Sheep Guarding Llama

After work today I was just exhausted.  I got home and really wanted to do something different.  So after discussing it for a while, we decided that we would attempt to get take out from Brookhaven Country Club, at which I am an associate member.  Ever since getting to go to the Tower Club in Dallas last week I have been itching to try out the other ClubCorp properties to see.  Now that I know how easy it is to go to them I’m really excited to try out the different venues and menus.  I’m also trying to orchestrate a Dallas Society Club Crawl for the young execs and professionals in the region to go around and try out all of the different clubs as a group.

So Souder and I drove over to Brookhaven, which is really just around the corner from us, and explored the property.  In many ways, being a ClubCorp member, and going to Brookhaven specifically, gives you a lot of the feeling of being in Walt Disney World – at least it does for me.  When Dominica and I use Disney properties we tend to focus on the resorts, food, lounges, venues, etc. and very little on the parks themselves.  ClubCorp gives us that same experience without the parks, but still with pools, athletic facilities, gold, etc.  Basically, Disney is like a giant country club with some parks in it.

Showing up at Brookhaven at night felt not totally unlike going to a Disney Resort.  It was huge with a grand front entrance, treed parking lot, very mature foliage and several venues including all the amenities.  Just what you would expect from a Disney property.  The other really similar feature is the way that you feel “included.”  One of my favourite things about Disney is how you get your Disney resort card and you can go anywhere in the Disney system and everything is handled through that single card.  Every meal goes to your room, everyone knows who you are (to some degree) – you are a “part” of the place.  ClubCorp does that between all of their properties.  Present your membership card and you are a member at that location.  Your food, drinks, etc. all go back to your main account.  You never need money no matter where you are.  Your ClubCorp identity travels with you.

We toured the facility a little bit while we were there.  It is pretty cool and way, way larger than any of the other clubs that I have seen.  This is a much older club too, having been built in 1957.  They’ve kept the 50s feel too even with the modern renovations.  It’s a very cool venue.

We brought dinner back home and ate there with Dominica and Liesl.  Dominica and I are continuing to work our way through Roseanne which I have not watched in forever.

Today is the three week mark.  Baby Miller is scheduled to arrive at seven thirty in the morning, twenty one days from today!  This is the home stretch.  We are almost there.

When we were pregnant with Liesl, it seemed like we were so much more involved in the soon to be arriving baby.  Maybe that was because we were scrambling to get a new home (the Peekskill house), get a nursery ready, get basic baby supplies, etc.  There was a lot more to be done and so many unknowns – we were reading new parenting books and stuff like that, going to birthing classes, etc.

This time things are very casual.  We already have our home.  The nursery is basically ready.  We already know what to do.  There is little unknown about the date – yes the baby could come early but that is quite unlikely.  We know exactly when everyone is coming in to town, where they are staying and what days we will be expected to be in the hospital.  Dominica’s pregnancy is seeming to be much easier this time too.  We are only really just now getting to the point where we really can tell that she is even pregnant.

Lots to be done still at home.  We have only a few real days left before the baby comes to get anything done around the house.  It maybe be three weeks from tomorrow officially but in those three weeks we know that we have one family birthday party in Mansfield and three full days to spend in Houston.  The final weekend we have Dominica’s family visiting.  So that leaves, after today, just one weekend day free before the baby arrives!  Let me repeat that for everyone who didn’t hear – only one free weekend day left!

This week is mostly a normal work week.  On Friday night Dominica, Liesl, Brian and I are heading down to Houston for three days.  Then another normalish week followed by the crazy weekend of trying to get the house into its final shape for the baby.  Then the week where we get Brian out the door and the Tocco clan descends upon Carrollton.

For lunch today we ran out and got some Denny’s.  We got back and I spent the afternoon working for the office.  Once that was done, it was back to other project work.  Boy there is a lot to do.

Brian got a bit more done on the house this weekend.  We are getting closer and closer to getting the office in to order.  Now if only someone who was supposed to be working on it would show up.

Playing a lot of catch up around the house today.  This is my one weekend that I know that I am at home.  Next weekend is the trip to Houston for three days.  So the time that we have to get anything done around the house is very, very limited.

My morning was really busy and because of that I did not even realize that there was a global April Fool’s joke being played on me.  My day started out super early as today is Non-Farm Payroll Friday and I have to be physically at the office by around seven in the morning.  That meant that I was up around six which is way, way too early for me especially with how busy we have been recently.  I just am not getting any sleep.

We’ve also been struggling with Liesl a lot recently.  She has decided that she no longer wants to sleep in her own bed but wants to sleep with us instead.  She traditionally has always been really good about sleeping by herself and would only come sleep with us once in a while – usually when she was not feeling well.  This is extra tough because Dominica is determined to not have her sleep with us except on special occasions which results in us going through a fight to get her to sleep and then dealing with her screaming a few hours later.  So we go to bed later, then get woken up and eventually she ends up sleeping with us anyway.  So the process is not working out and in a few weeks she is going to go through so much disruption that nothing we do now will matter anyway.

So the big April Fools joke.  Apparently this was thought up by Grey some months ago and he has been plotting this one and getting everyone ready to go long ahead of time.  He came up with it while working with Souder in Dallas around January.  There is this well known picture of me, one that I took of myself leaning on my one hand and in black and white.  I took it in the Newark apartment and liked it so I have been using it as my head shot ever since and it appears on SpiceWorks and in my online publications.

So what Grey did was have people – lots of people – from all over SpiceWorks, Twitter, FaceBook, FourSquare and other social media sites change their avatars to be headshots of themselves in the same position, in black and white.  A very subtle joke that I did not catch on to right away.  Had I not been so swamped with work this morning I might have noticed.  I did notice that Andy in London and Bob in Kansas City had changed their avatars but just two people was not enough for me to put two and two together (technically you need at least four cases for that to happen.)

I managed to have breakfast with Souder today at Panera and he finally pointed out what was going on because I hda no idea what he was laughing about.  Once I realized that it was going on I found thread after thread of people talking about it and as I started to look at people avatars I realized how many there were.  Very funny stuff.

There were even some collages put together by the end of the day of all of the people in the SpiceWorks community that had made the change and posted in certain threads.  Surprisingly, Souder never posted in that thread and so never made it in to the collage even though he had changed his avatar the night before.

It was a very cool “prank” and definitely feels good to see so many people taking the time out to pull this one over on me.  It is really impressive how well it ended up working out.  That was a lot of people to coordinate.

This was, in a way, a continuation of the multiple Scott Alan Millers joke that was played on me at SpiceCorps Houston a couple of years ago.