Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

I got up this morning and went straight into the “office” to work.  I have just tons and tons to do and no spare time.  I am being very productive.

My entire day was spent in the office.  So much work to do.  The family all went out for an afternoon family event so Oreo and I were home alone for a while which was really good since it gave us some time to relax and really focus on work.  As long as everyone is home I am stuck getting interrupted every few minutes.  And I really mean every few minutes – I am really lucky if I ever get a ten minute stretch in which to really focus on something.

I was at least incredibly efficient this afternoon.  I was alone for several hours and actually did manage to mostly get caught up.  I worked the entire day even after everyone returned home.  I worked until about one in the morning.  This is one of my busiest work days in a very long time.  I easily worked sixteen to eighteen hours without break today.  I even ate all of my meals sitting at my desk.

I feel better, though, getting some of this backlog of work knocked out.  This will make this week a bit better.

Liesl had another tough night last night.  Not as bad as the last few nights but definitely not good.  Francesca had something wrong with her eye this morning so they all planned a trip to the clinic together.  Dominica, Francesca and Liesl headed off to CareNow early before I was even really up.  Madeline, Emily and I took care of Garrett and Clara.

This is a really busy work weekend for me.  I am heavily backlogged on stuff that really needs my attention so I am trapped in the office for pretty much all of it, which is no fun.

Liesl turns out to have a very minor ear infection.  We are pretty sure that she had Clara’s virus last week and with the extra sinus action that she saw that it turned into an ear infection.  Fortunately we caught it really early.  Unfortunately we don’t have sick visits covered on her insurance so that little visit cost $189 while we are really, really tight on funds (still no word on whether or not I am likely to be getting paid anytime soon.)

This afternoon Dominica, Francesca and Emily went out for what they thought would be a quick trip to Walmart for groceries and medicine.  That ended up taking a few hours which they were not happy about.  Madeline and I stayed home to watch the little ones.

I did manage to get lots and lots of work done today, it was quite productive.  I did not get very much time to spend with the family, however, which sucks.  This weekend is going to be a pure work weekend for me even with everyone visiting.

I did manage to get a Fedora 14 development box built for Emily running in VirtualBox on Francesca’s laptop that she can use for learning Python programming.

I worked until everyone went to bed then went to bed myself.  Remember that tonight is daylight savings time.

Overall Liesl is clearly feeling much, much better today.  Not one hundred percent but she is happy and playing and isn’t all stuffy.  She was so much better today, in fact, that tonight she is sleeping in her own bed again for the first time in several days.  She was very excited to get to go to bed in her own bed.  At most she likes to sleep with us maybe once every fortnight.  Maybe even less frequent.