Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Monday.  Dominica was up very early this morning to try to get everything packed and loaded into the car so that we can drive today.  I got up at the normal time and worked all morning.  Of course, because we are trying to travel today, the day was just insanely busy.  I was running from thing to thing like mad.

We discovered MeshCentral today and got it installed on Vultr and up and running before leaving the office.  Finally a remote control system that actually works for Fedora with Cinnamon!  I am so excited about this one.  It is up and working already with Deepin, Windows, and Fedora.

Paul and I loaded Francesca’s “new” furniture into the bed of his Ford F150 for him to bring down to Friendswood with him on Wednesday or Thursday.  He is planning on coming down on Wednesday, but I think that it is much more likely that he will not be making it down until Thursday.  There are presents and stuff still being shipped to the house until Wednesday afternoon and it is a long, annoying trip to do in the evening, but only five hours so he might decide to do it anyway.

We loaded the Nissan Quest pretty thoroughly and got onto the road around one.  Due to traffic in Dallas, we were routed down the Dallas North Tollway, so we stopped by at the Taco Bell on Marsh and got lunch for everyone.  Liesl and I had waited to eat anything all morning knowing that we would get Taco Bell on the drive.  We’ve settled into a pattern for Liesl, she does three cheesy bean and rice burritos, and a caramel apple empanada every time.  Luciana generally is not that into Taco Bell and just got cinnamon twists.  Dominica is able to eat the same thing as Liesl, but sans spicy cheese sauce, and she gets tostitos.  

The drive went just fine.  There was some traffic but nothing major.  A few hours south of Dallas we stopped for McDonald’s coffee and got an Egg McMuffin (without the meat) for Luciana who says that an “Egg McMuffin is the closest thing to an hamburger that I can eat.”  She is so funny.  

Overall the drive was fine and we got to Friendswood at seven.  Dominica’s dad, sister, Madeline, Garrett, and Clara had all gone to the movies about fifteen minutes before we arrived.  So we had a quiet couple of hours at the house with Dominica’s mom and Bennie before anyone else arrived.  The girls disappeared.  Liesl went to the upstairs couch to be alone.  And Luciana went into our (Garrett’s) room and hung out in the bed for a while.  They were looking to just get some quiet time alone.

Once everyone was back from the movies the kids all hung out together until it was time for bed.  Once the adults turned in, Dominica and I hooked up our gaming laptop to the TV in our room and watched several episodes of the second season of Fear the Walking Dead before going to bed a little before one in the morning.  

The show has improved quite a bit.  In the first season I was pretty ready to give up on it as it was just so boring.  But the story is improving.  Still a bit too repeated from the original series, but decent.  Although I feel that they continue to fail to make a solid protagonist that you can hope survives.  I’m still mostly rooting for the undead as they seem more together.  I do enjoy seeing a show shot in Baja California in the wine country.  It looks so nice there.

The bed in Garrett’s room is just awful, to the point that I cannot sleep on it.  And the room is very warm and the bed is incredibly warm beyond that.  So I grabbed a few blankets and moved to the floor which was much more comfortable than the bed, by a long shot.  We slept with the window open to make it bearable.  

After twenty minutes, Liesl came in and said that she had insomnia and asked if she could sleep in our room so that she could fall asleep.  So Liesl slept on the floor with me, which made her very happy.  And minutes later Luciana came in and decided to sleep in our room, too.  She slept in the bed because her leg was hurting and she thought that that might make it feel better.  This was probably not good for Dominica, though, since having two people in that bed makes the broken frame so much worse.

Rachel is still in Austin and not getting back until tomorrow at the earliest.  So who knows if she is going to get to the house before even Paul has left.  We talked for an hour or so tonight on text.  We won’t be able to get back to watching our show, The Haunting of Hill House until after New Year’s.  

Dominica was very glad that I skipped work all afternoon and drove the family down so that she did not have to worry.  We don’t know how long we will be staying.  Paul has to be back in Dallas to make a flight to Wisconsin on December 27th.  We may or may not go back at that time.  We might stay until after New Year’s.  Or we might leave the kids for a week and go back up to Dallas for a bit and then come back to get them.  We will see.

We remembered to bring my new portable work rig with my two laptops, my big twenty four inch monitor, wireless keyboard, and mouse.  That will make this a lot easier to work for a couple of weeks.

And the holidays have officially begun.  This is why we don’t have a Christmas tree or anything at our house ever, and no decorations.  Technically we do have some this year, there is a tiny tree with lights, and some wall clings in the hallway, but that is it.  But the last day that we were at our house was the sixteenth, so doing any decorating of our own just doesn’t make any sense.  So this is what we do.

Sunday.  Today is mostly packing, because we are leaving for Houston tomorrow morning, and some art work as the kids prepare for Christmas, and some general cleaning around the house.  Dominica has asked me to leave Dallas most of a week early so that I can drive her and the girls to Houston tomorrow.  A friend of ours had a major car accident about two weeks ago having hit a semi on the highway and it has Dominica rather shaken up and driving worries her more than normal, so I am going to do the driving.

There is a lot of suitcases getting ready to go tomorrow.  The girls spent the day playing video games.  They took over the living room for the entire day.  Lots of Roblox, Fortnite, etc.  They played with their cousins much of the day.  Paul spent most of the day camped out in his office, a major day of Clash of Clans.

Dominica decided that she wanted to watch Shaun of the Dead, too.  And then it turned out that Paul had never seen it at all.  So the three of us watched it again from the beginning this morning.  Such a good movie.  I know that Hot Fuzz, the sequel movie from the Cornetto Trilogy is also on Netflix.   I have not noticed World’s End in the line up so not sure if that is there now or not.

Dominica and I binge watched Fear the Walking Dead for most of the day.  We finished the first season and got solidly into the second season today.  By later in the day it was starting to get pretty interesting and we are actually interested in it now.  Dominica had watched the first season years ago without me, so we had rewatched it together so that I would be caught up.  So early on today we got into the second season which Dominica has never seen, either, so we are both watching it for the first time together.

Both girls took showers later in the day.  They both wanted me to read to them today, but we are busy getting the house ready (and watching our show.)

It was a pretty relaxing day.  We watched in our bedroom on the loveseat all day since the girls had taken over the living room.