Sheep Guarding Llama

I got up this morning, showered and got on to the road to go pick up Brian in North Houston.  The drive is about an hour.  He was at Waffle House a while before I arrived.  I emailed ahead and had him order me a sandwich and coffee so that I could walk in, sit down, eat and be back out the door in five minutes.  It worked perfectly – everything was ready when I arrived and I am such a fast eater that it is hard to really be much more efficient.

We got over to the office where we were working on the PBX pretty early and got right to work.  It ended up being another warm day – quite a bit warmer than yesterday.  It was a long day too.  At least I had gotten some food before going in today.  Not having any breakfast was a bad idea yesterday.

Both yesterday and today we went to Chili’s for lunch.  They were really close and they cater to vegetarians which is pretty much unheard of these days in a national bar and grill chain – almost all of the others have eliminated anything that might possibly be used to feed a vegetarian from the menu.  Chili’s, however, actually has a special vegetarian menu and goes out of their way to welcome vegetarians.  I had not realized that they did this – as we have a Chili’s within walking distance at home I have a feeling that we will be eating there quite often now.

We finally got out around eleven in the evening.  What a long weekend.  We were really exhausted when we got done.

Before calling it a night, we went down to midtown Houston, about twenty miles from where we had been, to meet up with someone that I know from SpiceWorks (we had met previously at SpiceCorps Houston two years ago) for a few drinks at the neighbourhood bar down there.  I had never really been to midtown Houston before so that was interesting.  Nice to get to see the town considering how often I have been so close to it.

It was about one thirty when I drove Souder the twenty miles back up to North Houston.  It would have gone much, much faster had we not gotten trapped in the one way roads in downtown Houston that were all closed for construction.  We just drove and drove trying to find a way out.  That cost us twenty minutes, easily.

It was after three by the time that I finally got back to the Grice’s!  What a late night.

I got up on the early side this morning, showered and got out on to the road before most everyone was awake.  I saw Francesca and Bennie just for a few minutes before leaving.

It takes just over an hour to get from the Grices up to North Houston where I was picking up Brian.  Brian had gone to breakfast at Waffle House while waiting for me to arrive.  I saw him walking back to the hotel as I zipped by.  No time for me to get breakfast.  Hopefully we will have a chance to grab food soon.

The place where we were to be working on the phone system was right around the corner so that worked out great.  It only took us a minute to get up there.

Unfortunately the air conditioning was off in the building today so it started off on the warmish side and got warmer and warmer throughout the day.  We were pretty warm by the end of the day.

The day went well but was quite long.  I dropped Brian off and drove on down to League City arriving down there while the family was all over at Joe’s house hanging out still but everyone was pretty much ready to go.  Liesl had been asleep for some time already but woke up, sort of, when I arrived.  She really missed me and wanted me to carry her around for a while.

Pretty much I had made it down just in time to pack up the family, drive them back to Francesca’s and go to bed.  There is a lot more work to do tomorrow so the one day project was extended to tomorrow and Brian and I are heading back in once we wake up in the morning.

Today is our travel day down to Houston for a three day weekend.  I went in to the office and worked all day.  Nothing exciting happened during the day.

I had been planning on going home for lunch today but instead I got stuck helping Brian out with something that took all of my lunch period.  So that disrupted my plans a bit.  We grabbed a really quick bite at Rockfish after wrapping up the work and then back to the office.

Around seven thirty Dominica, Liesl and Brian swung down to the office in Irving, since it was on the way out of town, and picked me up.  I arranged with work to leave my car at the office over the weekend.  The office runs around the clock and there is constantly security both in the building and out in the parking in lot plus the lot where I park is completely exposed to a department that never shuts down (global network command center) so there is just about no chance whatsoever that anyone would risk messing with my beat up old car.

We got on the road and headed south.  Traffic was not bad.  We stopped at Wendy’s on the road and ate there.  It is lent so they have fish on the menu.  Their fish is good – it is really sad that they only offer it for a little bit every year.  I think that they really do themselves a disservice making a point of servicing Catholics’ dietary needs but not pescatarians.  In doing so they alienate some of their potential diners (but don’t appear to care since they turn them away eleven months of the year) and confuse the others (what Catholic observing lent knows that Wendy’s changes their menu just for lent?)  Of course, dropping their industry leading French fries for the stuff that they have now doesn’t seem like a good move to me either.  They had unique fries that made them a fry “destination”.  Now they have super-salty, get them anywhere generic fries that aren’t even worth eating if you are already there let along going out of your way to get.  I’m sure that they are much cheaper to produce but how many customers are you willing to give up just to be cheap?

We dropped Brian off at the Baymont in North Houston where they know him well.  Then it was on down to Francesca’s house.  We got in around one in the morning and were pretty tired.  Liesl did very well on the drive down even though she really did not nap at all.  That is good, though, because it will make it a lot easier for her to be able to sleep tonight.

I found out this morning that my great grandmother (Liesl’s great, great grandmother!) Beulah Van Voorhis passed away yesterday.  We had found out over the weekend that she was not doing well and that she was not likely to pull through but we didn’t really know for sure how badly she was doing.  We did hear that she had a new kitten that she was fighting hard to be able to stay around to take care of.

Beulah was actually my step great grandmother.  My mother’s mother’s mother died of appendicitis when my grandmother was very little and my great grandfather Roy Van Voorhis, who died on November 9, 1964, had remarried.  So Beulah was the only great grandparent that I really ever knew to any degree.  When I was very little I had spent some time with my mother’s father’s parents who were both still around then, but I did not know them very well as they were quite a bit older – at least in my memory.

My memories of Beulah include her house which I visited on several occasions but have not been to for many years now.  It is sad that Liesl did not get a chance to at least meet her as she was the last of her generation in the family.  I can remember her dog who, I’m sure, has been gone for a long time now.  She had an extensive salt and pepper shaker collection and a lot of cacti growing in her house.  In fact, she had one entire room given over to growing them.

This morning Dominica met with our new potential pediatrician for the kids.  We are not very happy with our old one and with the new baby coming it is the perfect time to find a new one to handle both of the kids.  Liesl has barely needed to see anyone since we came to Texas so it has not been a very big deal yet.

This evening, Dominica, Souder, Watson, Liesl and I drove down to have dinner at the Olive Garden on the Northwest Highway.  It has been a really long time since Dominica or I have eaten at an Olive Garden.

After work today I ran home just in time to get Dominica, Liesl and Souder loaded up and we headed back on down to Las Colinas to go to La Cima for Pasta Night.  It has been quite a while since we could make it down for pasta night.  Maybe like a month which is awful since it is such a great value.  We really need to work hard not to miss it.

Dinner was nice, it was great to be back at the club.  Watson met us there too.  We are turning into those people that just use it once in a blue moon rather than being regulars.  We have just been so busy recently.  Imagine how hard it will be once we have the little one in less than three weeks (LESS THAN THREE WEEKS!)

Dominica has been working like crazy the last couple weeks and she is pretty stressed out about it.  She worked all day today and there were tickets coming in for her during dinner as well.  We all decided to not let her see the tickets until after dinner.

We got back to the house and all three of us ended up working for several hours.  Dominica was probably busy until one or two in the morning!  It was a crazy night of work but she wound up being able to resolve some really critical customer issues and her stress level went way, way done because of that.  So she will be able to sleep far better tonight.

As crappy as it is to have so much work that needs to be done, it is awfully nice that we are able to work together as a family.  It is so much nicer than normal families who, at best, just discuss their days in general terms.  We really get to do a lot more together.