Sheep Guarding Llama

Six days until we leave.  Now we are in the crunch.  Everything has to be ready.  This is a trip of epic proportions and considering how little traveling Dominica and I have ever done, this is really going to be a leap for us.  Since we started dating a decade ago, we have only taken our honeymoon and two long trips to Walt Disney World together that constitute anything resembling real vacations and those are nothing like this.  We’ve done trips to Europe, but they were nothing at all like this.  This is a new level of packing, preparation and “no turning back.”  Once we hit Wednesday morning next week, we are on autopilot.  Everything is planned to the minute at that point and everything has to go exactly to plan.

I am in the office today, one of my few full office days this week (or for the next two months, for that matter.)  I don’t think that I will have a full four days in the office until the first week in July!  How crazy is that?  I really cannot believe it.

I had to run out to UPS today to overnight checks up to dad so that he could cash them and get the money into the bank and available for us before we leave for Europe.  This is going to be one tight financial adventure.  While I was out I ran across the street and got some frozen yogurt.  It was quite warm out today in my car that has no air conditioning.

The temperature in New York and Europe is going to be a shock for our systems.

I have been putting in a bit of work attempting to build a storage server for Danielle.  I am trying to convert a SunFire V100, which is supposed to cap out at 137GB of drive capacity, into a half terabyte storage machine.  Because Solaris 11 does not support this old platform I have to try some alternative ideas.  I have been working to get FreeBSD 9.0 working but am running into some incredible hurtles.  I’ve considered Ubuntu, OpenBSD and NetBSD as well.  We will see what ends up being the best option in the end.

I am loving my new laptop.  I have barely had any time to get it set up yet so I am hoping that I will have time to get it all tweaked and tested out before it is too late.  I really like how portable it is and how it makes me easily able to use it while we are all sitting around in the play room.  My old laptop was too large and fragile for that.

After work I came home.  I was a little later than usual.  Dominica hadn’t decided what she wanted for dinner so I didn’t bring dinner home.  She decided that she was in the mood for Mexican (this never, ever happens) so we tried out Los Lupes which we have been seeing for a year and have not yet tried.

Dinner was quite good, we both did the tilapia fish tacos.  The restaurant was completely packed and they had a live piano player slash singer who was quite good.  It was a nice place but very small and very busy – hard for the girls as they could not get up and move around at all.  We really splurged on our diets tonight and tried the tres leches which we have never had before but have really been wanting to try.  It was awesome.  Liesl really liked it too.

The new mobile phone is supposed to arrive tomorrow morning.

Today was my work from home all day day.  So much to do.  We are trying to deal with all the last minute errands that can’t be handled any other way today.  We don’t know if I will be getting another day at home during the week until we leave for New York and on to Europe.  This is when you know that it is the home stretch, now we hit the “last” of everything before we go.  We leave Texas one week from today.  One week.  I can’t believe it.

I worked on getting the bills paid today.  Our tax return money has come in.  That was one of the big items that we were really concerned about.  Having that resolved before the trip is a huge weight off of our minds (and our banks’ minds.)  So today we paid one of our big credit cards to zero.  Whoo hoo!  And we paid pretty much all of the other outstanding bills too.  Boy does that feel good.  Our finances have been really worrying us for this trip and they are still going to be really rough but this is the difference between rough and “what are we going to do?”

Dominica ran out to do trip shopping this morning.  She went to IKEA to get some new luggage after having tested our old luggage the last few days and determining that it was not going to do.  One of the pieces of good luggage that she had hoped to have used was partially eaten by the rat so that made using what we already had a little harder than expected.  We can fix that luggage by replacing the wheels but we can’t do that anytime soon.

Verizon decided to take a stab at solving the European mobile phone problem again today (after I posted on Twitter about how we had to find another provider after twenty years with Verizon over something so trivial) and, after an entire day of trying, they did finally come through with a solution and Dominica has a replacement HTC Droid Incredible 2 World Phone shipping out already.  We are supposed to have the replacement Android phone on Friday morning and she will still be eligible to move to an iPhone in late June as originally planned.  That was the last big hurtle solved.

For lunch today I was at Brookhaven with John.  I haven’t seen him since he left the office so we hung out for a while.  The weather was perfect for hanging out outside at Brookhaven.  We sat right on the golf course and it was warm but overcast.

After work the family went to YogurtLand and got dessert.  Then Dominica decided that since we were out and since the phone issue was resolved (it got finally resolved while we were at the yogurt place and I was stuck standing outside getting the details figured out) that we should run back up to IKEA so that she could get a second piece of luggage like the one that she got this morning because it is so perfect for our trip.  It is a convertible rolling bag and backpack so that we will have some flexibility in how we use it.  So we ran up to Frisco and she made a quick dash into the store and back with the luggage.  She was incredibly fast, maybe little more than ten minutes with Liesl, Luciana and I waiting in the Acadia for her.

One week until we leave and the big items are figured out.  Not too much to worry about at this point.  Just have to get all of the work items wrapped up and my school work all done so that we are clear to go.

Here we are in May.  The month that we have been looking forward to since last August when we decided to take our long vacation.  The time has really flown.  This seemed so far away and now we are scrambling to be ready.  We leave Texas a week from tomorrow!

I ordered a new laptop today.  I have been working off of the same laptop for a few years now and while it is perfectly fine it is a bit large for backpacking through Europe and the battery doesn’t have nearly the life that I would hope that it would anymore.  It was from a different era.  Not old enough to justify replacing normally but old enough that something new would sure be nice.  Well the right set of circumstances came up and I have a new HP Folio 13 on order.  The Folio 13 is widely regarded as one of the, if not the, best ultrabook (very small notebook but more full featured than a netbook) on the market.  Aluminum casing, solid state drive, low power, long battery life, backlit keyboard – all of the things that a hard core traveler needs.

