Sheep Guarding Llama

We finally got our schedule today and we now know exactly when we are leaving for New York.  Instead of leaving the weekend before we need to be up there we are actually leaving at the last possible second, the Wednesday evening before the Friday wedding, and driving like crazy and, if all goes well, arriving at dad’s house 24 hours before the wedding itself.  We will get there, probably stay up for about two hours as we will be unable to sleep at that point, crash and sleep a really long time, then get up and head to the wedding.  It is going to be one packed weekend.

From the wedding we will go back to dad’s, sleep, get up and head immediately to the airport to catch our flight from Rochester to JFK and then catch our flight from JFK to Heathrow.  Then immediately hop a train from London to Nottingham.  What a week that is going to be.  We are going to be seriously exhausted by the time that we get to Nottingham.  We will have nothing left at that point.

Weather was great today.  I was up early this morning and got some work done at home before going into the office.  I had to come home a bit longer than usual today so that I could watch the kids while Dominica was out running some errands.

After work I drove down to Grand Prairie to pick up Stacey Rodgers who was able to get away to join us for dinner at Brookhaven tonight.  She has not had a chance to meet Dominica and the girls yet.  Traffic was horrendous.  It took me an hour and a half to make the normally fifteen minute journey down to Grand Prairie to pick her up at the Hampton Inn.  It worked out “well” because she had missed her first shuttle and the second one was stuck in traffic.  She had just enough time to run in, change and run back out as I pulled in.  So the timing ended up not being too bad.

Traffic was fine going the other direction up to Brookhaven.  We were there in fifteen minutes, I would guess.  Dominica and the girls had been there waiting for a bit but just sat in the car waiting for us to arrive.

The weather was so gorgeous tonight, and Stacey is about to have to head back to cold Rochester and the snow, so we sat outside at Brookhaven.  It was great and it is really nice for the kids to be outside because they can make more noise, walk around and whatever without it really being a problem at all.  Dominica and I had the kitchen make us fish tacos tonight – we were just in the mood.

After dinner we sat around one of the fire pits for a while.  Liesl went and played in the bounce house for a bit and made a new friend.  She was horribly upset (see yesterday’s post) when her new friend had to leave because she thought that she would never get to see her, ever again.  We are pretty sure that they will see each other again as kids’ night at the country club is all about running into the same people over and over again.  Liesl was so happy, though, to come and tell us about how she made a new friend.  It was darling.  She is growing up so fast.

Luciana spent much of the evening tricking us by acting like she wanted to walk and then suddenly dropping and crawling away.

We hung out until it was quite dark.  Then Dominica took the kids home and I took Stacey back down to Grand Prairie.  It is funny that in three weeks we will be closer to Stacey in New York than we are to her here.  Stacey and I hung out until twenty till eleven which I knew was the very last moment so that I could still make it to the YogurtZone on MacArthur in Las Colinas to pick up frozen yogurt for Dominica and I.  So we said goodbye and I ran up to Las Colinas.

I came home at a quarter after eleven with frozen yogurt.  Both girls were already asleep.  Liesl had actually fallen asleep in the car on the way home.  Dominica and I ate our yogurt and watched some more House Hunters International.

The weather continues to be awesome down here in Texas.  I am not at all missing the snow in New York.

We are beginning to panic a little bit about our upcoming trip to Europe.  It is getting really close.  We don’t have our final travel schedule yet and we might need to be on the road driving to New York as early as twelve days from now.  Eek.  We are scrambling to get our house in Texas looked after, our travel plans finalized, our finances figured out – and not to mention the packing.  So much to do.  Oh, and of course, my homework and stuff for my class at RIT!  This is insane.

At this point we have a lot of our itinerary figured out but there is still tons to do.  We have most of our hotels picked out and booked but there are still gaps in the schedule and places where we don’t know what we will be doing.  We’ve only just added Viena and Venice to our schedule in the last few days so things are still changing on a regular basis.  As we nail down the hotels there is less and less of that.

I was in the office today and home for lunch.  Liesl has really developed a concern about us leaving.  She has always required that we get a hug and a kiss from her before leaving the house and if she didn’t get them she would be very upset and possibly cry for half an hour or more.  So we are very careful about that.  But now she becomes incredibly meloncholy whenever I go to go to work or when Dominica is going to go to the store and she starts to cry before we leave and she stands at the front windows waving and waving and blowing kisses.  If we don’t wave and blow kisses back the entire way to the car she will get very upset.  I have to make sure that I keep waving to her as long as she can see me and then I drive the car back past the front windows so that she can wave to me as I drive by as well.

