Sheep Guarding Llama

This is it.  Today is our last full day in Texas for a long time.  We will be on the road to New York in the middle of tomorrow afternoon.  It seems surreal.

I got up at seven this morning and got right to work.  So much to do.  We are not really ready at all.  There is so much to do and so much to think of when you are going to be traveling for this length of time.

My day was crazy busy just trying to get as much work done as possible so that I would be ready to go.  I am working from home today so that we have more opportunity to do things.  Not that it makes all that much difference at this point.  We are down to the wire.

Around twelve thirty Dominica ran off for her final hair cut before we go.  She wants her hair a lot shorter so that it is easier to deal with while we are traveling.  I need to remember to shave my head tomorrow morning as well.  Want as little to deal with once we leave Texas as possible.

I will be going to work tomorrow and leaving the moment that they don’t need me anymore.  Likely around 4:05 since most of my real work typically wraps up before 4:00.

Liesl is really excited to be going on vacation and going to New York to see her grandparents.  She can barely contain herself.  Little does she realize (or remember) just how long the car trip is and then how long the flight is going to be and then the train ride once we arrive.  Between tomorrow afternoon and Sunday morning there will be twenty-four hours of driving, nearly ten hours of flights and about three or four hours of trains.  Not to mention a six hour layover at JFK with nothing to do.

We tried to get to bed early tonight but it was probably midnight anyway before we actually turned in.  Tomorrow is going to be a very long day.  So much to do before we leave and then… the drive.

We leave Texas in forty-eight hours and we leave for Europe itself from New York in five days.  Vacationitis is now in effect one hundred percent.

I got up at a quarter after six this morning so that I could get some work done.  Liesl was up just minutes after me.  She popped into my office at half past six and asked me to set her up with a My Little Pony show and chocolate milk (Pediasure.)  Her morning routine, but not normally this early.  It was still dark out.  Every morning she finds us, has us set up whatever show she was watching just before going to bed, bring out her Dora pillow and her pink polka dot blanket and set up on the couch in the playroom with her chocolate milk.  This is how she starts her day.

Over the last several weeks her thing has been making tents from blankets.  She loves to have a tent over her bed, tent over the couch, etc.  Yesterday she decided that she wanted a “cave” instead (basically a tent with her head poking out.)  So I have to set her up with that so that she can watch her shows as well.

I went in to Medifast this morning at my usual nine o’clock and did my final check in before leaving for Europe.  As of today I am also out of transition and into my “stay fit” cycle where, in theory, I am back to eating real food and being “normal” from here on out.  The goal is to maintain my current weight, hopefully, forever.  They are excited about my trip and will be following along on Kidding Around Europe.  Dominica has been working on some new posts for there too.  The big one will be about all of the luggage and how she is managing to squeeze everything in there.

I’ve gotten a Europe 2012 Flickr Set set up now where all of the raw pictures from our trip will be being uploaded as we go.  Pretty much empty right now, but in theory that will be jam packed with content very soon.

Dominica spent a bit of time this weekend getting iPads and iPods ready for the trip. Books and music loaded, movies to watch.  We are ready.  There is going to be a lot of time spent on planes and trains.  Keeping the girls, and ourselves, occupied is going to be tough.

Today was slow at the office.  I was thankful for that.  My head is swimming with all of the things that we need to do before we leave.  It is starting to feel like a panic.  I am starting to have a hard time concentrating or focusing simply due to the massive volume of things demanding our attention.

I had to run to the post office this afternoon to send out the Droid X that has to be returned to Verizon.  Quite honestly, we are glad to be rid of it.  We never liked the phone and we don’t want it cluttering up the house like our old Palm 700p and BlackBerry Tour do.  Even Dominica’s old BlackBerry Pearl won’t go away and Liesl still plays with it from time to time and Luciana is starting to play with it.  Very soon, I suspect, they will be playing with an HTC Droid Incredible 2.

The whole afternoon was really slow at work.  I remembered to submit my timesheets – always a concern with me.  Very critical since we will be out of the country and very dependent on the regular flow of income while we are away.  I did some bill paying too.  Want to get that all taken care of before we are traveling.

It is Monday so the country club is closed. So our routine has been for me to pick up food on the way home to save time.  We are pretty much out of food at the house and we do not want to buy any more since we will be leaving and anything that is in the house will spoil while we are gone.  So we have already gone through and pretty much eaten everything and now have to eat out for all of our meals.

So I called into Rockfish and ordered dinner before leaving the office.  I brought home dinner and Dominica had some Rick Steves lined up and ready to go when I arrived.  We watched his European travel tips to make sure that we had thought of everything possible.

