Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is my big travel day.  Or, at least, the beginning of the big travel weekend.  Starting tonight I’m on the move pretty much constantly until Sunday afternoon.  This is going to be a long, long weekend.

Work was pretty busy today but not awful.  I went in to the office as usual. My traveling does not begin until pretty late this evening so my day is not really affected.

For lunch today I ran home and spent some time with Dominica and Liesl since I will not be seeing them tomorrow.  We decided that I would drive myself back to the office after lunch and that if I got done with work early enough that I would drive home and if not that Dominica would pick me up at the office and take me to the airport and we would just leave the Mazda at the office over the weekend.

The afternoon was completely crazy at work.  What a busy day.  My deployments this evening took two and a half solid hours without a spare second for me to stop and catch up.  It was maddening.  What a way to wear yourself out at the end of the day.

I managed to wrap up work just in time to run out, jump in the Mazda, drive to the house and have Dominica and Liesl drive me over to DFW to prepare for my flight.  Dominica had all of my stuff packed and ready to go.

I got to the airport two hours early – which has always been more than enough at DFW.  You move through security in around ten minutes there consistently.  It has never been an issue for me at all and now that we use that airport so often we are really getting good at getting in and out without too much problem.  I still like to leave plenty of extra time just in case.  Nothing worse than missing a flight as Dominica and I found out in England.

So I had lots of time which worked out well since I had not eaten since breakfast.  I hit the Tequilaria and grabbed a beer and a salmon quesadilla which was excellent.  It took so long to get the food that it killed about forty five minutes.  I had time to burn so that wasn’t an issue. I ate and then headed over to the gate which was just a few feet away.

The flight boarded on time and was scheduled to be down the runway at nine thirty but we ended up having ground crew problems and it took over an hour and a half for the ground crew to get around to getting us underway.  Not an impressive ground crew.

We finally got into the air sometime after eleven central time.  This is going to be one long, exhausting weekend.  That hour and a half delay came straight out of my very limited sleep schedule for the weekend.

Other than the delays on the ground in Dallas there were no issues with the flight.  I arrived only an hour and ten minutes late in Baltimore.  John picked me up in his new Toyota FJ Cruiser and we hit the gas station, got sandwiches and headed back to his place.

I was finally in bed around three thirty.  Nila was, of course, waiting for me and came up and got into bed with me.  She is the funniest cat ever.  She really misses me whenever I am away from Maryland.  She never leaves my side while I am there.

It took me until around four before I actually fell asleep.  Boy oh boy is this going to be one long day tomorrow.  Brian emailed me just before I fell asleep to tell me that he had just woken up but was going back to sleep rather than driving down to get me right away.  Probably best.  I need some amount of sleep or I will be useless tomorrow.

My phone woke me up at five this morning.  Of course when there is a major production issue I stayed up really late working on something.  So I got about two hours of sleep.  Ugh.

I worked for an hour or more.  I was kind of delirious.  I can’t believe that my cell phone battery lasted long enough for me to stay on the call.  Once the call was over I decided that I was too tired to just get up so I climbed back in to bed and slept until around nine.

Work was crazy slow today.  It comes in waves I guess.  Yesterday was so busy and today was so slow.  I guess the transition from busy to slow was in the middle of the night.

I went home and managed to take a long lunch today which was nice because Liesl was in a mood to hang out.  She seldom is really concerned about spending time with me when I come home for lunch.  She likes that I am there but she is normally busy doing her own thing and is not really looking to play.  Today she hung out with me and wanted me to read to her and spend time with her which was nice.  I am sure that she is really missing her cousins.  She loves having all of those people around and the constant activity.

We had to call the contractor, again, because he didn’t show up or communicate, like always.  Why is it so hard for people to realize that it would not matter very much as long as there was an email saying that he was running late or couldn’t make it for one reason or another.  We are sitting around waiting for him.  We could go do something or at least know that he did not completely forget about us if we did not have to follow up every day.  And every time he gives the “oh, I’m just on my way over there” excuse.  Every time.  It’s wearing thin.  If we call at noon or five in the evening, he is just on his way over.

