Sheep Guarding Llama

I got up early this morning.  After the holiday yesterday I knew that there was going to be extra work to be done this morning and that things were going to be really hopping at the office so I made sure to be up and signed in and working extra early so that I could stay on top of things.  I also knew that my boss was out today so I needed to be around to cover for him.

I worked very hard all morning.  Definitely a busy morning as I had predicted.  I waited until a quarter till one local time, which I always try to do when going to lunch here because it seems to be the perfect balance for work to be optimally lunch-ish both for the people that we support and for our own office.  Working in central time and supporting eastern time causes all kinds of problems that someone somewhere never thinks that you should be at lunch at that particular moment.

Of course, no matter how much planning I do to not take lunch at the wrong time, I get a call from my boss while still on my way to lunch: “Where are you?  I guess you are out of office today?”  What do you mean I must be out of office?  I’ve been working for five hours already.  Do I not get any lunch?  I’ve only been away from my desk for minutes and I am available still by email and phone while I am away.  That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.  Not only am I working but he was supposed to be taking a holiday today.

Then he tells me that I was supposed to be in the office today even though we had discussed more than once that I would not be coming back until sometime next week.  And it just gets worse from there.  Well now I’m just having a crappy day.  I do not handle this type of stress well especially when I am not in a position to deal with it right away.  I hate problems that linger and the last thing that I want is to have major problems at work and have it be an entire week before I am in the office to find out what is going on.  And as the new practice seems to be to tell me major bad news only after it is too late I live in a constant state of waiting to find out what has already happened of which I have not been informed.

So now I’m just going to be stressed for a week.  The biggest piece of news for the day is that we are no longer able to move to Austin.  Originally we were going to go straight to Austin but then had offered to go to Dallas for six months to help out.  That would have meant that we would have been heading to Austin right about now.  But as the house in Peekskill didn’t sell or lease we were really trapped and we needed to renew our lease in Dallas until we were able to get out from under the house.  But now everything has changed and we are staying in Dallas now.

It’s not that Dallas is the worst option but we have had our hearts set on Austin for a year and until today we thought that we were moving there as soon as we were done with our lease.  Now that we pretty much have renters going into our house we were very excited that Austin was finally going to happen.  We are extremely fortunate that we found out today that we cannot go there since we might have sent the moving truck there this weekend!  Talk about cutting it close.

At this point I’m a little sick from the stress and worry.  Dominica is very upset that we will no longer be living close to family like we had intended all along.  So instead of being three hours from the Grices we are going to remain five hours away making our weekend travel pretty awful for the indefinite future.  Just when we finally had a long term plan after so many years of moving around.

I’m assuming, but won’t know for a while, that this also means that our plans of spending our summers up north is no longer an option.  That was a really critical piece of being in Texas.  Our lives are in total upheaval now. It’s not entirely unlike I lost my job or got relocated again today.  Effectively we did get relocated and we are starting our planning all over again.

I’m stressed enough that I have a stomach ache.  Dominica is pretty upset as well.  The worst bit is not really having all of the details for a while.  We can make Dallas work.  We will get over that.  That’s just surprising.  It is extra crappy as Andy and Miranda will be in Round Rock soon and would have been just up the street from us.  Now they too will be hours away.

We are assuming now that we need to rent indefinitely.  Dominica was right that we are just too volatile to buy a house.  Even when we try to have a long term, safe house buying plan we get burned.  Our previous house buying we knew was somewhat short lived. Not as short as it ended up, months rather than years, but it was never supposed to be our “home” location like Austin was.

So we cut lunch short so that I could come home and deal with this as much as was feasible this afternoon.  I shouldn’t even try to have lunch; it just seems like a bad idea.

When we arrived back at the house from “lunch” the new Kodak 1080p video camera had arrived.  Unfortunately it needs a very large SD card to be of any use and there is no spare one at the house.  Dominica is tasked with finding one tomorrow morning when she goes shopping at Walmart for doggy cooking supplies.

Back to work all afternoon.  After work was over we went down to the Richardsons’ for take away Chinese.  I was pretty distracted and not very sociable.  I hate that work does this – leaves bad things hanging so that it is impossible to leave work behind.  Liesl had a great time though.  She played in the yard and went all over exploring.  She got Aunt Sharon to walk her down to the garden and pick strawberries which she ate right there.

