Sheep Guarding Llama

Summer is nearly over here in Texas.  The end of August signals the beginning of the possibility of cool days now and then.  September will remain hot but there will be breaks in the heat, unlike in July and August.

Another day and still, not a peep about the project in Saudi Arabia.  Very disappointed.  As August is drawing to a close, we are confident that the project is dead in the water (or sand, as the case may be.)

I had to be in the office a little early today as there was a Jackson Hole announcement at eight thirty that I was needed to support.

Tonight I got started doing P90X myself.  Wow did that kick my butt.  That is some exhausting stuff.  I can’t even remotely keep up with that workout.  That was crazy.  The workout was amount eighty minutes long, way more than I am used to doing for anything but walking.  I was one hurting puppy by the time that I was done.

I got up at six thirty today. Just four hours of sleep.  What is wrong with me?  I don’t even seem to sleep as long as I should.

Luciana got us up in the middle of the night but only long enough to get her another bottle and get her back to bed.

I got ready for work and Liesl got up just minutes before I left today.  So I set her up with Word Girl on Netflix Kids and got her her chocolate milk and got her set up for the morning so that she would be happy for a while so that Dominica could keep sleeping.

As I was about to leave Liesl said, “Daddy, are you going to work outside?”

I was pretty confused trying to determine what she meant.  So I replied, “Well, I’m going to go outside and get in the car and drive to work.”

And Liesl said, “That’s what I said, go outside to go to work.  I didn’t mean that you were going to work in the backyard outside!”

It was a surprisingly mature rebuttal from a three year old!

I got to work quite early today and got a lot done this morning.  By lunch I was doing alright so decided to actually take the time to eat lunch today.  Dan and I went up to Redneck Heaven for lunch.

Dominica is on her second day of her P90X program.  So far so good.  She is getting into it.  Hopefully she can keep with it, it is very intense.

Woke up late today, again, but still in time to get in to the office on time.  Just had to rush a bit this morning.

Work was pretty busy today.  One of those days where I feel like my head is a bit spinning and I have a hard time getting a good grasp onto everything that needs to be done, is being done, etc.

I worked through lunch which I have been doing more and more lately.  I just don’t seem to have the time to get to everything if I take a break in the middle of the day.  To much to do.

Dominica’s P90X exercise program that she got for her birthday arrived today and she did her first day of exercise.  She is really happy with the workout.  I am thinking about doing it as well but not today for me.  Too much to do.

A cool present arrived from Unitrends today.  Dominica messaged me at work to tell me that a large box had arrived.  I’m excited, can’t wait to get home to see what it is.

After work I hit the gas station and fueled up the jalapeno-mobile and headed for home.

The new package turned out to be a 1U Intel-based VMWare ESXi server built for me pre-loaded with the brand new Unitrends Enterprise Backup NFR software.  Very cool.  I’m among the first (or possibly the first ) to be running with it.

I didn’t get much of a chance to play with the Unitrends toys tonight because they didn’t send me a password for the box.  So I’ll have to talk to them tomorrow.  It’s a rack mount unit which will be perfect for my rack lab in the back room.

We went out to Brookhaven for dinner tonight.  It is kids’ night.  Both girls were perfect angels tonight.  Both did a great job of eating their meals, being quiet, sitting still throughout the meal.  Luciana was so cute, she walked over to the kids’ table to tell us that she wanted a cupcake when her meal was done.  It was adorable.

After dinner Dominica wanted frozen yoghurt so we drove up to Frankford and got some froyo up there at Yogurtland.

Dominica’s birthday present arrived today, she got the P90X exercise videos that Jeremy has been using.  She has been excited to get into P90X and get started on some extreme exercise.  So she started doing that today.  I am planning on starting that myself in a few days.

It was almost Ciana’s bedtime by the time that we got back to the house.  We got the kids off to bed.  Tonight Liesl and I finished reading the first book in the Winnie the Pooh series.  She has really been enjoying me reading those to her every night.  There are almost two weeks of stories in one book.  Tomorrow night we will likely start on “The House at Pooh Corner.”

Tonight Dominica and I watched The Rebound on Netflix.  Not bad.  Not great, but not bad.  Good actors.  It was cute.  Then we watched My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend but that wasn’t very good.  Then off to bed.

Liesl woke me up this morning pounding on the bedroom door.  I awoke with a start and realized that the sun was up.  I lept from the bed and realized that I was already late for work as it was a few minutes after eight thirty.  I never wake up this late.  I ran into my office by the garage, logged in to the “office” and sent an email saying that I was working from home.  Didn’t really matter much, my boss was so busy that he didn’t even acknowledge that email until late afternoon.

I don’t normally work from home on a Monday or a Friday so it kind of felt like a three day weekend, which was nice.  I got  a bit done today including some catchup on SGL.

I was in the office pretty much all day, not much time to pop out and to see the family.

I am tired today after a very long and stressful weekend of getting PBXs working but, while I am worn out, I get the relief of knowing that the phone system is working and not hanging over my head today at all.  Better to be relieved and tired than well rested and stressed out.  At least in my book, most of the time.

Still absolutely no peep or hint of information about Saudi Arabia.  We are starting to get really suspicious about this at this point.  We are still keeping positive, but the chances that this is real are deteriorating rapidly.  I have a “go bag” sitting by the door so that if the call does come in that we can simply grab the bag and walk out the door.  If it goes through we will all have to get to Houston as quickly as possible and sit there, for up to a week, while visas are processed and the moment that they are we will be on a flight for Saudi Arabia.