmas, and Dominica has been talking about getting one for months. So now we have the same one. Her plan is to make a lot of seitan jerky.
Dominica spent quite a lot of time getting things dehydrating today. Fruits, fruit leather, tomatoes, etc.
It was a full day of house cleaning. We went through many boxes and filled Paul’s truck up with stuff to donate. Three boxes of books at least. All kinds of stuff.
Paul hung several paintings today and Liesl’s new unicorn decoration stuff in their bedroom.
Jim stopped by just before six. We have not seen him in months. I’ve been wondering what he has been up to. He needed to borrow a ladder and while he was here borrowing that, he picked up his air compressor as well. That was taking up a bit of a foot print in the garage, so having him take that with him helped quite a lot.
Kat came by about twenty minutes after Jim had left with the ladder. We did cheese trays for dinner. Dill, cranberry, chocolate fudge, and other cheeses. Kat hung out till about ten. She wanted to try out our Oculus Go but did not have enough time, she has to work in the morning.
Rachel ended up bailing on us, but without any warning. Just didn’t show up. But I was not really feeling like going out or staying up late tonight, so that was overall pretty good. Dominica and I watched some more Brooklyn Nine Nine before going to bed at a reasonable hour.
Saturday. Got up at nine. It is a bright and sunny today, kind of warm out. Very pleasant.
I went into the office, but didn’t really work. Paul was just hanging out in his office (the dining room) and Dominica was on the couch watching Bones on Hulu. So I just hung out in my office while the kids were asleep. I talked to Paula and Anny in Transylvania a bit. Anny is at Paula’s house, today is Paula’s sixteenth birthday. So happy sweet sixteen to Paula.
At eleven I got an emergency call from a client who had a Windows 2003 Server cluster that had died on them and they needed my help. That was an interesting and unexpected one. I do not directly manage that cluster, nor did I even know that it exists, so I was finding out all of the details on the fly. But after an hour and a half we managed to get it working again. Yay for Saturday work!
The kids are still reveling in their ability to be alone and have quiet time. Luciana set up the Steam laptop in their bedroom and is playing Steam most of the day. Liesl continues to hide out in our bedroom mostly watching videos.
Dominica has been watching Bones on Hulu on her own. But I came out to the living room and joined her in the afternoon and we watched The Golden Girls for a while until I needed a break, and then we watching Brooklyn Nine Nine, which is just awesome and one of my favourite current shows.
I did a lot of work on SGL today and managed to complete May, 2018, finally. This spring is really lean on SGL updates, because there is really nothing to report. I spent several months just completely “head down” working. Long day, high stress, and nothing of note going on. It was horrible. June is the last really tough month that needs to be updated now.
After Dominica went to bed, I watched some Star Trek: Enterprise. Not very much, just one or two episodes. I am on the fourth and final season now. I think that the writing is getting worse, I still have most of the season to go, but the third season was a bit ridiculous and the fourth hasn’t started out all that great.
I woke up this morning to the doorbell ringing. Dave (I just met him today) was at the house to inspect the roof and siding to see about stopping the leaking that we have had going on. I was the only person that heard the door bell so I started the day by leaping out of bed and running to get to the door. Not how I like to get up and going in the morning.
We should have an estimate on the repairs by the end of the day. In theory, at least. (Turns out to be $1,000, but that includes the materials that are still needed.)
This morning was normal work in the office. Nothing special. Not a super busy morning, thanks to working late last night. So a nice day. I’ve been enjoying this week.
This afternoon we found out that Liza, the Grices’ golden retriever, had to be put to sleep. There was really no warning. She was fine all last week when we had seen her. She was just fine when Dominica and the girls left Houston. She was fine yesterday, playing with Holly. But then at night she suddenly got sick and by morning she was unresponsive. The vet said that it was an aggressive cancer and it took her really quickly. So by this afternoon they had to put her down. Our kids have never known the Grices without Liza. This will be incredibly sad for them. She has always been around. At least the girls got to see Liza on her last day, yesterday morning, and they got to see her healthy at that time.
