Sheep Guarding Llama

I’m actually pretty surprised that it is already Wednesday.  The time is flying.  I guess driving down on Monday helps make the week to seem shorter than it is.

Lunch today was at Bombay Chopsticks near my Medifast office.  Lunch was actually really good.  Ronak had found this place and wanted to go there.  They do a creamy spicy tilapia there that was really excellent.  Sadly I won’t be able to eat much more of this as I will be back on my diet in a few days.  So good to enjoy it now.

After work I stopped at Target to pick up some supplies.  The house is pretty bare overall.  We cleaned nearly everything out before we left.  The fridge is nearly empty.  I didn’t get much but the big item was a Schwinn tow-behind bicycle trailer that can hold two children.  No we do not have bikes but we plan to and this was a really good deal.  We want to be able to go bicycling and take Liesl and Luciana with us and we think that they will have a lot of fun riding in a trailer.  Hopefully Luciana will be moving on to using electronic games sooner than later.  She is nearly at the age where Liesl started using the iPad and if they could entertain themselves in that way they might really like being in the trailer.  So we bought one.

While I was looking at the trailer I found a hiking backpack for cheap that I really liked.  I have been needing one for a while and got one a year ago that ended up not fitting me as expected and was useless.  This is a tiny backpack that is designed just to hold the essentials (wallet, phone, etc.) plus has a bladder for water so that I can take a decent amount of liquid with me to drink while I am walking which is always a big issue for me.  Often when I walk I lack pockets and if I get a drink I have to carry it in my hand which is anything but ideal.

I got home with the new supplies and started working on cleaning up the house.  There is a lot to be done.  I did not get very far, though, before I decided that I really wanted a way to listen to books while working around the house and there was a stereo unit at Target that had looked really interesting that hooks to the iPod via Bluetooth that would be perfect.  So I thought about it for a bit and back to Target I went to pick that up.

It was a slow evening for me.  Just catching up on stuff.  Watering plants, putting stuff away, setting up the Bluetooth stereo, etc.  It is going to take a bit for me to settle back in to life back home in Texas.

It is also going to be a very long two weeks until my family gets back down here.  I miss them already.

I managed to get up this morning at a decent time, all things considered.  I showered, dressed and got into the office around ten or ten thirty.  I couldn’t find my badge so had to get a temporary one and get signed in.  That is going to be a pain.  We have so much luggage and stuff that returned from New York, it is going to take me forever to go through everything and figure out where that is.

I discovered this morning that not only is today my first day back in the office in Las Colinas but my friend Ronak, whom I used to work with when I was stationed on Wall Street, started at Las Colinas today as well.  So we got together and went to Brookhaven for lunch and did some catching up.  I haven’t been to Brookhaven for a while and haven’t seen Ronak in years.  We used to go out for coffee every day back in New York.

It was one hundred and six here in Texas today.  Too hot.  Hot and tired.  Ugh.  I got home and spent the evening doing cleaning around the house.  There is a lot to do and it is going to take me a while to get to all of it.

I had to get up this morning and work from the hotel until they kicked me out.  I have rather a hectic day today trying to fit everything in that I need to do.  I was up around eight, showered and got everything caught up before checking out of the hotel and heading around the corner to meet up with some folks from Dell for lunch.

We had decided that it would be way easier, since Dell does not have access to public WiFi inside of their offices, to just meet at a restaurant rather than actually going into their offices since we would not have to deal with security or anything and there really isn’t anything to do or look at inside of the office so we might as well get good food while we are at it.

Both my EconoLodge and Dell are located right by the airport and the restaurant was right off of Interstate 40 one exit west of my hotel which worked out well since that put me two minutes closer to Dallas.

The restaurant was a great choice for lunch.  I managed to get a smoked salmon wrap and a salad – time to focus on my diet again I guess.  I’ve got some weight to lose after the trip to Europe.

