Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is the big birthday party.  Tons to be done before the party actually starts.  The house is still in a condition where it looks like we are still attempting to move in.

Bennie worked all morning on getting the cabinets resized in the kitchen so that the refrigerator, which thus far has been sitting in the center of the kitchen, could fit into its place.  While he was working on that, the girls went out shopping for much of the morning.

Bennie getting the fridge put into place (and the water hooked up to it as well) really makes a difference in the house.  We knew that it would but after living with it for a week we kind of got used to having it in the middle of the kitchen and really forgot how large the kitchen actually was.  Now seeing a fridge in place for the first time the house looks so much better and the kitchen is usable for the first time.  That alone makes us feel much, much better about the house.

The house is slowly coming together.  I had tons of work to do today and tried to mix working from the laptop sitting on the bar with running around the house to get things ready for the party.  I can’t wait until I have an office set up so that I can work from a chair rather than having to do absolutely everything while standing at the bar.  It is really taking a toll on my feet and back.  The house sits on a concrete slab so the floor feels fine at first but fatigues you a lot pretty quickly.

We managed to get the house into ship shape just before the first guests, Andy and Miranda, arrived from Austin.  By the time that they arrived the house was really starting to look like we actually live here.  There are no boxes stacked anywhere and the kitchen is all put away.  Furniture is out and usable.  It’s amazing.  I’m looking forward to actually living in the house now!  The garage, of course, is a complete disaster.

The party went well.  Liesl had a great time being the center of attention.  We had a really good turn out.  The house was packed.  Lots of kids taking advantage of the back yard as well.  I think most of them have spent more time out there than I have at this point.

Speaking of the back yard, we have now been in the house for almost two weeks and the contractor that was supposed to be here on day one to remove the playground hasn’t even shown up yet!  It’s like pulling teeth to get things done around here.

Everyone commented on how healthy Oreo is looking these days and on how crazy our electrical issues are in the house.  No one has ever seen a house in such bad electrical shape.  That doesn’t keep us from feeling nervous.

For her birthday, Liesl had Dora decorated cupcakes.

It took Liesl a minute to realize that it was her birthday that was being celebrated.  She had a lot of fun eating her cupcake and opening her presents, though.   She got tons of really cool stuff.  She is a very spoiled child.  🙂

One thing that Liesl received is bristle blocks!  I couldn’t believe it when I saw them.  I had bristle blocks when I was Liesl’s age and I played with them a lot.  Seeing them really brought back some memories.

One thing that occurred to me is that Liesl is one of the first kids who will grow up playing with the same toys, to any significant degree, as her parents.  I realize that this was true historically, that toys remained relatively unchanged generation to generation.  But in the last few hundred years this has not been the case and I am not aware of any toy, at least any of any significance, of mine that my parents would also have had.

Liesl, however, already plays with bristle block, megablocks and Care Bears and is familiar with things like My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake.  She will be getting Legos soon.  She might even end up playing with Transformers.  This is a major change in childhood behaviour, I think.  Many of my childhood toys would fit right in with Liesl’s today.

The party did not go too late, but boy were we exhausted when it was all over.  We did some cleaning, we meaning mostly Francesca.  I went to bed around nine thirty as I was so tired.  After not too long Dominica went to bed as well.

I started watching, via Netflix, the original 1978 series of Battlestar Galactica, which, other than the pilot movie which I have on DVD, I have not seen since it was on reruns around 1979-1980.  I suspect that I saw it when it was released (I’m assuming that it was) to promote the second run of the show in 1980 with the altered cast that did not last long at all.  Boy does watching this bring back memories.  It is amazing how close this show is to Buck Rogers which was also made by the same producer.  Very similar shows.

In the office this morning.  I got in a little late but it is going to be a long day as today is the last day of the normal year with the SEC industry freeze going into affect Sunday at midnight so lots of work being rushed to be completed this evening.

The morning was fine.  I went to Mi Cocina for lunch.  Had a good meeting, very productive.

After lunch it was back to the office for a long afternoon of deployments.  A very long afternoon.  But that is par for the course and as expected.  Not stressful at all, just busy.  And busy with the hopes of the month long freeze!  Yay!

After work, Dominica ordered food in from the Coconut Thai Grill.  I swung over to the old apartment and picked up Jen.  She and I ran to CVS to pick up some pharmaceuticals then we drove up to Carrollton and had dinner there.  Jen didn’t stay for too long.  Pretty much just for dinner.

Dominica and I got about an hour or two of cleaning done before the Grice clan arrived en masse from Houston.  They are spending the weekend for Liesl’s second birthday party which we are having tomorrow.

Bennie got the hot water tank working correctly tonight.  Turns out that you have to cut the power to it, remove two panels and adjust the water temperature with a screwdriver.  What a pain.  Nothing like the ones that I am used to.  It would never have occurred to me to cut the power and take panels off of the thing.  That seems a bit crazy.

While working on the hot water heater we discovered that the previous owners, or possibly the ones before them, had tapped into the hot water heater’s power to use to power the half-assed garage conversion that they had done.  So that is a major issue that needs to be resolved.  That is our next big item – getting the power fixed in the house.  Everything is out of whack and we need very major electrical repair to keep the house in order.  It is, I fear, in a dangerous state right now.

