Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is Dominica’s thirty second birthday!

I woke up at six this morning but went back to bed and got up at seven just in time to work.  I signed in and got everything done for the day then showered and got dressed before anyone but Liesl was awake.

Our task for the morning was to pack up the car and drive Madeline and Emily down to Buffalo, Texas to meet up with their parents and siblings so that they could head back home to Houston so that they can start school on Monday.  It has been fun having them up here in Irving for the week.  This is, by far, the longest that we have ever gotten to keep them and the longest that they have been away from their mother.

The drive down went pretty well.  We stopped at Jack in the Box for breakfast on the road.  Liesl was awake for almost the entire trip.

It was around three or four when we got back to the house.  Liesl went right to bed right away and slept for several hours.

Dominica worked on learning some administration tasks for OpenVPN and Vyatta routers this afternoon.

Once Liesl woke up we went out to Boston’s, again, for dinner.  Then we hit the YogurtZone, again, for some dessert.  Then a quick trip to Kroger’s to do some grocery shopping and back home.

The evening was spent packing and getting me ready for my flight tomorrow.  I leave very early in the morning and arrive in Maryland before ten eastern.  It is going to be a very, very early morning for me.  I am not looking forward to that at all.  I have been tired all week as it is.

I will be getting back home to Irving on Monday evening at almost midnight.

I overslept this morning.  Has anyone ever noticed that every post starts off with info on how I slept?  Why do I continue to do that?  Does anyone care?  I’m imagining not.  It is just such a convenient kick off to the blog post.

This week has been pretty light on the posts.  I’ve been tired and busy and my evenings are pretty packed with activity so I don’t have much time to write.  Nothing much has been happening though so you are not missing anything.

For lunch today the girls met up with John, Nicki and I from the office at Boston’s.  That was a nice change of pace.  It took forever, though, because we had so many people.  It probably took half an hour just to get seated!

I got stuck late at the office tonight not getting to head home until after seven.  What a long day.

After work, we had dinner at the house and then, at my suggestion, Dominica and I took the girls out to YogurtZone for frozen yogurt.  They thought that that was a great idea.  YZ has make your own frozen yogurt desserts much like a froyo buffet.  It is very good.  We had a good time doing that.  We will definitely try to take the girls there again sometime.  It makes a great family outing and is pretty decently healthy.  Way better than going out for ice cream and it is more of an “event” as well.

I did get to play maybe thirty minutes of Oblivion tonight.  Not much but I did complete one quest and made good progress on another.  Madeline tried watching me play but thought that it was pretty incredibly boring.  Emily, on the other hand, thinks that Oblivion is about the most exciting game ever to watch and prefers hanging out with me watching me play the game than watching television in the other room.

The evening was pretty busy with packing and cleaning.  Then it was off to bed as early as we could muster, which was not all that early.  I was very tired by the time that we actually turned in.  It is going to be a short night as I need to be up to work at seven tomorrow morning.  I can’t complain, though, as Jeff is scheduled to work for seventeen hours tomorrow (Saturday) which is pretty rough on top of the fact that he has been sick all week!

My flight to Maryland is all set.  I am leaving Sunday morning at five forty from DFW and flying direct to BWI.  A direct flight, I can’t remember the last time that I had one of those.  That is going to be awesome.  This is one of the least hectic trips that I will be having in a very long time.  Two days, no driving, direct flights – who could ask for more?

I got very little sleep last night and woke up at five this morning.  I tried to go back to sleep but did not manage to so I just got up around five thirty and went into the office.

I didn’t bother to bring in coffee today and instead just drank the cold leftover Panera coffee from yesterday.  It  was in a sealed bag so other than being cold, it was just fine.  No creamer, though.

The girls drove down to Mansfield this morning to spend the day with family.  That left me on my own for lunch.  John and I took advantage of the day and we went to Rockfish for lunch.

I got home a little on the early side and we had dinner at home.  Then, after dinner, Madeline, Emily and I walked over to La Madeiline to pick up patisseries for dessert.