Lunch was good, we had a good meeting and got a lot accomplished.  Fortunately we were on Central time already (which gave me some more sleep last night as well) so I am aligned with the office in Texas again (boy that is going to be weird to get used to) so managing my schedule today is easier than it might have been.

I watched my BlackBerry carefully but since we had done an early and “short” lunch there was nothing needing my attention at the office so I took my chances and hit the road west to see how far I could make it during the remainder of lunch.

I ended up having a very slow day at work, thankfully, and was able to press on all of the way to Jackson, Tennessee before I was actually needed to stop and work.  I knew that along US Interstate 40 that there are good stops pretty often and McDonald’s are littered everywhere and they all have free, good WiFi from AT&T so I was pretty sure that stopping and working would not be too much of a problem.  Learning little tricks like this one are important to being able to work and travel effectively.

I stopped at the McDonald’s in Jackson by the highway, got a snack and coffee and set up with the laptop and worked for a few hours to wrap up what needed to be done for the office.  It worked out fine.  I was able to do the evening deployments, ensure that everything was done and that no one needed me, let some people know that I was getting back on to the road and by a quarter to five I was on the road and driving again.  All in all I lost very little time and am way ahead of where I had feared that I would be.

The drive west went fine.  Nothing really to report.  I made good time, hit no traffic really, had no construction issues.  I was pretty sleepy by the time that I was west of Little Rock.  The drive and the last several weeks have been taking a toll on me to be sure.  I need some time, at home, in my own bed, sleeping without any traveling, without any big change.  Just time to sit and slow down and take stock of things.

I did not manage to quite finish “A Short History of Nearly Everything” before getting back to Texas, but almost.  Only half an hour or so left to go.  I will finish that up tomorrow without any problem.

It was very late when I pulled into Dallas.  Around three in the morning.   The house was ninety-five degrees when I stepped into it.  Very, very warm.  I kicked on the air conditioning, did a quick walkthrough of the house and set to unloading most everything from the Acadia.

For the most part, the house appears to be intact.  The pillars out front are taking a beating and are in much worse shape that they were even last summer.  There is no doubting that we simply must do something about that now.  They are going to collapse and tear themselves apart.

The plants are in horrible shape.  Five of them are definitely completely dead, nothing left at all.  Those that remain are having a really tough time of it.  Hopefully I can nurse them back but there isn’t much left of most of them.

I was exhausted and ready for bed after getting home.  I turned the power back on to the networking gear and turned on the datacenter air conditioning unit too.  Hopefully we can get that room at least down to ninety or a little lower.  I’d like the networking gear to survive for at least a little while.

The Internet came back on pretty quickly and we are in business.  I got the phone hooked up so people can contact me again at the house.

I plopped into bed with only a few hours to sleep before needing to get up and head into the office.  I am going to be seriously exhausted tomorrow.  But at least I am home and the house is still here.  I poked my head out the garage door too and the Mazda is still intact.  The hail did not destroy it as my dad had feared.

The house is very quiet and lonely, though.  My Oreo was supposed to be here with me and now I have to go to my first night of sleeping alone.  This is my first night of sleeping at home without him snuggling with me for seven years.  It is hard not to think about him.  Tomorrow I will put him up on the mantle in the living room.

Today is my driving day.  Got up at seven, showered and was on the road just minutes before eight.  I had originally wanted to have been on the road earlier and to have gotten up at six but after being up until three in the morning packing this morning and needing to be able to drive all day I figured that four hours of sleep, rather than three, would be pretty important.

This is a very sad drive.  I am not going to see Dominica and the girls for two weeks or more.  Two weeks is the absolute minimum until they come down to Texas and very likely it will be a little bit more than that.    And this was supposed to be me driving Oreo back to Texas.

I hit Batavia at eight thirty and just a few minutes after nine I stopped at the Tim Horton’s on the New York State Thruway to pick up coffee and a breakfast sandwich.  Even having mentioned it several times recently, I still cannot get over how hot American coffee is made.  I was already at the next rest stop, the one at Angola, and the coffee still was too hot to even sip.