I managed to leave work a little early today.  That was nice.  Dominica and I got some time to hang out and talk.  Good timing since I will be out of town most of the weekend.  Our contractor came by this evening too and got most of the server room sanded and painted.  That is a major victory.  We are mostly ready for the carpeting now which comes in on Saturday afternoon.  I can’t wait to start using that room.

We took out the track tonight and spent half an hour clearing out the new office of all of the furniture to get it ready for the carpeting as I won’t have any time to help with that tomorrow.  And tonight we had to pack for my trip.  I’m taking almost nothing since it is such a short stay.  Just zipping to Maryland, having breakfast with John and zipping back to Texas.  Now the house is really a mess again holding all of that stuff.

We watched the one new episode of Wizards of Waverly Place and the first two of the second season of Good Luck Charlie that Disney has released to Netflix then it was time for bed.  Liesl is starting to really enjoy snuggling on the couch and watching Disney shows with us.  Good Luck Charlie is her favourite adult show.  She sits next to me and leans on me with my arm around her and she really pays attention to the whole show.  It is so cute.  She often holds her blanket while watching.  She is glued to the show, you can see a lot of Dominica and Madeline in her.

Francesca was awake and packing when I headed off to work.  The Grice family will be back in Houston this afternoon.  Dominica emailed me at work to tell me that Liesl was very upset that everyone had left all at once and was asking for me so I needed to be sure to go home at lunch today so that she could see that I was still around.  Normally she is fine with me going to work.  She has gotten used to me leaving in the morning and coming home in the evening.  Nothing like it was when we first moved to Texas and I started going in to the office on a regular basis again.  That was a very hard transition.  Now she knows that I will be home later and very possibly for lunch too and she doesn’t mind.  She often does not even bother to see me off even when she is awake before I leave – which I still try to avoid whenever possible.

Work was incredibly busy for both Dominica and I today.  No time off at all.  It was quite a squeeze just trying to get home at lunch to see Liesl.  I ran home but it was not for very long and I did not even get a chance to eat – which was not all that bad since I had picked up donuts on Josey on my way in to work this morning so those were sitting on my desk all morning tempting me.  I just ate another one for lunch when I returned to the office.

The whole day was just crazy busy and no fun.  At least I did not get stuck at the office really late.  I was only back in the office for an hour and a half before the fire alarm went.  I had work that needed my attention and I could not take the time to just stand around outside so I jumped in the car and zipped home.  I was back online and working about twenty minutes before the people who were sent outside managed to get back online.  So good decision making there on my part.

It was nice getting home around three thirty.  Liesl was napping for a while when I arrived so I was able to work.

I called our contractor today to find out why he said that he would be over on Thursday, last week, and we hadn’t heard a peep from him yet.  He had made a big deal about the carpet taking so long and insisting that it could be done faster but now that the carpet is coming in on Saturday he is not in the least bit prepared and is not even going to be ready for it.  Utterly ridiculous.  I can’t believe that we have to call him every single day and any day that we forget to call he doesn’t show up.  He says “see you tomorrow to do X or Y” and then the next day we wait all day, then the next and he never returns until we call again to ask what has happened.  We had a talk with him about this the last time that he was here to work but it didn’t change anything.  You’d think given the current state of the economy that making money would be a priority for people who are working for themselves.

The mudding is done in the server room now.  The sanding is supposed to be done tomorrow.  I’m not holding my breath.  We really need the shelving finished too that will hold the lights around the ceiling – that not being done has been holding up the electricians.  This is all such a mess.  And we only have a few days to go before it becomes an order of magnitude more of a problem than it is currently – which is still a pretty big problem.  I leave Friday night to go to Maryland and will be driving back from there all day Saturday.  When I arrive back in Texas on Sunday I will have Brian with me and he will be needing to be able to live in that room.  If things aren’t done it is going to be rather too late as we have to move furniture in there at that point.

I hung out with Dominica and Liesl this evening.  We caught up on our Wizards of Waverly Place and then Liesl and I watched Open Season 2 twice while Dominica caught up on work out in the living room.  Liesl really loved the movie (which is why we had to watch it twice) and already knows what antlers are and gets excited identifying them in her books now that she learned about them in the movie.  She is so adorable.  It is amazing how quickly she picks this stuff up.

