Sheep Guarding Llama

I woke up around two thirty this morning and didn’t feel so hot.  It wasn’t that bad, just enough to get me out of bed and send me out to the kitchen for a glass of water.  Most likely it was heartburn that was causing the discomfort that woke me up.  Within a few minutes, though, I was not feeling well at all and it was off to the bathroom for me.

I was up until around six in the morning!  It was pretty awful.  I was really, really sick.  Luckily there was just enough battery left on my office Blackberry so I was able to get caught up while being incapacitated and was able to let my managers know that I was going to be out sick today.  No chance of me making it in today and I can’t imagine that I would be able to even work from home much.  Really not feeling well.

I managed to get back to sleep around six and slept until around ten in the morning.  That helped but I was still very ill when I got up.  I needed the sleep, though, or I would really have been bad all day with exhaustion on top of everything else.

I’m pretty sure that I have food poisoning.  Not sure what else it could be.  I got sick about fifteen hours after eating seafood which is a pretty likely source of food poisoning.  I had two things of shrimp and clam chowder at lunch yesterday all of which is a high likelihood of carrying toxins – no way to cook that out.  Nothing serious, just really inconvenient.

Liesl insisted on watching Racing Stripes several times today.  I’m already getting pretty tired of that movie.  She really loves it though and it is good that she wants to watch something other that Dora, Diego or Wonder Pets.

Later on in the day, snuggled up on the coach with Oreo at my side, wearing my sweat shirt and sweat pants and covered in blankets, I got to play Oblivion for a while – one of the fringe benefits of being home sick.  Oreo thought that the whole day was great – we snuggled the entire day.  Dominica couldn’t believe how cold I was with the apartment being near seventy five degrees and me being so bundled up and snuggled with the dog and still being very cold.

I managed to finally complete the Thieves Guild quest line in Oblivion which basically puts me at the end of the main game.  Technically I do have a few loose ends left – I never did the little daedra quests but I’ve been told that they are pointless and not worth the effort.  No real story to be had with them, just some work collecting tidbits from around the game and then you get some silly reward that you don’t even want.  I might do them at some point but for now I am just skipping them.  Beyond that, the only quest that I know that I have left is the wrap up the “Fingers of the Mountain” quest which I will come back to.

Now, what Dominica has been waiting for, I am leaving the main Oblivion game and venturing into the expansion content of the Shivering Isles which was, in many instances, sold as a separate game from Oblivion itself.  From what I have seen online, the Shivering Isles should provide around thirty additional hours of gameplay which, when added to the miscellaneous wrapups that I need to complete yet, should put the complete Oblivion game pretty close to two hundred and fifty hours by the time that I am done with all of it.  At least done enough to put it down and move on to something else.

I only played maybe twenty minutes in the Shivering Isles before putting it down for the day.  This evening we watched James Stewart in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation from 1962 which wasn’t bad but I would not call it a classic either.

Liesl has a new routine now when going to bed.  She likes to count her bears.  She started doing this the other night and we were so excited when she counted to six.  Tonight I asked her “Liesl, how many bears do you need?” and she said counted from one to eight several times and once went to nine!

I can’t believe that 2010 is almost over.  That seems just crazy.  Our first year in Texas has been flying by like nobody’s business.

I got up early this morning and got on email and got to work straight away.  Always too much to do and no time for sleep.

This morning, Brian Souder and I got to go out to Addison Airport near where we are in the Metroplex to see Fifi, the last flying Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber still in flying condition.  It was very cool to get to see it come down the landing strip and be right there on the tarpac with it.  We were running a little late (not our fault, the plane came in early and our ride wasn’t ready to get to the gate until the plane was making its descent) but we got to see the plane still in motion and pull up along side of it while the propellers were still spinning.

I managed to take quite a few pictures of Fifi while it sat at Addison Airport.  The plane is available, currently, for rides ranging from $595 to $995.  If it was cheap I would totally do that but I can’t afford to be spending a thousand dollars for a less than an hour ride in a World War II bomber.  Boy that would be cool though.