Liesl had a great time going over to the lawnmower shed and just standing on the slope and then running down.  She was quite the card and everyone found her to be really entertaining.  She knows how to work the crowd, that is for sure.

We did not stay too late.  Dominica is still feeling pretty sick and obviously I don’t feel too hot today.  So we were home at a reasonable time.

The DVD archiving project is going gangbusters.  With three laptops running all day long as fast as they can there is just tons and tons of stuff being archived.  At this rate I am hopeful that we will hit four terabytes of data before I have to head off to Texas.

We were supposed to have the paperwork finalized for the rental of the house in Peekskill today but we did not receive it.  We are told that everything is still going alright and that we just need to hang tight.  It was a bad day, though, and it makes it that much easier to think the worst.  We don’t really have any cause for alarm or concern yet.  It would be very nice to know the official status of the lease sooner than later, however, as we need to be able to schedule movers, get some plumbing fixed, figure out when I am going to go down there, etc.  There is so much to do to get the house ready and not knowing for sure if we can move out of it or not yet is making things that much more difficult.

Dominica and I did go down to the barn today to figure out if we really care about the stuff that is down there.  Tons and tons of the stuff that remains is either going to get tossed or donated.  Sorting through it and making sure that we find the sentimental stuff is our big task.  We want to get as much of that done now as possible as we no longer know when we will be returning to New York and what is there might remain there for a very long time without us having any opportunity to sort through it.

Again tonight, when we went to go to bed, Liesl wanted to go out to the tent to sleep rather than going to bed in the basement.  She really loves camping, apparently.  We were surprised that it occurred to her that we might go out to the tent again after we had only done it for those two nights.

It is great to be in Ithaca again.  It has been so long.  I can’t remember the last time that I woke up here.  Liesl has never been here at all.  I bet that Dominica has not been here for at least three years.

We slept in a little this morning as Dominica was not feeling well at all today.  She must have caught a stomach bug.  By “we” slept in, I mean that Dominica slept in.  Liesl got me up at seven in the morning.

The big event this morning was that Liesl, barely nineteen months old, spelled her name this morning without any prompting from us whatsoever!  She was sitting in bed playing with her Leapfrog toy Violet (a talking dog) which has her name programmed into it and when it went to say her name Liesl spelled L I E S L right along with it.  Dominica is like “oh my, she just spelled her name!”  I couldn’t believe it either.  She is growing up so fast.’

Liesl and I played for a while and then I found Nick Jr. and put on some kids shows for her.  The first show I did not know what it was but after that Dora the Explorer came on and so she watched that.  That is still her favourite show.  She has gone from The Wiggles, to Elmo in Grouchland to Dora the Explorer.  So each favourite show seems to last a few months.  I wonder what will be the next Liesl craze.

Dominica got up around nine thirty.  I had been speaking to Bob via email and txt this morning so we knew what was going on.  We got out at a quarter after ten and drove up to Ithaca College and out to Danby to find Bob and Lisa’s house to which we have never been before but I had a pretty good idea of where it was.

We had a really good time hanging out with Bob and Lisa and getting to meet Emily.  Originally we had to be out of town by one this afternoon but our plans for this evening changed so we were able to hang out until around four in the afternoon which worked out much better.

We drove up to Trumansburg after visiting because we needed to stop in at the Parkers’ to grab Liesl’s other water bottle that we had accidentally left at the Parkers’ lake house at the ring of fire on Silver Lake on the third.  We swung in there just for a minute and drove on to dad’s house.  Dominica just was not feeling well at all all day.

Tonight, when we went to go to bed in the basement, Liesl kept saying “outside, outside.”   She loved camping out in the tent and wanted us to take her out there again to sleep rather than sleeping in the basement.  It is too warm to sleep outside, though, and we brought in all of the sleeping accoutrements so it would be rather a pain to take them all out again and set up the tent.  Liesl was very sad when we told her that she could not sleep outside.  It is nice to see how much she loved the camping experience though.  Hopefully we can do this regularly at dad’s.

It was another hot morning in the tent with the sun beating down on us while we slept.  The original plan had been to have gotten up very early this morning so that we could be on the road to Waverly practically with first light. Last night, around two in the morning, Liesl started screaming and screaming.  This went on for hours.  She was so loud that Dominica had to leave the tent for a while and dad woke up inside the house which was sealed off as he was running on air conditioning.