It is really sweet that Liesl misses us so much and doesn’t want us to ever be away but it is heartbreaking as I have to leave the house every day.  It makes me want to get up early and get in to work before she gets up so that she doesn’t have to go through that.  She seems to be fine if I am gone before she wakes up.  It used to be like this but it was nearly two years ago and she has been fine since then.  Now Luciana is starting to mimic her and needs her hug and a kiss before anyone leaves and will go stand in the front windows waving to you as well as you drive away.

This evening Dominica and I decided to splurge and to have some Indian for dinner.  So she ordered from Ruchi Palace up on Trinity Mills and I went there after work to pick up dinner thinking that it would be a super easy dinner idea.  And this highlights why online ordering is not as popular as just picking up the phone and calling – the restaurant was out of business.  Argh.

So I sat in the parking lot for a bit while Dominica looked up options online.  Eventually she settled on Flavors down in Addison, called in and order and sent me down there since I was already out and driving around.

Flavors had the food ready for me the moment that I arrived so I just stepped in, paid and left.  I hope that we like this place.  It is going to be very disappointing if we went through a year of dieting and not being able to eat at Ruchi Palace just to have our local Indian place go out of business a week after we were able to eat there again!

I got home and we ate dinner while watching House Hunters International.   The food from Flavors was excellent.  We are really happy with it and the price was good too.  It is not as close as we would like but it isn’t bad and if I hit it on the drive home it is better still.

We did pretty little tonight.  More looking into hotels and a few more nights have been covered.  We went to bed on the early side.  We were all pretty tired.

Woke up at about ten thirty this morning.  Another beautiful Texas spring day.  Nearly eighty degrees today and sunny all while they are getting threats of snow back home.

I got up this morning and spent the morning doing as much work as I could.  Dominica managed to get on the road at a good time and called at around ten thirty to tell me that she and the girls were already on the north side of Houston and on the open highway without significant fear of traffic issues.  So that gave me about three hours to get work done and be ready for them to get home.

I continued my streak of productivity and stayed busy as long as I could.  Dominica got home before two and I spent some time with the girls while Dominica got ready to head off to Zachary’s birthday party at Chuck E Cheese’s in Lewisville at three thirty.

On the way to the party we stopped at Target to pick up birthday presents.  Dominica has gotten really good at being super fast when doing this while I stay in the car with the girls.

Liesl had a great time at Chuck E Cheese.  She loves going there.  She knew exactly what to do with her tokens too.  She immediately rode ride after ride all by herself.  She was able to get on, put her money in and ride over and over again.  She played a lot of the “ticket” games too and won herself some little tiny plastic frogs that she really likes in blue, green and purple.  Last time that we were at Chuck E Cheese she won some little plastic fish that she still plays with.

We stayed at the party as long as we could.   I have class tonight online that I need to get to.  I’ve missed a bit of class and really can’t miss anything additional.  I am way behind and need to be pretty much done with the class before we go to Europe or it is going to be a real problem.  I have no idea how I am going to effectively work on my class work while I am over there.  So my goal is to, somehow, have it all done before we go.  That is going to be awful.

We took off at a quarter till six and made it back to the house just in time for me to start my class.  That lasted for about an hour and a half, not as long as I had anticipated.

After my class was over Dominica ran out to CVS for a bit.  Liesl made me sit on the floor in front of the front windows and she sat on my lap the entire time just talking and talking.  She gets so upset these days whenever one of us leaves te house.  She really is only happy when her whole family is together.

Liesl stayed up until midnight tonight hanging out with me.  She was determined to snuggle on the couch all evening.  She had me make her a tent out of blankets right beside me  and she played on her LeapPad while Dominica and I watched House Hunters International.

I uploaded a few pics and videos today.

Today is my day all set aside for working from home.  Lots to be done and this is my chance in which to do it.  I slept in a bit this morning, snuggling with Oreo who seems very content to just be home with daddy today.  He’s been a little upset that he has been home alone much of the last few days but at least it gives him time to catch up on his sleep a bit.