Today is the major ultrasound day for the new baby.  So Dominica and Liesl will be coming down to Irving early this afternoon for that and I will be meeting them there.

I got up very early this morning for an early rates release call and, it turned out, that since they made us start taking our SafeWords to work again as of yesterday that, of course being out of habit, I left mine there and didn’t have it so that I could log in remotely this morning.  Argh.

I worked from the office this morning and then, during lunch, met Dominica and Liesl at the doctor’s office.  The ultrasound went well.  The baby is doing well and looks good.  We got to see his or her little face for the first time and managed to avoid finding out what sex he or she will be.  We didn’t find out with Liesl and we are attempting to not find out this time.  So far so good.

The ultrasound went quickly but then Dominica had a normal appointment immediately following it as well.  So to keep Liesl happy I took her out to the lobby and let her play with the foam blocks and the other little girl who was waiting there with her mommy.  Liesl had a lot of fun playing and we probably got thirty or forty minutes out there.

I just grabbed a sandwich on my way back to work and ate at the office.  Dominica and Liesl went and did some grocery shopping before heading for the house.

I worked until almost six then ran over to the apartment to pick up the air mattress that is needed at the house for the weekend and then jumped into rush hour on the George Bush so that I could sit in stopped traffic for almost an hour.  Ugh. I need to remember to take my iPod with me when commuting because I could get through a book from Audible in no time.  Otherwise I am bored out of my mind listening to the radio.

Tonight is our very first time cooking food in our new house!  Veggie sausage and peppers.  Dominica made that and we ate while we watching a little of Harry Potter: The Half Blood Prince on BD in our bedroom.  Once we were done eating we got right to work on getting the house ready.  Our first house guests, the Grices, arrive tomorrow night and there is so much to be done before then.

Our main focus, since Dominica worked on the kitchen much of the afternoon, was on our bedroom which is, by far, the biggest disaster in the house.  There is just tons and tons to do there.

The closets seem to be drying out decently well.  We are hopeful that they can be salvaged and that we are not going to have to do any sort of major mold remediation right now.  If we can just get through until we have the money (and time to plan) to do a renovation of the master suite then we will be able to rip out those walls and floors completely and start over with everything new right down to the studs – and perhaps aluminum studs to even further mitigate mold risk.

I went into the office this morning.  I had to drive back up to Carrollton at lunch so that I could stay home with Liesl while Dominica took Oreo to his vet appointment.  His new vet is really close to our new house which is great.  Only about five minutes away.

Oreo did very well at his checkup.  The vet was very pleased with his progress and his itching has mostly gone away.  He is into a “normal dog” category for itching.  He is still very cold much of the time, that is a big deal still.  But otherwise he is doing much better.

The vet snipped some of his warts.  Dominica and the vet joked about what a warty dog Oreo is.  Must be something in his body chemistry.  He has always had several pencil warts.  Dominica asked about Oreo’s horrendous stomach skin tag.  The vet said that she could just snip it off – and so she did.  Oreo was a very brave little boy who didn’t make a peep.  Such a good dog.  She cut it off and sewed him up and bandaged him.  No issues at all.

On the way home Dominica stopped at McDonald’s to pick up lunch as I have been missing lunch the last few days and if she didn’t pick something up quickly I would miss it today as well.

I ate and ran back to the office to work for the afternoon.  I worked until quite late, around seven.  Liesl was still asleep so I was not concerned about getting home quickly.  At seven I went over to the apartment to get the last of the stuff.  The gang was all up at La Cima but we really couldn’t make it out today, far too much needs to be done.

I managed to get the final load of stuff.  The guitar, the last server, a few odds and ends and a big pile of dress clothes like dresses and suits.  Unfortunately trying to get them all down the stairs proved to be a bit much for me and some of the clothes fell down the apartment stairs.  Ugh.

Dominica got Liesl up and showered just before I arrived home.  We drove out first to Lowe’s.  We picked up some additional LED bulbs as we totally love them now that we have tested them, one new hanging plant that will be going up shortly and the chemical that we need to treat the mold.  We also hit Walmart and then went on to Denny’s for dinner.

We tried to eat somewhere other than Denny’s but it is always so late by the time that we try to get food that nothing else is open.  Dinner was good, though.  Liesl likes it there.  It is quiet.  We are often the only people there.  And she loves the ranch dressing that they use with everything.  She likes to just dip her fingers it in and lick them off.  She also likes their mac and cheese.

After dinner we came home and installed the new lights.  We replaced the flood light in the back yard with the LED outdoor flood that we are trying out.  We went from a 150W incadescent bulb to a 16W LED that looks better and seems to illuminate more.  It is estimated to save around $350 over the life of the bulb.  Not too shabby of an investment.

We moved our bedroom to all LED too.  Four bulbs at 6.5W each.  So our entire bedroom is lit with just 26W which is great. Down from around 300W previously and it looks so much nicer too.  We are going to slowly replace everything with LED where we can and fluorescent where we cannot.