Liesl was up screaming for hours.  It was horrible.  We were never able to figure out what was wrong at all.  Our best guesses were that her eye teeth were coming in and really bothering her or that she had had night terrors that had woken her up.  It just went on and on.

Once Liesl finally fell asleep – we moved her to the mattress with me and Dominica went and slept on the air mattress to get some distance from the screaming girl – she was still restless and would wake up crying on and off throughout the night.  It was a very rough night for everyone.

When Liesl and I woke up this morning Dominica had already gotten up and started getting ready to go.  She had given up on trying to sleep and had been up for a while.  It was pretty warm when we got up.  Oreo stayed in the tent with Liesl and I.  He really likes sleeping outdoors too.

So Liesl and I got up and came inside to start getting ready for the day.  Dominica was feeling pretty sick, probably from a lack of sleep.  So she went back to bed and took a nap for a little while.  So I logged in and worked for a little bit to make sure that things were okay at the office before I was going to be mostly out of touch for the day.

It was ten when we finally hit the road.  About two hours later than Dominica had wanted to have left but we made good time and were at the farm in Waverly before noon!  We had no idea that it was so close to dad’s house.  We had been expecting a drive of over three hours.  So it ended up that only arrived maybe twenty or thirty minutes later than we had wanted to have been there.  Not bad at all – especially considering that Dominica is not feeling well at all and that I was able to work before leaving and was able to stop and get gas on the drive.

We hung out at the farm all day.  Liesl had the best time playing with her cousins.  She is old enough now that she can totally just go off outside with them and the older girls watch over her and she just has so much fun playing with the kids.  I think that what she really likes is the independence of being able to go play without needing any adults to be around.

Liesl spent practically the entire day, it seems, outside.  She especially loved playing in the plastic castle and the jungle gym for the little kids.  I don’t know that she did very much playing with other kids her own age.  There really are only a couple that are close enough to even remotely consider to be “her age” and even then you have to stretch pretty hard.  Garrett is the closest and they play together all of the time.  When Clara is older she will be in the same play group but not for another year and a half, most likely.

It was a very hot Fourth of July with temperatures going into the mid nineties and bright, unbroken sunshine. It was pretty intensely hot.  It wasn’t so bad stepping outside for a minute here and there but being in a house without air conditioning in that heat does get to you after a while.  As long as I wasn’t moving too much it was okay but if I had to go chase Liesl or something like that I would get hot and not be able to cool back down.

We stayed until about eight thirty in the evening and would have stayed longer but Dominica was still not feeling well and wanted to get up to Ithaca so that we could get into our hotel room.  So we took off.  Liesl stayed awake for the drive which was surprising after getting a horrible night’s sleep last night and her only nap all day being the hour and a half that she got in the car on the drive down to Waverly before the day began.

The drive up to Ithaca was quite easy.  It really was not all that much driving today.  It just felt like it was going to be a lot.  So it was just after nine thirty when we drove in to town.  It has been a really long time since Dominica has been in Ithaca.  She was thinking that it felt awfully strange being there.  I have been there much more recently than she has.

We stopped at Taco Bell and grabbed a quick bite for dinner.  It was way easier to get food before getting into the hotel rather than after we had and Liesl had gone to bed.  Then we would have been sorry.

We were off to bed rather early tonight.  It was nice.  We have a king bed for a change and Liesl just slept with us – which always makes her happy.  She has been not sleeping with us pretty much since Dominica left to go to New York so we have pretty much broken that habit and should not have a problem sticking with it once we are back in Texas.  Fingers crossed.  We are planning on having her sleeping in her own room again right away.

We were probably in bed by eleven.  We are at the Comfort Inn on Elmira Street where I always stay when I am in town on business and where dad used to stay when he would go to Ithaca long ago.  The hotel is pretty nice but our air conditioning did not really work at all and the room was seventy eight degrees with no air movement all night.  Better than the ninety-something going on outside but at least outside there is some breeze.  We were a little uncomfortable at that temperature but we did manage to get to sleep.  The bed was comfortable.