My new laptop case arrived today.  It is pretty cool.  I will try to post some pictures tomorrow – both of it and of the new laptop too.

Tonight was busy between prep work and just general work needing my attention.  So much to do, so little time.  I expect to be home tomorrow and in the office on Wednesday.  So pretty much everything has to be done tomorrow.  Wednesday is purely a “pack the car” day.

Three days.  AAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!

I got up early this morning and got right to work trying to get things done as quickly as possible.  I am completely overwhelmed with work and projects that must be done before we leave.  There is not nearly enough time in the day.  I have no idea how I am going to pull all of this off.

I locked myself in the office for much of the day.  The girls really wanted to hang out with me but I just don’t have the time for interruptions.  I sat down with Liesl and explained that I had to work really hard today and that I would go to work for three days but then, after that, we were going to go on vacation.  She got super excited and seems to understand.  We are trying to show her videos of where she will be going and doing and trying to make her understand as much as possible.  She seems to get it and can’t wait to leave on Wednesday to go see her grandparents in New York and then fly on to England.  I tried to teach her to say “jolly good show” as well.

Dominica went out to do some shopping today.  She has been buying My Little Ponies for Liesl to surprise her with on the trip.  Liesl is so into them now and has been asking for them all the time.  She got nearly all of them today and gave Liesl one of them, Apple Jack, early as Liesl was really anxious to get that one.  The rest will be a surprise to dole out while we are in Europe on the trains.

The day was exhausting.  By the evening I was really burned out.  I spent some time watching some shows with Dominica and the girls.  We caught up on the latest episode of Hot in Cleveland and Happily Divorced which are the only normal shows that we watch.  Then we watched some more of Travel with Kids.

Once Liesl went to bed I went to bed myself.  I’ll get up early-ish tomorrow and get more work done then.

Our last weekend before the trip.  Holy cow time has flown by.  We are suffering from vacationitis – we don’t want to do anything and mentally have already switched into vacation mode.  It is really hard to focus on anything but the trip.  So much to do before we go!

I am the on call for the office this weekend.  I got up this morning and tried to get as much work done as possible.  I worked really hard all day.  It was a very busy day.

I spent much of the day working on several servers, including a SunFire V100 that I am supposed to be delivering to Danielle when we drive up to New York.  We are delivering three laptops and the V100 on this trip.  That will reduce the “stuff” in our house but only by the tiniest bit.  I really wish that there was more for us to send.  I am so tired of the house being full of stuff.

I ran out to Redneck Heaven this afternoon and picked up shrimp salads for us for dinner.  That was my only real free time today.  We just have to push through until the trip.  There will be plenty of time to relax once we are gone.

I had to be up early this morning so that I could get into the office for the non-farm payroll announcement from the fed.  So that meant getting up at six.  But it meant that it would be easier to work from home this afternoon too.  I worked in the office until noon then came home, did some phone work for a while then worked from home for the rest of the day.

We are starting to get a little nervous.  Five days to go.  Five days!  Are we ready for this?  I am definitely not ready.  So much to do.  I have no idea how I will get everything done that needs to be done.  This is nuts.

I had to do some fancy maneuvering of weekend support schedules in the office to make it that I can be free while we are in Europe.  Somehow I got scheduled to work the weekend support during my holiday so we had to juggle several people to find a solution that would allow me to cover some other time so that someone could cover for me then.  We finally got it figured out and I am actually the on call this weekend – which is really awesome both because it gets it out of the way and also because there is a freeze in effect this weekend so the likelihood that much will happen is not very high.  Likely it will be a quiet weekend.

The new global phone arrived today.  That is good.  We have it in hand and Dominica spent the day getting it ready.  So far she likes it a bit more than her old phone too, which is good.  It is faster and smaller – perfect for traveling.  And since we don’t really care about this phone as it is being replaced as soon as we return from Europe we don’t have to worry about it getting beat up either.  The new phone is an HTC Droid Incredible 2 replacing her older Droid X.

Dominica took Oreo the vet this afternoon.  She is very pleased with his progress which is good as she was really concerned about him a week ago.  The extra food and baths seems to be helping a lot.  He appears to be happier too although he now seems to be really restless at night.  I wonder if he is more restless because I am not wearing my CPAP?  I got the CPAP a few months before we got Oreo so this is the very first week that he is trying to sleep with me that I am without my CPAP and I wonder if that change is bothering him.

Tonight we more or less relaxed.  Not totally but some.  This weekend is going to be really hectic and there is really no break until we leave on Wednesday evening so tonight is our chance to rest up before everything goes crazy.