I’m heading off to Maryland on Sunday morning to see John for two days.  I am flying out first thing on Sunday morning and returning Monday night.  We thought about having Dominica and Liesl come along but it is a short trip so they are staying behind.

Spent the evening otherwise just hanging out with the family.  Went to bed around eleven.

I have been getting in to work quite early all week.  That works out very well.  Leaving the house once Liesl is awake is so stressful for everyone.

It is much, much cooler today than it has been.  Our hot streak is finally “broken”, not that it is not hot but today we did not manage to hit triple digits by the thermometer at DFW Airport.

This morning, John and I made a run over to Panera Bread to pick up coffee for the team.  It was a nice eighty eight degrees while we were out which was awesome.  Haven’t had that in a long time.

Just as we were heading back into the office it started to rain pretty heavily.  We were completely soaked by the time that we got in.

I came home for lunch today and everyone was just getting back to the apartment after having swam all morning when I got there.  I could hear them on the stairs heading to the apartment.  They pretty much all fell asleep immediately and napped all afternoon.

This evening is both pasta night and the Young Execs club at La Cima.  So I got out of work on the early side, before six, and drove right over there on my own.  We were only able to get dinner reservations for the family at eight this evening so I am guessing that they are very busy tonight.

The Young Execs group was good.  I only hung out with them during the Happy Hour portion of the evening in the lounge.  They moved into the dining room for dinner at almost exactly the same time that Dominica, Madeline, Emily and Liesl arrived for dinner.

Brian Watson joined us for pasta night.  We had a good time and remembered to talk to La Cima about changing the pace of our dinner as Liesl doesn’t hold up well for the relaxed pace that they usual have.  The pace is appropriate for the atmosphere and they manage it carefully and well but for a twenty one month old little girl the food just doesn’t come out fast enough.

Changing the pace worked very well tonight and Liesl was quite happy all through dinner.  If we can just remember to always do this, we should be good.

The girls headed home and Brian and I stayed behind with a few people from the Young Execs group for another hour or so.

I got home and it was pretty much straight off to bed for me.

I was up and out the door at seven this morning.  Today the girls are all going into Dallas to go to the museums.  They all got up about an hour after I left for the day.

They were not able to head to the museums as early as they had hoped because Dominica got stuck working for an hour before they could leave.

Work was very busy today.  I felt the need for breakfast so around ten thirty John and I drove to Panera Bread, got breakfast and brought back coffee for the team.  The coffee was a major hit.  Most everyone in the office had no idea that Panera had good coffee and were very happy to have it.  Everyone thought that it was much better than what they were used to getting, which is usually Starbucks around here.  What is amazing is that people will drive to Panera for bagels and then to Starbucks for coffee and no one ever thought of getting everything from the same place!

Around one I came home to be with Oreo for a little while.  He can’t go all day without someone at home.  He would get quite upset if we did that to him.  I tried to work on a computer that we have sitting in the living room to get Windows XP installed but I could not find a USB stick anywhere in the house with which I could move network drivers over to the PC, so I gave up on that.

I then took an old Pentium III 1GHz DeskPro that has been sitting around the apartment for a while to see if I could get Fedora loaded on to that so that Emily could use it as a programming machine.  This little Deskpro has been with us for a long time and has moved around from one storage unit to another and moved from Geneseo to Peekskill and now to Texas – just so that I could plug it in today to find out that it was dead and would not power up at all.  Argh.  So I threw it out after messing with it long enough to determine that it was completely useless.

The girls had a good time at the museums in Dallas and were very exhausted when they finally got home mid-afternoon.  I got stuck at work pretty late this evening.

When I finally got home I tried to play some Oblivion but only managed to play for a maximum of five minutes – there were just too many interruptions to be able to do anything productive at all.

I spent what time I did have this evening working with Emily on her Python programming.  Failing to have gotten one of the computers in the living room set up for her I got her hooked up with the Acer Aspire One netbook that we have running Fedora 11.  That worked pretty well for her for Python programming.

It was a very short evening.  Everyone was pretty tired and went to bed pretty early.  Tomorrow night we are all going to La Cima.