Paul and I went up to Plano this afternoon to do some work with a client up there. I had figured that it would be a two or a three hour trip, but it ended up being a very quick one. Fixed their issue and was on our way back home in no time. Very easy, that’s how we like it. And a very happy client.
We had about two and a half hours after getting back before we needed to leave to go to the Carrollton Library for the Yule Ball, or whatever it is called. I charged up my phone, caught up with work, which was pretty easy given that it was late on a Friday on a holiday week, and started making myself some dinner as I had not had anything but a small bowl of cereal so far all day. I went for pan frying some veggie burgers for my dinner.
Dominica watched The Golden Girls most of the day. So I saw bits and pieces of it throughout the day as I would pass through the living room. Dominica is addicted to that show, and even got the Golden Girls trivia board game for Christmas.
At six twenty, we left for the Carrollton Library at Josey Ranch. Dominica and I just wore Harry Potter tee shirts. The girls were dressed up in robes and “house” gear, and both brought their new, very fancy wands that they got for Christmas. Josey Ranch is very close, only takes a few minutes.
We arrived and there was a really long waiting line to get into the Josey Ranch Rec Center, maybe a hundred people or more in line, and that was just the line to get in when the doors first opened! We got there at the perfect time, no waiting, the doors opened as we got out of the car and the people filed in almost immediately. No standing around outside for us. Not that it was that cold, it was in the low fifties. I didn’t even bother to bring a jacket. Nor did the kids, but they had their Harry Potter robes on.
The event was huge, we couldn’t believe how many people showed up! They really know how to draw the crowds at the Carrollton Library. And there were kids of all ages, from very young to teens. Even very old teens. And all free, which is awesome. Just a great community outreach from the library.
First thing that we did was hit the photo op spot and take some pictures. Both girls chose to get their picture taken in the Forbidden Forest. Dominica and I tried to convince them to take Azkaban prisoner photos, but neither would do it. But their forest pictures turned out great.
Liesl in the Forbidden Forest with her Hogwarts Letter
Next up we hit the main ball room to see what was up. You had to visit your house table (Gryffondor for Liesl, Luciana, and me; and Ravenclaw for Dominica) to get your ticket coupons for the raffle, and to get a light up wristband in your house colours (red for us, blue for her.) What a cool idea that was, it really made the themeing more special.
Luciana in the Forbidden Forest with her Familiar Owl
Then we got in the snack line. Andy’s Custard provided ice cream treats for everyone. That’s Dominica’s favourite. And Treats by Tiffany provided cookies, too. And loads of bottled water. But no butter beer, that would have been messy, but really cool.
A Wizards’ Dual
The ceiling was decorated in floating candles and stars, very well done.
Next up was the costume contest. We should have skipped that, it took way too long and our girls while properly dressed up were not in competitive form style costumes. It was too much time and made Luciana antsy. She is too young to spend so much time on something like that. Next year we will skip that.
Luciana Getting a Magical Tattoo
After that it was over to the library side of the complex to do OWL trivia. We didn’t win but the girls made a friend on our trivia team and went on to do the scavenger hunt with her. They had loads of fun doing the scavenger hunt.
Costume Contestants
Last thing, and we were the last ones allowed in to do it before things started to close, was the potions class. We went into the “kids reading room” and they had a table set up with equipment and guides to making six different potions. Liesl chose to make the “Draught of Peace” and Luciana decided to make “Felix Felicus”. Dominica took Luciana and I took Liesl and we went around with our ingredients list and the girls had to track down what was needed and make a “potion” in a small phial. It was loads of fun and both girls really enjoyed it.
Liesl’s Lightning Scar Tattoo
And that was it. It was the end of the night and time for everyone to go home. A big success, we will be returning to this event for sure. Both girls were very happy. There were some professional photographers there, too, and our girls posed for them for a lot of pictures. So hopefully the city website will have some of them at some point. But we have no idea when they get posted online.