Tomorrow morning we are hanging out with the Winans in Ithaca.  We have not seen their house nor met their daughter Emily yet!  We have not seen them since their wedding in September, 2006!  We will be back to Pavilion at dad’s house tomorrow evening.

It was rather hot in the tent this morning when I woke up as the sun had come pouring in through the east facing screens.  I was completely in the sunlight and not at all a the same temperature that I had been all night long.  That woke me up pretty quickly as it did for Oreo.  So he and I got up and headed into the house long before Dominica or Liesl woke up.  That was perfect because I have to work this morning at eight anyway.

There was more work that there normally is for a Saturday today which is a bit annoying as it is a holiday weekend.  So I worked for several hours.  When I was able to get away for a while we drove over to Geneseo to get breakfast at Denny’s.  They had some new, special breakfast items that had looked really good and I wanted to try them out.  We had the same waitress from Thursday night and she recognized Liesl right away.  Liesl tends to make an impact wherever she goes.

After lunch we went to Walmart and, as soon as we arrived, realized that we did not have Liesl’s pacifier.  I knew that she had taken it into Denny’s with her so Dominica went in to Walmart and dad and I returned to Denny’s to see if they had found it.  It turns out that they had found it but had just thrown in away minutes before we made it back (it had only been a total of ten minutes at most since we left.)  The manager was nice enough to empty out the trash to get it for us and had the kitchen run it through the dish washer to sterilize it for us.  Liesl was going to be exceptionally unhappy if we had lost it.

We got to Walmart ourselves and were immediately confronted by two women working to get the top down on what we believe was a 1957 Corvette Stingray.  What a beautiful car.  As it was labeled a Stingray that might mean that it could not have been older than1963 but it did not look like that late of a model to me.  We ended up not being very helpful and they figured the top out on their own but did offer to let us drive the car for having taken the time to attempt to help them.  Neither dad nor I wanted the responsibility for driving that car though!

While at Walmart both Dominica and dad did some grocery shopping.  I picked up another 2TB external hard drive as we now have three laptops set up and the only thing holding me back from running all three all of the time is the lack of a place to store all of the archived movies.  So this should solve that problem and allow me to really speed up the process.

On the way back to dad’s we stopped at the Ralstons’ and I picked up the Mazda so that Dominica and I could use it later on for going down to Silver Lake for the festivities this evening.

Around five this evening Dominica, Liesl and I drove down to Perry to go to the Parkers’ lake house on Silver Lake.  We are going “for the fireworks” but are not actually staying for them as Liesl does not like them, at least she did not when we were in Walt Disney World, and neither of us care to see them at all.

We had a good time hanging out with the Parker clan.  We have not been down there for many years and so have been quite out of touch with the Perry crowd.  Liesl had a really good time.   There were lots of kids with whom she could play as well as an outdoor plastic house that she thought that playing inside was the coolest.  She just played and played – mostly by herself without any need for interaction from the other kids.  She was by far the youngest so none of the other kids were really all that appropriate play friends.  It is good that she does such a good job of entertaining herself.

We headed back home at nine thirty.  We did not stay up for very long after getting home.  We are sleeping out in the tent again tonight.  Dominica and Liesl pretty much went straight out to the tent as soon as we got home.  Liesl really liked sleeping in there last night and wanted to go back tonight.

Tomorrow morning we need to get up and hit the road right away in the morning to drive down to Waverly for the fourth of July party that is there every year.  We will be there all day and will then be heading up to Ithaca in the evening and will be staying at the Comfort Inn there (I just booked the room tonight before turning in for the night.)  We will be visiting with the Winans, Bob and Lisa and their daughter Emily who is just over one year old, on Monday before returning to dad’s house in the afternoon.

Today is Friday so it is my super busy day. My boss was out today so I was extra busy as well.  Fortunately today is the start of the long weekend so the market closes early today giving us a chance to get out at a reasonable time today so that we can enjoy the weekend, more or less.  Of course, I am scheduled to work quite a bit tomorrow morning so that does not really count for me.  I won’t really get much time off tomorrow.  I do actually get Monday off, however, so that is great.

Dominica and I have been looking forward to getting to camp while at dad’s house.  All of our camping gear is here and we are not planning on shipping any of it to Texas as we have no intention of camping where it is so hot and where there are so many dangerous things about in the wild (scorpions, big spiders, coyotes, etc.)  Camping in New York is crazy safe and convenient.  Camping in Texas is stressful at best.  We figure that any time that we are going to want to camp that we are already going to be in the New York area so getting the tent from dad’s is as convenient as anywhere.

