Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

The day today was pretty uneventful.  Brian was up super early this morning so that he could drive on down to Houston for the day for work.  He was out the door around four in the morning!

Work was work.  Nothing special.

I left work “on time” today, which feels an awful lot like “early”, and drove up to Dallas proper to attend LogMeIn’s local user group event.  They rented some space in a nice hotel and put on a very nice show for their loyal customers.  Getting free dinner and drinks goes a long way to offsetting the costs of these services sometimes.

Traffic was terrible getting over the Mockingbird Lane.  It took me at least twice as long as I had expected and I spent most of the time just sitting in stopped traffic.  That was a mess.

The venue was great for the LMI event.  Watson was already there as were Jeff and his wife whom we had run into in Austin two weeks ago!  That was a bit of a surprise.  Jeff and his wife had met up with the gang at the hotel in Austin on the patio on the night when I had blown my tire and had returned to the hotel for an extra day.

The food was excellent and there was an open bar.  The presentation was not too long, maybe an hour at most.  Two local customers spoke about how they used LMI and then LMI engineering gave a talk introducing some newer features and some upcoming ones.  It was interesting and a good use of time.

After the LMI event, Watson and I drove over to the Ranch to meet up with Souder and some people there.  We were not there for very long.  Souder had managed to get back from Houston just about the time that we were going over to the LMI event.  He did basically nothing but drive all day.

I brought home dinner for Dominica and we called it an early night.  Tomorrow is going to be a very long day as I have to be up at four to drive Souder to the airport so that he can fly back to Philly and then, tomorrow night, dad is flying in from Rochester.

I accidentally left my alarm set this morning so it got me up at six thirty from across the room.  Once I was up I decided that it just made sense to go ahead and get up and get in to work.  There is always plenty to do.  Brian was up to so we ran to Panera for breakfast and then he dropped me at the office and he went on to deliver bagels to Dominica who was just getting up by that point.  Liesl had gotten up and was watching Dora when we had left the house.

For lunch I had things that I needed to take care of at the house so I walked home and ended up on the phone for two hours.  Fun.  Then Brian and I ran to Potbelly really quickly to grab sandwiches and then it was back to work.

The afternoon was extremely slow.  Almost nothing happened at the office.  It gave me a chance to get a little bit of writing done which was nice.  Good to get on top of that.

I’ve been reading the book (via Audible) called “Things White People Like” but I gave up on it today.  I read some reviews online and discovered that no one else likes it either.  It isn’t entertaining in any way nor is it informational.  Failing to be funny it also fails to be observational.  While the author seems to know a few white people he does not seem to know very many and no white person that I have ever met and certainly not myself fits the stereotype given in the book.  Of course, no one ever wants to admit that they fit a stereotype but in this case I don’t even know what he is talking about.  He goes on and on about how every white person listens to X music, reads Y books and sees Z shows, none of which I have never heard of.  He talks about how all white people discuss this or that, things I’ve never heard anyone discuss before.

The book also acts as though “white” means something non-racial.  Like “white” is used as the opposite of “poor” in some places and the opposite of “educated” in others.  I’m sure non-white people would find the book more offensive than white people do.  What is most odd is how the book expects all white people to be snobby about something except the people that they are being snobby to are other white people – so it makes no sense.  The author seems to be very confused.  The book is poor at best.  So I stopped reading as it was wasting my time.  I’m moving on to a book on the Lewis & Clark Expedition that should be much more interesting.

I got home a decent time.  Watson came over not too long after I got home.  We all ordered in from Italian Crust and ate dinner with we all worked out of the apartment.  It was a busy evening.

Liesl has gotten even better at using the iPad.  She is now selecting different games that she wants to play and switching between them.  I bought her an alphabet game last week and she has started playing that as a break to the Monkey Lunchbox game.  She also plays a shape matching game that we got for free and have on both the iPod and iPad.  I was amazed at how many shapes she knows now.  She can go through that game without any problem which is amazing as I have never seen her play it for more than a minute before.  She is learning so quickly.

At one point this evening, Liesl was sitting on my lap at my desk and she just pointed to the keyboard and ran her finger down the top wrong of keys and named the letters one after another as she went!  Apparently she has learned her alphabet without us evening knowing!  Between the Fisher-Price alphabet game that she plays on the computer in the living room and the alphabet game on the iPad and all the normal alphabet stuff she has just picked it up, I guess.  Truly amazing.  She knows tons of Spanish words too from watching Dora.

Liesl also has a large vocabulary of fruit and animals now.  Very impressive.