On the way home we stopped and picked up Taco Bell for Dominica, Liesl, and me. Luciana didn’t want anything, just a pizza at home. Paul was already ready for bed back home, so didn’t want any food.
We got home, ate dinner, Dominica put on Brooklyn Nine Nine for her and I to watch. And I made a personal pizza for Luciana. I did some SGL writing while watching the show and am caught up to nearly the end of May, now. One more day of catch up writing and I will certainly have it finished.
Dominica was sleepy early, so went to bed after two episodes. I stayed up to get the girls to bed. Liesl came out to the living room and climbed onto my lap on the black couch and we watched an episode of The Orville together. I am caught up on Hulu so I am watching them as they release there. This was episode two of season two.
That took us to half past midnight and I was pretty sleepy myself. So I got the girls off to bed and turned in.
So here is a pretty neat statistic. Today is the day when SGL becomes, by some standard at least, the longest work in literary history. That’s not quite fair. SGL is non-fiction, so whether it is literary or not is hard to say. But it is an auto-biography. Short of reference books, the longest work is not Proust, that many people expect, SGL and some other things blow that away. Until today, a bizarre Super Smash Brothers fan fiction novel (I have no idea if it is written by a single author or not) was the longest known work of literature. But as of today, SGL pushes over that barrier to become the top dog, at least for the moment. Of course, one has to ask if a blog truly counts. Is it a single work? Does non-fiction count? But if this was a traditional media of pen and ink and called a journal then it would clearly qualify.
Of course as with any record, one has to wonder how many longer works exist that no one knows about. Most people do not know about SGL, and I do not know about that many other blogs. Are there loads of blogs out there that are even longer? Not likely. Since I have been writing almost daily for almost twenty years (okay, one month short of nineteen years at the moment) and since I write rather a lot per day, there is a far better chance than it might seam that SGL might truly be the top dog for a single author, single piece of work. The scope of my writing here is rather unprecedented.
What is really the more interested statistic is that for the last many years, we are pretty sure that I have been the most prolific writer in the IT industry as well. With around four hundred thousand posts, a few books, loads of magazine articles and blog posts, my writing level outside of SGL is actually many times larger than it is within SGL. SGL has been around longer with me writing essentially constantly since February of 2000, but my IT writing has been nearly continuous since around 2009 (so ten years at this point) and by 2010 it was already being suspected that I was writing more than anyone else out there. And things have only picked up over time.
But, for whatever it is worth, this is a pretty big accomplishment even if it does not break any official record. If I stay healthy, SGL is still “only at the beginning.” One of my big regrets is not having thought of doing SGL earlier in my life. Five or ten more years of it would have made it so vastly more interesting. I wish that I had a clearer record of those years. Now that I understand just how important it has been to record the last nineteen, it is sad that the same records don’t extend back to my youth. I hope that my children learn from this and decide to write in a similar fashion. There is so much unique value to this.
I managed to sleep in a little, getting up around nine today. Put in a couple of hours before making myself a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast. Dominica decided that the bad weather was mostly north west of Fort Worth and that she would have a clear enough drive up from Houston so packed up the girls and got on the road a few minutes before noon to drive back up to Dallas.
It is still cold and rainy today. The yard is under water, as it always is. The old firepit thing in the back yard is a tiny pond now. Very strange. So Paul and I started doing dishes, laundry, cleaning, and other things to make it look like we had been cleaning all along.
Dominica and the girls were home before four. They made really good time! There was a huge minivan load of stuff for the house. It was pretty well packed. There was a lot of Christmas stuff in there to bring in. So, once again, even with all of the work that I did to make space in the house, everything is full again.
To make some extra space, we took the giant box of donation stuff out and put it in Paul’s truck to have it out of the way. We have several donation boxes full at this point.