I came home at lunch and ended up working from home all afternoon because I needed to deal with getting the new Folio.  I got the order finalized around three and picked it up at the warehouse at four.  I got it home and Dominica was very relieved to see how much smaller this new laptop is than the old one and how much lighter and more rigid.  She has been working like crazy on all of the packing to get us ready for the trip and every ounce matters and every inch as well.  Things are tight and we have nothing to spare.  It is going to be really hard carrying all of this stuff as we don’t have a car in Europe.

My first impression of the new Folio is that it is awesome.  A full size keyboard but no wasted space.  Light and easy to carry.  This is going to be so much better.  We have to live off of this thing for two months as our only computing device.  Having it be as usable as possible is critical.

My next task this afternoon was to figure out what we are going to do about a phone while in Europe.  We have been planning all along to just get a loaner phone from Verizon, which we had been told that we could do when we first got our current iPhone 4 and Droid X which are not international phones.  We had hoped that Dominica’s phone might be up for renewal soon enough so that we could just get a new iPhone 4S instead of getting a loaner phone.

Well, nothing goes to plan.  I called Verizon and Dominica is not eligible for renewal until June 19th – the very end of our trip abroad.  So that does not work at all.  Argh.  So we had to resort to getting a loaner phone.  Ah, but there is a catch.  We called for the loaner phone and it turns out that that is not available unless your trip is only roughly three weeks, or less, in length.  That’s not going to work.  Uh oh.  What to do now.

Now we are in a panic.  The only options from Verizon are ones we can’t accept – better to drop our plans than to do what they suggest (agree to two more years on an Android that isn’t reliable.)  We talked to Sprint and it sounds like they might be an option.  Buying a phone in Europe when we step off of the plane might be an option as well.  Hard to say.  We are brainstorming.  This isn’t good. We thought that we were doing well for the trip but suddenly we have reintroduced panic back in.

For dinner we went to Brookhaven and sat outside for kids night.  We stayed until the girls were exhausted and they both were pretty much asleep by the time that we got back home.

I can’t believe that we are already up to the end of April.  We have been talking about this vacation in May for so long that it seemed like some far off dream – something that we would never actually do.  And here we are, days away.  The month is here already!  What is amazing to me is that many people take vacations every year.  If they do they must spend their entire year planning their vacations.  How do people find the time to do this?

Today marks one entire week that I have been caffeine free.  I dropped the caffeine cold turkey a week ago today and haven’t had any problems at all.  I wanted to get off of the caffeine for three reasons.  One for my heart – even though my check-ins each week are good I would like them to be better, second for the money since we spend so much on coffee and soda and third because caffeine is a problem for international travels dealing with jet lag.  One of the best ways to fight it is to not have any caffeine.

So, in theory, I am ready for Europe now.  Just over one more week to go without caffeine and I will be standing on the tarmac in jolly ol’ England.  I’m going to have enough to deal with when we get there without dealing with jet lag too.

I’m busy reading “Under the Tuscan Sun” having finished the first two sequels.  I decided that going back would be good.  The books is nothing, whatsoever like the movie other than both are set in the same general region of Italy in the same century.  Very weird.  They must have just really like the name of the book and winged it from there.

On my way home from work I went to Rockfish and picked up dinner for the family.  We haven’t done Rockfish in a while.  After grabbing the fish I ran across the street to Yogurt Zone and picked up froyo for Dominica, Liesl and I as well.

While driving home I finished “Under the Tuscan Sun” and moved on to reading “Everyday in Tuscany” which is Frances Mayes’ twenty year anniversary retrospective on her life in Tuscany.  The original book was started in 1990 and this one in 2010.

We watched some more of Travels with Kids tonight.  We’ve now seen all of their mainland European shows which are almost entirely places that we are not going with Venice being the only exception.  At least we got some good ideas about Venice.  We will be there for one day now with our finalized plans.

Yesterday I spent nearly the entire day working on projects.  I worked until my brain wasn’t really functioning any more.  I was quite productive, though, so I am happy about that.  I had a lot of things that I needed to get done and I wrapped them up, or mostly.  We are feeling like we are in the home stretch now before going to Europe.  Less than two weeks to go and so much to do that it is hard to think about anything else.  Not because we are so excited but because there is just so much to be done and so little time in which to get it all done.  Heading to another continent for so long with the kids is a bit nerve-wracking.

Today is my homework day.  I have tons to do so I pretty much barricaded myself into the office and just chugged away on that all day long.  Not fun but it had to be done.  I am so behind and I am really concerned that I am not going to have nearly enough done before we have to leave for Europe and doing it from Europe is going to be painful, to say the least.

By the end of the day I did finally get my homework caught up.  I am no longer officially behind.  Certainly not ahead, but no longer behind.  That, in and of itself, is a pretty major accomplishment.

I got us take out from Brookhaven this afternoon.  I made it in time to get food from the buffet but it was a breakfast buffet today all breads and meats so there really wasn’t anything for us to eat from that.

I did give Oreo a bath today.  Or a shower really.  A nice, long relaxing shower.  He likes that.  We have new shampoo and conditioner for him from his vet appointment yesterday that he seems to like.  It is very soothing.  He was very soft after his shower.  His mange is still awful and it makes us so sad.

We discovered that there are “Travels with Kids” episodes to watch on Hulu Plus.  We found this show long ago when it was only one or two seasons and didn’t travel anyplace in which we were interested so we never really got into it.  They’ve done a bit more now so we tried watching it again.  We are always looking for travel shows.