I saw a Lavazza (the big Italian espresso company) sign at Angola so I stopped again to grab espresso.  I was excited, having been in Europe all this time, to get good coffee in the States.  Boy was I disappointed.  The “barista”, if you could call her that, at the Lavazza completely burnt the coffee making espresso at the American temperature rather than the Italian one.  It ruined the taste of the coffee.  And the coffee was full of grinds.  This tasted nothing like real Italian coffee.  I am very surprised that Lavazza puts their brand on this.  This wasn’t just a store selling Lavazza, this was a Lavazza store!  This is Lavazza’s official representation in American.  Is it any wonder that Americans almost universally think that European coffee is awful?  If they intentionally ruin it when serving it in America of course we are going to have that impression.

It was a pretty good day for a drive.  Clear and warm.  For the first part of the drive I was not too tired.  On the drive I have been listening to Bill Bryson’s “A Short History of Nearly Everything” which is pretty long, nearly sixteen hours, and therefore pretty likely to last through my entire drive.  The drive is estimated at twenty-five hours long by Google Maps but when you take into account the starts, the stops, the time listening to music, time with nothing on while navigating and others you really only likely get half of that time as time to listen to books.

I crossed the Pennsylvania state line at eleven and into Ohio just twenty minutes later.  Ohio really does take forever and it was just after four thirty when I crossed into Kentucky at Cincinnati and Covington.

It was eight when I got to the EconoLodge by the Nashville Airport.  I got checked in, dropped off my luggage and had a few minutes to wait for James who was meeting me there so that we could go out for some food.

I didn’t have long to wait.  James met me and we drove to an Italian restaurant around the corner.  We talked for probably two hours. Maybe not quite that long.

I was off to bed early, probably around ten thirty.  Quite exhausted.  I have a lot of driving to do yet tomorrow.

I was back down at the Ralston’s this morning working on that server trying to get it up and running.  It didn’t take too long before we figured out that Radio Shack had mislabeled a part and that I needed to run back up there and get the right one.  Argh.  So I drove over to Geneseo.

After getting what I needed at Radio Shack I ran into Olympia Sports knowing that Rachael had to have the shift off today because of the wedding and ta da, there was Mary.  It is funny how Mary and I manage to find each other or run into each other, normally in Geneseo, year after year.  She was pretty surprised to see me.  We only had a few minutes to chat.  Now it will be another year before I see her again, at least.

Back to the Ralstons’ but there was not enough time to get the cable built and tested.  Art is going to do that later and I will work on it remotely.  We have everything that we need now so it will be fine.

I ran up to the house and we were out the door for the wedding by eleven thirty.  It was a busy morning.

We got down to the church plenty early.  We have to be there early because Liesl is in the wedding.  She is the flower girl, a critical role.  I am also in charge of pausing the music between the processional and the recessional.  Playing second fiddle to my daughter, again.

The service was very nice and Liesl did an excellent job.  All of the little kids were so cute.  After they were done with their jobs they all sat down at the feet of the wedding party and stayed there, more or less still, throughout the service.  It was darling.  For my part, the pausing of  the music that went fine in rehearsal yesterday did not work today and my Uncle Leo had to go bolting through the church to pause it manually in the back.

After the wedding Liesl was in for pictures with the wedding party and Dominica went with them as Liesl’s “handler”.  Probably a role she will have a lot over the years.  Dad came with me and we drove up to the Avon Inn for the reception.  The same Avon Inn where my senior prom was eighteen years ago.

Dad and I got there a little on the late side.  I had a beer and we hung out with the family out in the lawn.  Luciana, who was obviously with us as Dominica and Liesl were pretty busy in the “trolley” limousine with wedding party stuff, had a great time just walking around and meeting everyone.  She is always a hit.  Fourteen months always are.