So this afternoon, Dominica and I carried the tent out to the back yard and while I worked on the afternoon deployments she worked on setting up the tent which she is very good at doing.  We cannot camp very far from the house, unless we go to a campground, because of my need for a CPAP.  We are limited to the distance that we can stretch an extension cord from the house.

While Dominica was working on the tent the Ralstons stopped by to pick up a computer that I had promised them.  They need a computer to use as their home media server.  Originally I had thought that we must have a D325 or D530 sitting around that was not in use but that turned out not to be the case.  Dad and I looked high and low to see what we could find before I remember this custom-built, Athlon64 unit that has been in his office for a few years now.  It is a 3U black Antec rackmount chassis with heaven only knows what in it.  It was a computer that we had built and had used in Geneseo just before we moved out of there.  There were two like this, this one and a 4U unit with loads of 250GB SATA hot swap drives.  Antoni took that other unit almost a year ago but this one has been looking for a home for a very long time.  In theory it will be perfect for them.  More power than they actually need and lots of room to hold several 3.5″ hard drives.  Dad is, I’m sure, ecstatic to have it finally out of his office.  This is one of those very large items that we had not figured out what to do with.  Problem solved.

While they were over, Art assisted in putting up the tent.  So now we are all ready to camp out in the yard tonight.  We also found out that the Ralstons bought a car today.  That means that they are not going to be needing the Mazda for very long like we had originally thought.  So instead of me flying to Washington, DC in a week I can potentially just take the car and drive down instead and then drive it on home to Texas.  That is a pretty major change of plans but one that will work out really well for us.

We had been attempting to go out for lunch today but I ended up being so busy that we just skipped lunch altogether.  We made plans with Aunt Sharon and Uncle Leo to do a Friday Night Fish Fry from the Capa Lounge and to watch a movie tonight.  So around six thirty they brought up take out from the Capa and we all ate out in the back yard as it was really nice out this evening.

After dinner we watched Dear John which dad had downloaded to the AppleTV a few days ago but it had taken so long to download that we had been unable to watch it on the day that we had intended.  So we watched it for the Friday night movie night instead.

Dear John was pretty sad.  I found it surprisingly depressing.  There story wasn’t bad and the actors were good, for the most part, but I’d have to say that overall I did not enjoy it.  The story was pretty weak and mostly was just a commentary on how crappy life can be.  Something that I would rather do without.  In theory the ending was somewhat uplifting but it was also incredibly vague and melancholy.  Not that there is not a place for a good melancholy film from time to time but this one was just too sad and not deep enough to pull it off, in my opinion.  I would not necessarily avoid the film but I would not seek it out either.  Nothing special and easily forgotten.

After the movie, the Richardsons went home and dad headed off to bed.  Dominica and I took Liesl and Oreo out to the tent.  Liesl thought this was great fun.  She had been out in the tent much of the afternoon playing – especially while we were eating our fish fry out there.  She thought that having a fresh air room in the middle of the yard was pretty cool.  Liesl has been loving being outside in general so we were hoping that she would really like camping.

Liesl fell asleep pretty quickly as did Oreo.  Liesl has an air mattress in the back of the tent.  Dominica and I have the queen sized futon mattress in the middle of the tent and Oreo slept on his pillow right next to my head.  Dominica brought out an ottoman as well on which we placed her laptop.  I had been archiving movies all day on it and it was all set up with about a dozen films that we could choose from.  Remember that we have power in the tent for my CPAP so having power for the laptop is pretty easy.  Even cooler is that dad’s wireless reaches out into the yard without any problem so we could be online and check email or whatever as well.  Now this is camping.

We looked through the available movies and decided to watch Johnny English with Rowan Akinson.  Neither of us had seen that in a while and we both enjoyed it when we had.  Dominica maybe made it a third of the way through the movie before falling asleep.  I made it a little longer but was tired and decided to just turn it off and call it a night.

It is a great night for camping.  The air is cool but not cold and it was relatively dry.  It was cool enough that we could cover up with blankets which makes sleeping much more comfortable.  No need for any of our fans either.