Our house is currently insanely inefficient.  Everything in it from windows to doors to appliances to lights was as bad as you could get.  The washing machine and fridge were major first steps and some of the high profile lights are getting switched.  We are seriously looking at replacing many of the windows and doors as they are all ancient and you can feel them leaking air.  Not so bad in winter but will be a major problem for us come summer when we are attempting to cool this place.  The lack of insulation in the attic is a top priority as well.

After switching the lights we put Liesl to bed and then did the mold treatment in the closets, laundry room and hit both of the “under the sink” locations that had been identified yesterday as well for good measure.  The stuff is salt based and safe around food and clothing which is awesome.  Fingers crossed that this does the trick.

I hooked up the SAM-SD (HP Proliant Dl185 G2 running OpenFiler) tonight, after a full year of it being disconnected, so that we can start getting access to all of our already converted movies and television shows again.  We have been missing that.  We didn’t get a chance to really test it out tonight but at least I can see that the server is up and working and is connected to the network and the almost two terabytes of data is all intact.  Pheww.  That thing has been moved an awful lot so we were worried.

For the moment the server is just sitting on chairs.  We were trying to figure out tonight where we are going to put it long term and were worried about how much noise that it would make in the house.  From tonight’s test of a “worst case scenario” in the garage, it is pretty quiet.  Too loud for me to work in the garage with it on but fine for people in the house.  Once we start to “finish” the garage it should be fine.  Totally silent in the house and just background noise in the garage / office.

It was after two in the morning when I finally managed to head off to bed.  I have to be up early tomorrow for a conference call just after seven.  A short night for me.

Tomorrow, during lunch, we are having the “big” ultrasound that we had to reschedule from last week.  So I will be meeting Dominica and Liesl there for that.

Oreo was doing well all evening.  His stitches don’t seem to be bothering him at all.

Today is our mold inspection.  I got up this morning and worked from home for an hour before the mold inspector arrived.  She came at nine thirty and spent a couple of hours going over the house and then sitting with us to discuss the findings.

We do, of course, have mold.  That much we knew.  No getting around that.  There was a very small amount found under both sinks, pretty par for the course I guess.  The inspector did not find mold outside of what we had already seen, though, which is really good.  There is every possibility that all that we have is what we see.

We discussed what could be done about the mold and, overall, I think that the prognosis was rather positive.  The inspector thought that we could recover our carpeting and maybe even our padding and directed us to some EPA approved mold treatment chemicals that would do a much better job than bleach and be safer as well.

Our humidity in the house is excellent for retarding mold growth so we are doing a really good job there at least.  We’ve managed to probably stop any further growth at this time.  We had a sample taken of the major growth in the laundry room so that we could find out if it is just normal mildew or if it is something bad and unhealthy.  Not that normal mold is healthy, but it isn’t toxic either.

We will get more details from the sampling on Friday or possibly Monday.

As soon as the inspection was done Dominica and Liesl went to the apartment to work on packing up the fragile items, like plates, that are still there so that we can get them all out today.  I stayed behind to do mold remediation  and wrap up work before it became lunch time so that I would have a little bit of time to help with the packing.

I pulled the carpeting out of the closets and put them in the garage to dry.  Hopefully that will eliminate most of the problems there.  Now the pads are exposed and just might have a chance to dry out a little more, as will the baseboards.

I moved the dehumidifier back from the laundry area to the closets to really get the pads dry.  I thought that I should clean its filter even though it wasn’t very dirty, just to give it all of the power that it could get.  When I took it off I discovered that the entire condenser was a frozen block of ice!  Oh boy.

I spent over an hour thawing out the condenser.  What a mess.  Probably a quart of water came out of that thing after I let it sit out and blew a air dryer on it for a while.  No wonder it wasn’t pulling as much water as I had expected that it would!  It will be far more productive now.  I waited until the dripping stopped and switched it back on.  Fingers crossed that nothing is wrong with it.

Then it was off to the apartment where I quickly loaded both the BMW and the Mazda with boxes that Dominica had prepared.  With so much going on today, no chance for lunch yet again.  Once the cars were loaded I ran to the office to work from there for the rest of the day and let Dominica go back home.

After this there is just some clothes in the front closet, my guitar and a Sun SunFire V240 server left to get which I can easily do with the Mazda tomorrow.  We can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Liesl naps very late which works out with my work schedule. I rather have to work quite late now so that I do not drive home in rush hour.  In rush hour it appears to take forty five minutes to get home.  When rush hour is over it is more like fourteen minutes.  Quite a waste to try to go home early.  But if I wait until seven I can get home right as Liesl is waking up from her nap and so I don’t miss time with her and don’t waste time driving.  That is what we did tonight.

Once I got home we went out for dinner at Denny’s just up the street from home.  They have a new veggie burger there now that we like which is a big deal as recently almost all of the big, national chains have dropped their veggie burgers – all at the same time which is really weird.  How can that possibly have been losing them money?

The house is really coming along.  The PS3 is now hooked up in our bedroom to the television.  We haven’t tried using it yet but it is there just in case.  Liesl is pretty happy using the iPad to watching things when she does want to watch something.