I said it with Liesl, fourteen months was like the magic number when she went from seeming like a “baby” and being passive to being a “toddler” and being interactive.  Fourteen months seems to be when the fun really starts.

It wasn’t too long before the wedding party arrived and we went in for the reception.  Unfortunately Liesl was pretty worn out by this point and was having a bit of a tantrum and I had to remove her before the wedding party was even announced.  So I ran out the back door with her and she and I sat outside for quite some time while I waited for her to be in shape enough to be able to go back in.  So I missed nearly everything in the early portion of the reception.

By the time that Liesl and I walked back in to the Avon Inn there was already a pretty good line of people getting food.  We were seated at table one so we were among those already called so I took Liesl back to the table and immediately set about getting her and I some food.  Liesl, we think, has issues with low blood sugar and seems to have real issues if she does not get the right kinds of food at the right times.  We are working on that now that we have identified that as a problem.  That was a huge challenge for us while we were on vacation because her one consistent source of protein and nutrients is her fortified chocolate milk beverages that she got daily back in the States.

We ate dinner and soon thereafter dad wasn’t feeling too well so I left Dominica with the girls and drove dad back to his house, dropped him off and drove back to the Avon Inn.  I managed to arrive just in time to see the last minute of the father – daughter dance.  It took me a bit to find Dominica and the girls.  It turned out that there was a bathroom emergency and she was working on managing all of them.  So I ended up doing multiple sprints around the outside of the Inn trying to get to everyone.  It’s been a busy evening.

One of the people that we met at the wedding actually lives right around the corner from us in Carrollton.  Right next door to Chris who is watching our house,  in fact.  Well within an easy walking distance of our place.

We left the wedding just a tiny bit on the early side.  We were far from the first ones out but we were not the last.  We were totally tired and the girls needed to get to bed.  Both were long, long gone by the time that we got to the house.  I was able to carry them in and put them to bed without either one waking up.  Sadly, this was my last chance to see them for weeks.  After this I am starting my longest stretch ever without seeing my daughters.

Once the girls were in bed it was time to start the packing.  There was a lot to do and we wanted to load up the Acadia with stuff from the barn as well as just the normal stuff for me to take back with me.  Nothing like waiting until the last minute.

Dominica got all of the normal packing done then we went down to the barn together and started going through our stuff there.  Boy is there still a lot of stuff down there.  Who would have guessed that so much stuff could even still exist after all of the things that we have moved around over the years.  It continuously boggles my mind just how much stuff we actually own.

We ended up working on packing the Acadia until about three in the morning.  What was more important than the packing was that we managed to go through and eliminate far more than we packed.  We produced a whole bin of things to be donated to the rummage sale and many bins, six to ten bins, I would guess, of stuff to be thrown out.  We were throwing out a bit more than we were keeping.  That is a good ratio.  If we could just do that with the rest of our stuff that we still have there and that we have back in Texas we would be in great shape.

It was probably a bit foolish being up so late before I have to drive to Tennessee tomorrow but we were so productive.  This is the largest elimination of stuff from storage that we have ever done and there is more to do too.

If we didn’t own so many books maybe it would be easier.  The books certainly take up an insane amount of our space.  And there are so many more books than we realize.  Cookbooks, computer books, music books, novels, travel books, random books, etc.  Every box holds some set of books that we have totally forgotten.  And to think how many books we have thrown out over the years. It makes me sad.  We could have this immense library but we have nowhere to store them all and moving them is so hard.  And each year we use them less and less and we shift over to the Kindle and iPad for everything.  We almost never pull a book off of the shelf to read anymore.  Even ones that we own physically we often use their digital counterparts to actually read.

So it was three o’clock when I finally got to bed.  The car is jam packed with stuff and the barn is much closer to being empty than it has been in at least six years.  Tomorrow I have to get up early and start my drive south.