I did a little more house cleaning today and was settling in to start working when I saw the Facebook post that Gavin’s beloved blankey had been left at Flip’s in Grapevine and that he was very upset.  I talked to Ashley on Facebook and at first she was just going to let the blanket go, it was so far away before they realized it and she was able to placate Gavin by telling him that the blanket was on Thomas the Tank Engine (where they had been) and that seemed to work.  But then he woke up from his nap and was really upset.

So I ran over to Grapevine which isn’t too far from me and picked up the blanket and some fish tacos to reward myself for the journey.  I brought the blanket back home as I had spoken to one of Ashley’s friends, also via Facebook, and found out that she was going to be going from Lewisville to Arlington already today and could easily deliver the blanket this afternoon.  So we arranged to transfer the blanket later on today and she would get it directly to Gavin.

So today was a huge success for Facebook.  Learned of a problem and coordinated a resolution easily between parties who don’t normally talk to each other.  I know Ashley’s friend in passing as we have met at parties but I would never have guessed that she was traveling where needed or know how to contact her.  This is where Facebook shines, bringing together communications in an ad hoc manner based on topic or need rather than on pre-existing communication channels or relationships.  Because I had posted on the Facebook thread that I was getting the blanket and because Ashley had posted where it was her friend could see that she was the missing link in transporting it and we were able to coordinate directly.  First time that I’ve had Facebook work in that way and it really demonstrates a flexibility missing in legacy communications.

So much of my afternoon was spent running errands.  It was kind of nice and that was a low stress way to spend the afternoon.  I had on my iPod the whole time and managed to listen to more than half of “Bella Tuscany” just while driving around today.

Once I was home from the blanket exchange it was time to really get down to solid work.  The dishes were done, the house was picked up – there just wasn’t any real excuse for not getting to work at this point so it has to be done.

I worked solidly from about five thirty to four in the morning.  It was a very long and intense day.  Lots of different projects.  Security, server migrations, database work, networking and more.  I was super productive and I think that it all went really well.  Lots more work to do, though, so I have to get some sleep and get up tomorrow and get right back to it.

Dominica and the girls are heading home tomorrow morning and I expect to see them early in the afternoon.  We are scheduled to be at Chuck E. Cheese’s for a birthday party at three thirty.  Liesl will be very excited to go back there, she loves it.  She talks about it regularly and she has only been there once before.

I overslept this morning so was rushing to get into the office.  My car’s (well, Dominica’s car’s) tires were soft so I had to take some time to fill them up before getting on the road too.  It is chilly this morning and there was just the tiniest drizzle going on while I was filling up the tires at the house.

I got into the office.  It is dark today.  Definitely rain coming.  There was some lightning to the north as I drove home last night so a good storm is not out of the question.

I had a lunch meeting today that got moved to Red Neck Heaven in Lewisville.  So I drove up there in the rain.  This was my first time going there.  With a name like that, not the kind of place that I would be very likely to go to without some particular reason.  The place was absolutely packed.  We had to wait about twenty minutes to get a table and there were only two of us.  The food was good, I had a grilled shrimp salad that was quite tasty.

The afternoon was really slow in the office, it was great.  I didn’t get to leave early but the afternoon was pretty relaxing.  I worked in the office until around a quarter after six.  I was supposed to hang out with Stacey tonight but I called her just before leaving the office and she decided that she was going to take a nap.  Going out late last night was too much for her.  So she might want to go out later but I won’t find out until after she is done with her nap.

So I went home and did some cleaning and reading.  I finished reading Simon Winchester’s “Atlantic” and started reading the sequel to “Under the Tuscan Sun”, “Bella Tuscany.”  I figure that I need to catch up on my Italian travel reading before we go so that I am that much more prepared for the trip.  I got much of the house cleaned up and did some of the dishes.

I figured that getting deep into work would be unproductive as I had already mentally set this evening aside for taking Stacey out to see Dallas so I ran over to Redneck Heaven around the corner and had a beer and grabbed a light dinner (another salad, their grilled shrimp salad is excellent and a nice change of pace.)  I hung out there for a while and Stacey eventually woke up and decided that she was just going to watch television tonight.  So Andrew came out and hung out for a little bit.

I was home on the early side and just used the opportunity to get to bed and do some catch up on sleep.  Oreo thought that that was a great idea.  He is always extra snugly when it is just he and I home.  I read a little more in “Bella Tuscany”, but not much, before going to sleep.