Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

The Ledigs headed for Tennessee this morning.  Little to report in Irving.

I came home for lunch but work was very busy so I was pretty late and it was a short lunch.  At least I got a little Liesl time.

After work Dominica, Liesl, Souder, Dave and I went to Boston’s for dinner.  This is our last chance to have dinner with Dave as we are going to Houston tomorrow evening and he is flying back to Philadelphia on Monday.

Everything is moving along really well with the house.  Our financing is pretty much all in place – no issues there.  Everything with the physical house is going well.  The seller has agreed to all of the requests and almost everything is already done, in fact.  The seller has decided to just use our foundation guy instead of getting their own estimate and hopefully that will be happening the first week in November.  We are well on track from all perspectives for getting into the house.

The weather is great this week.  Nice and cool.  Autumn weather is North Texas is great.  I’ve been walking to work most of the week and it is very comfortable.

I just came home for lunch today and got some time with the family.  I got just a little time to play a little Oblivion while relaxing at lunch.  I am now finished with the Dark Brotherhood storyline!  Only the Thieves Guild left to go in the main storylines of the main game and I am almost at the end of that as well.  The end is within sight.  Well, the end of the main game.  I have not even attempted to enter the Shivering Isles yet.  Many hours of gameplay in there yet to go.

The Ledigs decided that Texas was so awesome that they are going to stay another day so we are hanging out this evening.

After work we met up with Kevin and Pam at the apartment and from there drove up to Carrollton so that they could see our new house – especially now that we are very confident that everything is going well and that we should be into the house reliably in November.

After seeing the house it was down to Boston’s to get pizza for dinner.