After checking out the plane, Brian and I grabbed an early lunch at Rockfish and then Brian dropped me at the office and went back to walk Oreo and pick up take out Indian from Chaat Cafe for Dominica for her lunch.

I had a lot of work to catch up on at the office even though I had been diligently on email all morning.  Just too much to do.  Lots of server issues, it seems, continuing from this weekend.

We had a fairly relaxing evening at home tonight.  Dominica made dinner and we just stayed in.

When I got home, Dominica told Liesl to tell me what movie she had seen today.  Liesl said “Run Zebra!” which turned out to be the moving Racing Stripes which is about a zebra that thinks that it is a race horse.  This is, apparently, Liesl’s new favourite movie and she made us watch it again tonight.  Fortunately for me, I have never seen the movie before so it was not to bad to sit through.  I will likely see it a lot more, though, as we are moving into the age when the same movie is watched over and over again.

Liesl is so cute when watching the movie.  When the horses (and zebra) race she runs around the house like a maniac pretending to be a horse in the race.

It is Halloween and my grandmother’s birthday.  We are down in Houston to celebrate Halloween with the family here.  Liesl and her cousins are all in matching themed Halloween costumes today.

Oreo, Liesl and I slept in a bit this morning.  Everyone was very snuggly.  I was awake for a while but didn’t want to get up and wake everyone else up since they obviously needed their sleep too.

Once I got up I went straight from sleep to getting paged out with server outages, again, at the office.  It ended up being a very busy morning trying to keep up with server issues.  We had one right after another.  Not a fun way to start a Sunday.

Once things finally settled down and I had a chance to take a shower, the family packed up and went to Waffle House.

This evening is the trick or treating in Houston.  This isn’t Liesl’s first Halloween but it is her first time going out to trick or treat.  She loves candy so this should be a lot of fun.

We got the kids all dressed up – the girls as dancehall girls and Garrett as a cowboy saloon patron – and headed first down to Texas City so that Uncle Joe could see his nieces and nephew in their costumes.

Then it was off to Beth’s house where the neighbourhood kids were all gathering for the mass Halloween migration that was about to happen there.  I’ve never seen a suburban Halloween trick or treating event before.  This is nothing like what anyone that I knew ever did back home in New York.

There were probably twenty or twenty five kids all out ready to trick or treat.  A scary sight for any would-be candy giver to have to contend with this motley assortment all at once.  Overall the trick or treating was very quiet and there were very few houses in the neighbourhood giving out candy but this one, massive moving mob of children and chaperons was a sight to behold.

Liesl didn’t know what was going on at first but Madeline took her by the hand and showed her out to take her felt witch candy bag up and say “trick or treat” and hold the bag open.  The delivery of free candy into her bag was one of the most exciting things that Liesl had ever seen!  She caught on in a wink and was dragging Madeline along from house to house rushing to run up and get her candy.

Liesl tried hard to say what she was supposed to say, saying “trick or treat”, repeatedly as she approached a house but getting so excited that she would often just say “Candy!” once actually confronted with the candy delivery process.  She would always remember to say “thank you” – but often not until she was some way away from the person who had given her the candy.

Liesl was quite the trooper walking all over.  She did great.  She was, by far, the littlest trick or treater of the group and definitely a favourite.  She was so adorable and so excited about the whole thing.  She really had a wonderful time and we got a lot of good pictures even though we were in basically total darkness the entire time.

Towards the end Liesl was getting tired and decided to ride between houses, they tended to be few and far between that were offering candy, in her stroller and just get out to go up and ask for candy.

After the trick or treating was done we packed up and drove over to Joe and Britt’s house to see Aurora, the new little Boston Terrier puppy that they got just a couple weeks ago.  Aurora is so tiny.  I’ve never seen such a young Boston.  She was very sweet and just loved having people come to visit her.

We couldn’t stay long, lots of driving to do tonight.  We left just after nine and got on the road to get back to Dallas.