Liesl didn’t want to go to bed at eleven when Dominica and I were turning in so we let her bring the iPad to bed so that she could play.  She is so cute propping herself up in bed like she is old and reading a book.

Plagiarism 101.  This is a great article from InfoWorld.

Dominica and Liesl had so much fun at the Fort Worth Zoo yesterday that they decided to go back again today!  Our annual membership is starting to pay off.  We saved roughly thirty-two dollars yesterday and another seventeen dollars or more today.  So half of the cost of our membership is covered in the first forty-eight hour period.  And that does not take into account the tax advantage – the cost of admission is taxable but annual membership is considered to be a charitable donation so just coming close to break-even on the price is well worth it.

The train at the zoo was not running today either.  Very disappointing.  Dominica really want to take the train.

They didn’t put in a really long day today, just another three hours.  One of the benefits of being members is that it encourages us to use the zoo for more appropriate lengths of time rather than trying to squeeze as much out of every trip as we possibly can.  Now we can use the zoo much more casually than we would otherwise.

Today, the crocodiles were active and swimming about.  Liesl had fun watching them from under the water but she was scared that the crocodile was going to try to steal her sippy cup from her to get her water.  She kept telling Dominica “Oh no mommy, au jus, oh no!”  So cute!  She still calls her water “au jus.”

The weather continued to be great today.  It has been a gorgeous week so far.  Dad emailed this morning to ask how it is going to be when he is down here because it is looking like it might be in the forties while he is here!  Some introduction to Texas that he will get.  Barely warmer than New York.

I went into the office pretty early this morning knowing that I was going to need to run out for a while in the late morning to take care of some things so I got up at six thirty to get a jump on the day.  I got completely caught up in the office but had to leave early because I had taken Dominica’s car today so to get her able to go to the zoo I had to run it back to her.  Brian dropped me back at the office later, after he, Donnie and I had grabbed lunch at Jersey Mike’s.  They have the best northeast-style subs around.

The afternoon wasn’t too bad at work.  Pretty slow, really.

Everyone felt like Waffle House tonight.  Dominica, Liesl and Brian picked me up at the office and we drove out to Northgate to Waffle House for dinner.  Liesl was in rare form tonight – very excited about getting a waffle.  We still had to be careful about mentioning the crocodile or she would get concerned and she appeared to think that a crocodile might be lurking nearby trying to snatch her waffle when she wasn’t looking.  Maybe she is somehow connecting her experience with a crocodile while holding her sippy cup at the zoo with the Swiper the Fox character from Dora the Explorer.  It is a weird reaction, to say the least.

After dinner Brian wanted Dairy Queen so we drove around looking for one.  It took about half an hour but we finally tracked one down far north on Beltline.  At the Dairy Queen they had an outdoor play area of exactly the kind that Liesl just loves.  So we all sat outside with her eating our soft serve while she played.  At first she was very cautious and just kind of looked around it.  Eventually she figured out that she could climb through the tunnels and get to the top of an enclosed slide.  It was a pretty neat setup for a two year old.

Liesl has not been one for slides thus far.  She is mostly disinterested in them but likes the play gyms normally associated with them.  She prefers to try to walk up the slides rather than sliding down them.  That changed tonight.

I was standing at the back of the gym with Liesl as she worked to figure out how to get into the slide chute.  She very gingerly put her feet in and slowly allowed herself to back into the tunnel on her stomach.  It was so adorable watching her suddenly slide away backwards.  The look on her face and her waving “bye bye” to me as she went down the slide was incredibly cute.  It was a rather steep and long slide so she went pretty fast.

Well once she figured out the slide, it was all over.  Then it was a matter of running back through the gym to get to the top of the slide and do it all again.  She slid down several times before we had to pack up and head for home – which did not go well as Liesl was really exhausted and not happy that we were leaving the slide.  She did not get a nap today and is overtired.

Once we got back to the apartment, Watson came over and the Brians and I worked for three or four hours doing some systems analysis before everyone headed off to bed.  Even Liesl, who was way too tired, stayed up until after midnight!

We all slept in this morning a bit, last night being the time change so Brian and I had stayed up rather late watching Netflix sci-fi shows, and the weather was absolutely amazing so Dominica suggested that we take Liesl to the Fort Worth Zoo today.  I have never had a chance to take Liesl to the zoo.  We tried to take her with the Grices’ to the Houston Zoo many months ago but that didn’t work out and Dominica and my father took her to the Seneca Park Zoo in Rochester, New York back in July but I’ve never made it to the zoo with her so this was a real treat for me.  Plus I just like going to the zoo anyway.  We’ve heard that the Fort Worth Zoo is far superior to the Dallas Zoo so we had decided to go there even though it is a little farther away.