The kids spent the entire evening hiding, Luciana in her room and Liesl in mine. They were really ready for time to themselves after a few weeks with their cousins. Liesl hid on the floor on the far side of the bed so that she could basically disappear! Liesl mostly watched videos, while Luciana immediately broke open her new Lego Elves Fire Dragon set and spent about four or five hours putting the entire thing together. It is a really cool set with great colours and styles. She loves it and it is perfectly up her alley. She needs a lot more of the Lego Elves sets, such an ideal thing for her. And she was able to put the set together all by herself.
Luciana and the Lego Elves Fire Dragon
I made the girls dinner. Veggie chicken nuggets for Liesl, and a bowl of steamed veggies. And ramen noodles for Luciana. (Which reminds me, Paul and I found a ramen place just a few blocks away that looks like something that we need to try.)
At six I worked with Valentina for several hours. It was nearly nine when we got done working. While we were working, Dominica was watching The Golden Girls which apparently she was not able to watch while in Houston. She was anxious to get back to binge watching it. Once I was done working, I joined her and ate my cheese and cracker tray.
Dominica was pretty tired and was off to bed before eleven. I wasn’t quite ready for bed, so worked on SGL, did some cleaning in the house, and waited for Rachel to come over as she was stopping by after getting off from work tonight to pick up some boxes and luggage and stuff that she has been storing at the house.
It was around one thirty when Rachel finally made it over. We talked for probably an hour. She’s having a really rough week and needed someone to talk to. She got her stuff while she was here, she had a lot of clothes, some boxes, some keyboards. She went home and then I got off to bed. Luciana had fallen asleep earlier, Liesl was getting ready for bed while Rachel was visiting.
Tomorrow is Friday, a normal work day in the morning. Then Paul and I are going up to Plano in the afternoon to do some on site work up there with a customer. In the evening, the girls have the Carrollton Library Yule Ball event that they have been looking forward to. That will be a lot of fun and something really unique. So we have to make sure that we are able to make it to that. It will be very sad if they miss it.
Wednesday. We are back to regular work today, although I expect it to be slow. I slept in a little, till eight thirty. Dominica and the girls wanted to come home today, but the rains started last night and are expected to continue until tomorrow morning. And to make it even worse, it is pretty cold out there so the rain is listed as “wintery mix”, not good for driving, especially in Texas.
Back in the office today things are pretty slow. There is some build up from the holidays, but mostly it is just slow. Because the holidays fell in the middle of the week, it is a good year for people to take the entire week off, rather than just a day or two, so I have a feeling that many of our customers are running on skeleton crews this week.
Luciana’s thumb seems to be improving. She was able to sleep last night and use her hand, but not her thumb, today. It still hurts.
The afternoon got slow. Spent a bit of time on the phone with Allen, this is the first that we have talked in a week since he had his surgery.
For dinner, Paul and I went down to Old Town Carrollton to Twisted Root Burger to check it out. It was pretty good. He really loved his American Burger, said that it was the best burger that he had had in quite a while. I have the vegan Vegabond and it was quite good. Plenty big, I was stuffed after just that.
After getting back from dinner, I worked on some SGL updates, making good progress through May, and watching more of Star Trek: Enterprise. I am nearly done with the third season now.
I put in a few hours of web site work this evening as well, just a little before midnight. After almost two weeks of it being down, we were finally able to get MangoCon’s website back online. That was pretty important.
Once the site was fixed, I went back to watching Star Trek: Enterprise which I was able to complete the third season before turning in for the night. It kept me up an hour or two longer than I wanted to be. But I was able to wrap up the show and the very intense story arc of the “expanse.”
I think Jared is correct, season three gets pretty cheesy and over the top. I felt that Enterprise was doing really well in the first seasons. But the huge expanse arc seems like it is just “too much”. The writing gets pretty weak as it continues. Especially the writing for Archer.
Since I was up I stood at the bar most of the time and kept working on SGL updates. My Chromebook is getting quite a lot of exercise these days.
It is looking unlikely that Dominica is going to make an attempt at coming home tomorrow. Carrollton is predicted to get one to three inches of fluffy white stuff tomorrow and driving in snow in Texas is really bad. So we will probably not see the family until the weekend.