The drive went fine.  I was really, really tired on the way back but fortunately had my book, In the Wake of the Plague, to listen to on the drive which helps quite a bit.  Dominica was able to nap for over half of the journey and Liesl was asleep for a good portion of it so that worked out very well for them.  I am going to be exhausted tomorrow.

It was one thirty when we pulled into the parking garage and two by the time that we got into the apartment (yes, about half an hour to get from the garage to the apartment once you deal with the dog, toddler, packing, broken elevator, etc.)  We were really, really tired when we finally got in and went to bed as quickly as possible.

I finished reading my book today.  Now I am starting Stuff White People Like.

No time to sleep in for me today.  I had to be up at seven this morning so that I could watch my email as there was some work that needed to be done and I needed to know when I would be needed.  So I only got about six hours of sleep, which normally would be plenty, but this week I have been struggling to get anywhere near enough sleep.  I’m just falling farther and farther behind.

I got up and worked for a few hours this morning.  Everything went fine, just takes a lot of time.

For a very late breakfast, really lunch, the Miller and Grice clans went out to Kelley’s which took forever.  Apparently everyone in town had the same idea today. Traffic was crazy and the restaurant was packed.

Liesl is looking older today.  Her face changed some yesterday and she looks more mature.  I never thought before having a child of my own that I would be able to watch her grow day to day but you really can.

I was on the computer much of the day.  Lots of blogging and writing done today and I worked hard to clean up my out of control inbox as well.  I’m still quite backed up from before SpiceWorld so getting some “quiet” time to work on getting that down to a reasonable level has been good.

My big project today was getting things kicked off on my Linux Administration blog that I am writing with Jeff Pierce.  I got three short posts posted today which is a good start.  I’m hoping to pull off at least one tomorrow.  It is nice having a dedicated Linux blog – a place to consolidate all of the stuff that I do every day.  I really should have started that many years ago.

This evening Dominica and Francesca just went out and picked up dinner and everyone hung out at the Grices’ house.  Liesl has been having so much fun with her cousins that she didn’t nap today and just went and went like a little dynamo.  She has an amazing level of energy.  By around nine, though, she was out cold and sleeping solidly in our room by herself.

I was going to go to bed myself around ten but ended up with some servers down at the office so I got stuck up a bit later than I had wanted to be.  Once the servers were okay Oreo and I were off to bed ourselves sometime before eleven.  I am still fighting to catch up on sleep from last week.

Before falling asleep I read a few more chapters in Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina which I had started reading yesterday.  I’m about six chapters in now.  Just a tiny start on a very long book.  It is the first book that I am reading via Kindle.  I’m using the Kindle app on my iPod Touch.  So far the book is very interesting.  I’m enjoying the insight not only into Russian high society but also the look at the contemporary European reaction to Bonaparte’s early conquest of the continent.

Oreo and I were asleep quite a while ahead of Dominica who stayed up with the girls watching Miley Cyrus’ new movie The Last Song.

I got up and did my normal Friday morning conference call from home and then got ready to go into the office.  Ended up taking forever, as it often does, to get out the door and into the office.  Nice and cool today.

At lunch, Souder and Dave came and picked me up at the office and took me to Rockfish for lunch.  Rockfish is much cheaper than you would imagine.  Really a great deal for lunch.

The afternoon was busy but wrapped up pretty quickly.  The late afternoon was pretty slow and I thought that I was going to be able to get out of the office at six allowing us to get onto the road at a really good time but there was a production issue that was escalated to me just as I was about to leave which trapped me at the office for an extra half of an hour.

It was around seven when Dominica, Liesl and I finally got onto the road bound for Houston.  Not too bad but an hour earlier would have been much better.

The drive went fine.  Because we were driving as early as we were, Dominica was awake most of the way.  Liesl only napped a little bit on the trip.

I got to listen to a little more of In the Wake of the Plague that I have been reading recently.  Good book.  I am learning a lot of fourteenth century Europe that I did not know before.

We arrived around eleven thirty – much earlier than normal.