Sheep Guarding Llama

The holidays have begun, the kids are home from school for a few weeks. Dominica got up around seven so that she could help with making cookies and pignolata. I would have gotten up sooner, but Luciana immediately came over and said she was freezing and hadn’t had a blanket last night and climbed into bed to get warm.

All morning was more cookie baking. Paul and I kept joking that we need to wall mount a video camera and record the kitchen and make an Italian baking reality show, it would be a huge hit on YouTube.

Holly managed to escape again this morning. What a pain that dog is. Much easier to catch her today with everyone home.

Joe came over with the kids this afternoon, around three. After working hours, even though it is a holiday Saturday, Paul, Bennie, Joe, and I went out to the garage and shot pool for a while till it was time for dinner. It was so hot in the house, between the baking and no windows being opened and it being close to seventy outside anyway, that we could not stand being in the house.

I was tired very early, as was Dominica. So we got to bed shortly after the Grices making it a short day. We could hear people out in the garage shooting pool long after we had gone to bed.

Friday. Another very busy day with work. Today is the last day for the Grices. So we had a quiet day for the most part. But school was a half day, so we expected everyone to come back around two or two thirty.

I spent the morning working. We are doing a lot of work to test and move to MeshCentral which is one of our best new finds in software. We are estimating that it is going to save us around $1,600 a year in licensing costs, while making us more agile and performant as a company. I am so excited about finding it.

This afternoon Paul and I had a major phone meeting for a while. Very significant. Fingers crossed that it turns into something.

I worked most of the afternoon. Keeping myself busy. Dominica is always swamped with work around the house. Cooking, baking, wrapping, etc.

For dinner this evening, Paul and I went to Taco Bell and got nearly sixty dollars of Taco Bell for the family. That is a lot of food from Taco Bell!

I spent an hour and a half on the phone this evening talking to a sales candidate that I met at a part two weeks ago. That has some promise.

I worked till around midnight. The kids all slept on the couch tonight. So I got a break from the floor and tried sleeping on the air mattress with Dominica.

Thursday came about quite quickly this week. The whole week seems to have just flown by. I am now used to sleeping on the floor and don’t really even notice. Although because we slept in the open upstairs area last night, I woke up to Holly and Liza jumping on me and Truman licking my head.

Just a normal morning of work. Lots of more MeshCentral work today. That’s been big this week. And doing some research into MailCow which we might was to switch to from Zimbra. It looks pretty promising; significantly more modern which would be nice for our team.

Early this afternoon Holly, the oversized black labrador, pushed the gate open and took off running down the street. Liesl just happened to be in the kitchen when she ran and was like “no, no, no, no…” so we had some warning. I was the only adult home, and in pajamas with no shoes on. I ran down the street and down a block, but Holly ran away from me and is very fast. So I was pretty much useless.

I ran back to the house, got shoes on, grabbed a phone, told Madeline that she was alone with the kids, and went back out. I called Dominica and Paul who were at the grocery store doing some shopping and told them that they had to hustle back to help me catch the dog.

I spent probably twenty five minutes hunting the dog down. I found her decently quickly, but she is way faster than me and kept running away from me, going down several different streets. I was on the phone with Dominica the whole time, hoping that they would get back and be able to help me quickly as even if I caught Holly, I would not reasonably be able to get her back on my own.

I managed to catch Holly and hold her collar just minutes before Dominica and Paul returned. She happily jumped into the Nissan and they drove her back to Francesca’s house while I walked back. Then they went back out shopping. They were out hunting down half and half for coffee, and signs to put on Paul’s CanAm which is sitting out front and Elizabeth told him that he should have signs on if he was hoping to sell it.

After they got back from shopping and put out signs, it was only an hour before his first inquiry call came in! They didn’t buy it, but they called to find out. That’s more calls than he has had in weeks.

I made myself Boca burgers for lunch. I skipped breakfast today.

Emily and her friend Hannah came by and hung out for about an hour talking about the Europe trip in the summer. Hannah wants to go to Texas A&M for travel and tourism, so very much up her alley. Emily has not yet made any serious decisions about her Europe trip yet and she is rapidly running out of time. Dominica, of course, is pushing her to make it a museum trip, something Emily has no interest in. I just want her to give a rough outline of the countries that we are going to be going to because I don’t think that she is being realistic about the travel time needed to get from country to country and still have a chance to see the country that she is getting to.

Dinner was “fend for yourself”, so just a cheese and mayo sandwich for me. I made green beans and veggie chicken nuggets for the kids. Madeline worked late tonight, not getting home until after dinner. She has to work every day this week. All the fun of being the college worker back from college during the holiday busy season while everyone else that works there is at school because they are all still in high school.

I did tonnes of web hosting work tonight. Solving tough problems with hacked websites and migrating hosting and stuff like that. Good work, and worked quite late. Tomorrow is a busy day of meetings.

