Sheep Guarding Llama

Went to work this morning.  Nothing much to report there.  My days are not highly interesting to outsiders.  Work is mostly just work.

After work, the family picked me up, right at five on the dot, and we drove to DFW so that I could catch my flight.  There are new TSA screening practices that have started in the last few days and we don’t know if it will take extra time to get through security or not and DFW is always a massive hassle for getting to the right terminal even if it tends to work pretty smoothly once you arrive.

Getting to the terminal was so stressful and difficult that Dominica and I switched drivers in the airport so that I could drive to the final terminal.  Even though DFW finally put up some sort of signage, the existing signs are still wrong, missing critical information or confusing plus the way that the loops work and the lanes change is very frustrating.

Once I got into the airport and checked in for my flight I was through security in no time.  In was only about ten minutes from curb to gate.  I got in and had almost two hours to kill.  So I found a restaurant where I could camp out and kill some time.  Pappadeaux at the DFW airport is a full restaurant down in the basement in what used to be the train station (no idea why the train no longer goes there – that would be incredibly handy!)

I had a crawfish po’boy, it was very good (and big.)  It was nice having a real place to kill some time.  Airports can be pretty boring.

My flight out was delayed by about half an hour due to mechanical problems.  That’s never what you want to hear.  The pilot overslept sounds so much better.

It was after eight when finally got to board our American Airlines Boeing 737 Super 80 (they dropped the 737 and just went to Super 80 at some point to make it sounds newer than it is.)  The flight went pretty smoothly.  Just over two hours.

It was just after eleven when we landed at RFU, Raleigh-Durham, in North Carolina.  This is my first time to RFU since we did an emergency landing here en route from Orlando to Rochester, also on American Airlines, when we thought that dad had had a heart attack nearly twenty years ago.

I didn’t check any baggage, I just have my CPAP and laptop backpack, so I was out of the airport in minutes.  Curtis picked me up and drove me over to the hotel.  I’m staying at the Double Tree, which I have never stayed in before.  They give you a warm chocolate chip cookie when you check in which is awesome.  I’d use them a lot more often if I had known about the cookies!

I have an awesome suite.  A full two rooms with a livingroom and office area that is huge plus a full bedroom with doors separating them.

It was straight off to bed for me after checking my mail and stuff.  Need to be up pretty early tomorrow morning, at six forty five, so I need some sleep.  I am shifting over from central time so that is five forty five to my internal clock which is a bit earlier than I wake up on my own.

Dad came over this morning.  We had a pretty light morning with everyone sleeping in as much as possible and just lounging about at the apartment.  Liesl is so excited to have dad arriving here every morning.  This is a special treat for her.

Maggie came over mid-morning to meet up with dad as they have talked a bit but have never actually met.  We hung out at the house for a little bit then we all went to IHOP for lunch.

This afternoon we had to make sure that I was all ready as I am traveling tomorrow after work and don’t have time to come home after work.  It is going to be a very busy week.

Liesl got a lot of time with pa-pa this afternoon.  Liesl loves getting dedicated time with him in her room playing with her toys.  She is loving having her room back as well.  She really likes having her own space with her own sofa and chair and television and large play space where she can spread out her toys and take up as much room as she wants.  She has been sleeping far better now too that she has her own bed back again.

Luckily this weekend is almost completely free from office worries, which is an amazing change, so I am able to spend time hanging out with dad while he is here in the DFW.  We slept in a little this morning then I drove over to dad’s hotel to pick him up and bring him back over to the apartment.

For lunch we went out to Waffle House again – dad’s choice.  Apparently Waffle House met with his liking.  I knew that he would love southern breakfast cooking.

This afternoon we just hung out and visited at the apartment.  Lots of grandpa (pa-pa) and Liesl time.  They have been having a great time getting to hang out with each other.  Liesl is loving having her pa-pa here.  She makes him go into her room and sit on the couch for hours.  She loves saying “sit!” and pointing to where she wants you to sit.  Then she brings toys or whatever to you.

For dinner this evening we took dad back to La Cima.  Dominica and I had our monthly meals to use so we thought that we should use them tonight as we have no idea when we will use them otherwise.  It was a very nice dinner and a beautiful night to be up in the tower.

I got up and did my morning conference call before heading over to the hotel to pick up dad and bring him back to the apartment.  I dropped him off and then went into the office.

For lunch today we took dad to La Cima.  He was quite impressed, I think.  He really liked the view of the DFW.  This was his first time really getting a chance to see the area as he flew in in the dark last night.  The weather was perfect for La Cima as well as we got to watch a storm roll in and the rain hit which is very cool midday up in the Williams Tower.