Liesl decided to sneak into our bed and sleep with us tonight.  She and Dominica went to bed around eleven.  I went in to the office and worked for a few hours before turning in myself.

I got up and worked from home for an hour and a half this morning before running into the office.  It was nice to get to drive the Mazda now that I have working headlights and a fresh oil change.  The car is running so much more smoothly now.  I forgot to mention yesterday that I discovered that there is a Valvoline near the office that does a very cheap oil change and headlamp replacement which, when you drive Mazda is a very big deal.  We lose one headlamp every month so being able to get it replaced for twenty five dollars is a very, very big deal to us.  They can do our inspection too which is awesome because we have to do that really soon and I was wondering where I was going to be able to get that done.

Work was pretty busy today.  I didn’t manage to get lunch for myself until nearly three.  I ran over to Which Wich and got, surprisingly, a sandwich.

Dominica and Francesca took the kids to the Ft. Worth Zoo today.  They said that it was a mad house there.  Of course, it is spring break so everyone is there.  They were not too happy with the decision to zoo it up today given the craziness that ensued.  But they were pretty much committed once driving all of the way there.  At least Dominica and I are getting some serious value out of our zoo passes.  We just keeping using those and using those.  Everyone wants to go to the Ft. Worth Zoo when they come to visit us.

I wrote a whole long post today and later, when I came back to check on it, I found my post in draft mode and all of my writing gone past this point 🙁

After their trip to the zoo, the family went out for lunch at the pancake house there in Fort Worth that we really like.  They loved their meal, as always, and had to brag about it to me later.

Once I got home, Emily, Madeline and I went for a walk, about two miles total, up to our local pizza place and got dinner there while the rest of the family ate at home.  It’s been nice to get a chance to go out and walk in the evenings.  Nice to get some exercise and very nice to get a chance to really see where we live.  Walking around the neighbourhoods helps to get a feel for where we are and to see where things are in relationship to one another.  I’m getting a much better mental picture of the area now.

After our walk we came back and Emily and I watched The Chaperone on Netflix before everyone turned in for the night.

Today I am back to the office while Dominica and Francesca take all of the kids out for the day to some place called Amazing Jake’s where they have games, food, laser tag, movies and all kinds of stuff.  They went out there for about six hours today and everyone seems to have had a really good time.  An exhausting day for sure.  Wore the kids out big time.

I got home on the early side today.  This is my first day going home since the time change.  It is bright out quite late.  It’s great.  Emily and I decided to go for a walk and see how long it would take to get over to the plaza with Target.  It really wasn’t a bad walk.  I Google Mapped it and was 1.3 miles each direction.  So 2.6 miles is a pretty healthy evening hike.  It was great weather for walking through the neighbourhood.  We even went in to Target while we were there.  Nice to know that I can just walk to Target when needed.  It is really only just a little bit farther than it used to be to walk to Walmart back when I used to live in Geneseo.

After we got back we found that dinner had not been started yet so we recommended that we go out and get Peruvian from Inca’s Cafe.  Everyone, except for Dominica, was pretty excited by that idea so Emily and I went out to get Peruvian and to surprise everyone.

We made it just before the cafe closed.  It took us quite a while to review the menu and to decide what we should get for everyone.  While we waited, we had chips and salsa.  Very, very hot salsa.  It was quite good.  We were the only patrons in the restaurant as it was approaching closing time.

It was about nine twenty when we finally got back to the house with dinner.  We got a vegetarian option for Dominica that she really liked and pulled chicken for Francesca that she really liked.  I got fish sticks (nothing like what you normally get for fish sticks.)  We also got some appetizers so that we could try out a few different things.

Altogether it was a really good and interesting dinner.  I’m happy that we have a nice Peruvian place right around the corner.  It is hard to get much variety in Texas.

There was no time this evening for me to really get to my computer and work.  I ended up spending most of the little available time this evening on the couch with my nieces watching Disney movies on Netflix like Read It and Weep and Starstruck.