It is already Wednesday.  This week is flying by.  Mostly because I lost Monday to driving, so I didn’t even notice the week getting started.

Sleeping on the floor last night was way better.  I’ve adjusted already and it felt pretty good.  I was able to do my normal tossing and turning without feeling soar, and did not feel like I had to get right up this morning because the floor was so hard.  Amazing how quickly we adapt to things like that.  It actually felt pretty nice.  It’s not as comfy as the memory foam at home, but it keeps me cooler than the foam does so it is a trade off.

Monday was so busy at work, today is nice and quiet. But there is plenty for me to do. I ended up staying at the dining room table (where my office is) the entire day. From eight in the morning until after one in the morning!

The Grices still have school and work today, so it is quiet all day around the house. I got a lot of work done, working hard on getting all caught up so that we are ready for the holiday season.

This afternoon, the family all went to IHOP to get Grinch pancakes. I stayed home as it was only five o’clock which is well in my work day and we had a lot of important work going on with the west coast and I did not feel that I should step away, which was good because more stuff happened while I they were gone. So I just made myself some MorningStar chicken nuggets for dinner.

Paul left Dallas to drive down to Houston around two. He has a truck load of stuff that we forgot that we would need while here. And he is pulling his trailer with his CanAm side by side all terrain vehicle to use while we are down here.

Not much to report today, I worked the entire day so my view was always from the dining room table. Late in the evening I made myself some veggie BLTs.

Paul has Garrett’s room now, with the terrible bed. Dominica, Liesl, Luciana, and I are all sleeping out in the craft area of the open upstairs. Dominica is using the air mattress again, and the girls and I are on the floor as we all find the floor to be more comfortable. Liza, the golden retriever, came up and snuggled with Luciana during the night.

Our first full day in Friendswood (Houston) for the holiday season.  The Grices all still have school and work so it is mostly just us here. I woke up on the floor this morning at eight thirty.  It has been a while since I have slept on the floor all night, but thank goodness I am still able to do it and my back did not hurt or anything.  I was certainly feeling the floor by the time that I got up, but once I was up I felt fine.  Not bruised, or twisted, or sore.  Liesl did fine sleeping on the floor as well and was awake around nine.  Dominica had gotten up long before me, her back really hurting from having stayed in the bed.  Luciana is the only one that stayed asleep for any length of time.

We hung out with Dominica’s parents this morning.  I took my Dell laptop and set up at the kitchen table for the morning.  Today was mostly web work, working on fixing customer web sites, migrating sites, and so forth.  More testing with MeshCentral today, too.

Lots of work today, especially being out of the office most of the day yesterday.  So I was super busy all day.

By the afternoon, I was set up in the dining room with my twenty four inch monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse.  That makes working a lot more comfortable and I am out of most everyone’s way.

Madeline and Emily both had to work today.  But there is only one car.  Do Madeline took our minivan today to work.  

When Madeline got home from work, she took Liesl and Luciana back with her to Justice to go shopping since Justice has a big sale on, plus they get Madeline’s work discount off on top of that.  So pretty serious discounts.  Both girls took their own money and went shopping for their own stuff and had loads of fun and both came back with lots of new stuff that they are very excited about.  Very fun outing.

This evening we had veggie BLTs for dinner.  And then celebrated Bennie’s forty seventh birthday.  He had a yellow cake with chocolate frosting.

Today in history: In 2012, Liesl watched The Goonies for the first time.  She was only four years old.  Dominica’s very Liesl quote from the evening was “I hope my potty never does that!” in reference to Troy on the toilet geyser.  Sadly, Liesl does not remember the movie at all at this point and Luciana has never seen it.  But we do not have it anywhere that they could watch it.  So they have no chance to see it currently.

The kids played like maniacs for the small amount of time that they all got with each other.  The Grice kids needed to be in bed around nine because they still have school tomorrow.  They are all so happy to be together.

Dominica and I did some work on the GroveSocial website which is getting pretty close to being ready to do a “go live”.  Then I did a little more web work, some blogging on SGL, and Dominica worked on feeding the kids their late night meal.

Emily got home a little after ten and Luciana wanted a snack.  So we hung out for about an hour.  Then I went to the car and brought in the air mattress so that Dominica could try sleeping on that tonight.  Garrett’s bed, even without me in it, she cannot handle.  And because she needs to sleep on her side she cannot sleep on the floor like I can.  So Liesl and Luciana are planning to sleep on the floor with me tonight, and Dominica will be next to us on the air mattress and the only real bed in the room will be empty because there isn’t a single person that wants to sleep on it over being just on the floor.

I stayed up a bit longer taking care of some more web work that really needs my attention and getting a little more blogging out of the way.  It has been such a hard year, I want to avoid getting too far behind.  Now that we are in Houston, it is easier for me to keep up, so I intend to do so.

Heading to bed myself around one in the morning.  Dominica went to bed more like eleven thirty.