It took us a little while to get all ready but we finally made it out and it was probably eleven in the morning when we finally got to the zoo.  They only open at ten so that wasn’t too late.  The weather is just perfect for being at the zoo today.  It is just a little autumn brisk in the air with a light breeze and bright sunshine.  Cool enough to make walking around the zoo and getting some exercise very pleasant.

We decided that it would behoove us to simply join the zoo as members as today’s visit cost is applied towards the membership cost.  With membership we can come to the zoo as often as we want for the year, our parking is free and we get ten percent off of our food purchases which adds up quickly.  If we come back two more times this year, which seems pretty likely with a two year old who loves animals, we will have saved money.  Any more than that and we are making out like bandits raccoons.

We brought Liesl’s stroller although that turned out to be possibly more of a burden than it was worth as she was determined to walk everywhere all day.  We started by heading into the primate area.  Liesl loves monkeys and apes, which of course she calls monkeys.  That was a great start to the day.  She really liked the waterfalls and things that the animals had too.  She loves fountains and running water, just like her daddy, so that was some of her favourite stuff.

I was starving having not had breakfast and it being lunch time, so we stopped at the first cafe in the zoo and got Burger King for lunch.  We get ten percent off of the normal prices so it is actually cheaper, as far as I can tell, for us to eat inside the zoo than to eat outside of it.  The cafe area was neat because it was below the level of some of the fish tanks at MOLA (the Museum of Living Art) so Liesl had a grand time watching the fish, turtles and gharial.

From the cafe we headed out and say the zebra.  I actually had not seen them myself but was carrying Liesl and she pointed up the hill and said “zebra!”  It took me a while to find them.  I couldn’t believe that she had seen them on her own.  She must have some amazing eyesight.

She really enjoyed MOLA.  They had a ton of aquariums in there and she wanted to spend a lot of time at each and every one.  Her favourite one might have been the one outside, right at the MOLA entrance (most of MOLA is inside a building.)  She stood at that one for more than half an hour and just had the grandest time watching the fish and turtles.  Anyone else who came up to look at the fish would get a long, disconnected explanation from Liesl as to the fish and what they were doing.  Then Liesl would attempt to count the fish – a daunting task for a little girl who just learned to count to eight.

After MOLA we decided to travel to the far top end of the park to see the Texas exhibit up there thinking that Liesl would really enjoy that part.  It was a long  jouney to get up there, this is no small zoo.  We really wanted to take the Yellow Rose Express, the railroad that runs through the zoo, but it is closed today and not running.  We got a bit of exercise today.

The Texas exhibit was very nicely done.  We spent some time at the petting zoo where Liesl got to pet a chicken and a goat.  She was very gentle and was plenty gentle, even for the little chicken.  She thought that petting and brushing the goat was great fun.

We got some ice cream and hung out in the main Texas town exhibit for a little bit figuring out what our strategy was going to be for the day as we had already burned through most of the zoo hours for the day.  We decided that Liesl would most appreciate the aquatic and big cat exhibits so we headed that way.

Liesl got some more aquarium time and got to see several big cats like a mountain lion, ocelot, jaguar and bobcat.  We hit the aviary but it was tiny.  Then we went to the bat cave.  We never really managed to go into the bat cave, though, because right at the entrance is a little “cave” for kids to go into that is too small for adults.  At first, Liesl was too afraid to go in but after some bigger kids went in there she decided that it would be fun so she went it without her parents and then decided that this was the best thing ever.  We probably spent more than half an hour with Liesl hiding in that cave playing with whatever kids ventured along to check out the cave themselves.

Liesl played in her kid cave until the zoo closed.  She was not happy when we had to take her out of the cave and leave the zoo.  She was really exhausted and needed to get home and take a nap after that.  She had a great day and we are already glad that we paid for annual memberships – we are going to be using those a lot.

We got home and put Liesl down for her nap.  It was probably five thirty by the time that we got home.

I played a little Oblivion this afternoon while Liesl was sleeping.  Not too much, maybe an hour at most.

For dinner, Brian and I went out to Blu Ginger and got take-out for Dominica.  Then he and I hit La Madeleine for dinner and sat outside and enjoyed the awesome weather.  It is cold enough that fleeces are required but still very nice.

After dinner, at nine Dominica put Liesl to bed and Brian and I drove over to Watson’s house where we worked for three hours on some projects.  This was my first time ever seeing Watson’s apartment!  It is very nice.  A Texan version of our old apartment in Newark.