Watson made it to La Cima for his first lunch there ever – which is amazing as he has been a member there for over a year.  After lunch he and I had to go to a meeting which kept us pretty busy.

After the meeting it was back to work.  Then home once the evening deployments were done to hang out with the family.  It was pretty early this evening when I was able to wrap up.  Almost a holiday weekend kind of feeling.  Good timing as dad is here to visit.

This evening we stayed in and ordered Thai from Blu Ginger for dinner.  Watson came over to go over the meeting as well.  He and I walked over to Blu Ginger to pick up dinner.

Mostly it was a relaxing evening.  Watson and I worked quite a bit but it was nothing stressful and mostly it was just going over stuff, not like “real” work.

Liesl has been playing with her paw-paw all day and is so happy to have him here.  She is a family girl!  This is their first day together since July when we were in New York.

I was quite tired when the alarm went off at four in the morning.  Not a fun time to be getting up.  I was ready to be out the door by a quarter after four.  So we were off to the airport.

Brian is flying American from DFW today which is what I will be flying next week when I head out to Raleigh for two days so this was a good run through.  DFW is a major hub for American Airlines so we will likely be using them repeatedly in the future as they simply have a lot of traffic here and they are the closest airport to us both now and at the new house – although the new one is closer to Love Field where Southwest flies the most.

We got Brian dropped off and checked in without a problem.  Then I drove back to the house so that I could shower and get ready for the day.  It was probably five when I returned, maybe a little earlier.  I worked from home for a while before going to the office but still got in very early.

I put in a long day today.  This next week I am going to be doing a lot outside of work so I wanted to get as much done today as possible.  Dad is visiting for a week so I’m trying my best to have time to be able to spend with him.

I am enjoying listening to the book The Essential Lewis and Clark which is almost entirely, at least up to this point, excerpts from Lewis and Clark’s journals from the expedition ready by different narrators depending on whose log in being read which is a great way to experience their writings.  I am learning a lot about the era and the project that I never new before.  It always amazes me how early, 1804, this expedition took place.  The United States was only a few years old and we had only just purchased the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon and we had no idea what we had purchased or what was out there.  Very interesting time period that we often forget about in studying American history.  In reading the journals it is very interesting to find that they were regularly experiencing and describing new animals previously unknown to Americans.

Dominica and I have talked about taking the kids, when they are old enough to appreciate it, on a drive from St. Louis to Portland to experience to entire trek that Lewis and Clark made and study the history as we do the drive.  A great way to see a part of the country that people seldom visit and to experience history first hand at the same time.  Driving the length of the Missouri River, America’s longest river, would be pretty amazing.  I’d love to drive the Mississippi as well.

I worked kind of late then came home and hung out with Dominica and Liesl for a little while before running out to the airport to pick up dad at around eight thirty.  I had been watching his flight using a flight tracker so I could see him getting closer and knew that he was basically on time.  It is amazing that we live in a day and age when you can just see this stuff.  Flights were always such a disconnected mystery when I was young.  Liesl will never think of flights as a disconnected “black box” event where you enter on one side and hours later disembark on the other.  People stay connected during flights now.  It is a different world.

I got to the airport probably a bit too early as dad had luggage to get.  Dad’s flight ended up getting delayed as well but a little over twenty minutes as they had ended up losing their third engine (not one of the flight engines, apparently, but the one that supplies the auxiliary power.)  So I did a lot of looping of the airport.

It was about a quarter after nine when I picked dad up and we headed out of the airport.  This is dad’s first time in Texas and really his first time in the South and one of the few times that he has been west of the Mississippi.  He has been to California and Colorado before but always by flying there so he hasn’t really ever seen anything but little points here and there.  As a kid his father drove him out to Iowa from Ohio once, but that was his farthest extent in that direction and all of our trip to Walt Disney World in Florida were always by flying, not driving, so he has not been to too much of the south, even.  We did many trips to Virginia, for example, when I was younger but not to Georgia or Alabama, for example.  So this is a pretty major journey for dad – he is getting to see a lot of new stuff.

What is interesting is that my father has traveled more and driven farther than most people but has done so primarily to the north and east and has been a thousand miles or more farther in that direction than pretty much anyone that I know but to the south and west he has not done much traveling.

Dad didn’t eat all day and we had held off on dinner assuming that he would be pretty hungry when he landed so the first stop was to Waffle House – dad’s first real taste of the south.  We got our dinner to go and then drove to the apartment and we all ate dinner.

We visited for about two hours.  Liesl was incredibly excited to see her “paw paw” as she has started calling him.  She was not happy when I had to take him to his hotel for the night.