Sheep Guarding Llama

Francesca and the kids left Houston around five thirty this morning to drive up to Irving.  It is about a five hour drive and she was trying to get out of Houston before rush hour really began because that could easily tack one to two hours onto the drive time.

It was cooler this morning but extremely humid.  Major storms hitting to the south and east of us plus another major storm system pounding the central midwest around Iowa and Nebraska.  Francesca got stuck driving in horrible storms all day long.  We only got a few minutes of drops in Irving today so I was still able to just walk into the office.

The Grices arrived around ten thirty.  Dominica spent the morning trying to get the house ready.  I came home from work and they were all in the pool.  It was very overcast and threatening to rain so there was no one else out there at all.

I walked over to Jersey Mike’s and picked up subs for everyone for lunch and walked back to the pool where we ate.  Still, the heat isn’t too bad but the humidity is just crazy today.  While we were eating a few sprinkles started to come down so we hurriedly packed up and went back up to the apartment.

I had to deal with our credit card being turned off over lunch today.  We travel so much and do so much online shopping that we are constantly setting off the alarms with the banks.  What a pain that is.  I explained that Dominica would be traveling for the next several days so they hopefully will not turn it off on her while she is out on the road.

I walked back to work, risking the rain.  It was a busy afternoon at work but I managed to get home at six so that we could get ready to go to La Cima.  Our dinner reservations were for six thirty but we were not able to get everyone ready in time for that.  We arrived around seven.

Liesl is now officially used to the club.  We got into the elevator and she said “Cima, Cima!”  She said it again when we walked into the club.

Dinner was insanely hectic.  It did not occur to us that we should have gotten a private room with so many people – we had enough to fill some of the rooms to capacity!  So we were in the main dining room at a huge table.

Dinner, with so many people, ended up taking way too long and Liesl just could not stand it. She was so ancy from the very beginning and by the time that we had our main courses we were walking her around trying to keep her occupied and before I could finish I had to take her down to the ground floor lobby and play with her there as she had decided to start screaming.  It was just too much for her having family visiting and swimming for a while, only getting a short nap then having a really long dinner at La Cima.  A private room would have made all of the difference.

It was quite late by the time that we got home from the club and all we did was feed Oreo, walk him and try to get everyone off to bed.  That took forever, though, and Liesl would just not fall asleep.  It was around midnight before we were able to get to sleep which is going to be awful tomorrow as everyone has to get up at four thirty in the morning so that they can get on to the road to get driving to New York!

Their plan is not to make it all of the way tomorrow but just to go as far as they can before night and then get a hotel and go the rest of the way on Friday.

Did well at getting into work at a decent time this morning.  I’m working hard to get up early in the morning and get out the door.  I was doing well then started getting out of the habit for a while there.  I really have to get in early or else it is so hot that I just can’t stand it.  It is getting to be crazy hot here in Texas.  We are already into temperatures to which I am not accustomed.

Work was insanely busy today.  Very little time to think at all.  I walked home for lunch today – it was quite warm but somehow it never seems to be as bad when going home for lunch as it is coming into the office early in the morning.  I wonder if it might be a lot more humid first thing in the morning or something?

The plan for this evening was to go to La Cima to use our free meal vouchers for the month of June because tonight is the last opportunity to use them at all.  So we made seven o’clock reservations.  I also made reservations for tomorrow night at La Cima to take the Grices to pasta night.

I tried to get out of work early but that did not work out at all.  Instead of making it away early I ended up getting stuck quite late.  I called Dominica and had her pick me up from work to save time.  I did not manage to get out until around seven thirty which was quite late for getting over to the club.

We got over to the club and had an awesome dinner, even if it was late and Liesl was way past her time to start winding down for the night.  We had our huge four course dinners plus a side of mac and cheese that was amazing.  Maybe the best that I have ever had.  Instead of swordfish they had lemon crusted halibut which we both ended up getting.  I didn’t like it as much as the swordfish but it was good.

Liesl was getting fussy so we grabbed our desserts and made a dash to get home.  That worked fairly well.  We were still pushing our luck but she was decently happy.

Tonight was our last night alone.  The Grices are arriving from Houston tomorrow morning.

This morning when I left the house it was like stepping into a blast furnace – a very humid blast furnace.  It was so humid and hot that you could see the haze in the air just in the hallway.  I can take humid cold and dry heat but humid heat really takes a toll on me very quickly.  I hope that this does not keep up.  This makes for an incredibly hot walk to the office.

At least work was not too busy this morning.  For lunch, Jeff and I went to La Cima in Las Colinas to pick up lunch and spend an hour or so working on some documentation that needed to be done.  There are so many interruptions at the office that it is impossible to get any real work done – which has always been my complaint about the office.  This helps a lot.  It was a very good lunch today as well.  The seafood trio with the creole mustard sauce was excellent.

The timing was not good to bring lunch to Dominica so she just ate on her own today.  She wasn’t too concerned about getting food from La Cima since we are scheduled to eat there for our monthly “night out” tomorrow night and we are going to be going there on Wednesday night with the Grices for pasta night.  So she will be La Cima’d out before they leave for New York on Thursday morning.

The plan is for the Grices to arrive in Dallas on Wednesday.  Then we will hang out for one evening and they will get an early start on Thursday.  Leaving from Dallas, well rested, makes the trip far easier than starting from Houston for everyone.  They have an awful lot of people to pack into that Toyota Sequoia, though, with the two adults, two tweens, two toddlers and an infant plus Oreo, of course.  We decided that Oreo could not stay with me because of how long he would be stuck being home alone until I headed to New York and how difficult it would make all of my logistics since I will be doing all of my traveling alone and I may easily be doing ten hours more traveling than Dominica will be doing since I am going from Dallas to Houston and then up to New York.

What a long trip that is going to be for me, all alone.  Ugh.  Dallas to Houston to Annapolis to Sterling to New York.

The afternoon was not too bad. I was able to get out at normal time and go home to hang out with Dominica and Liesl.  We spent the evening at home just hanging out and doing nothing.  We watched a little of Sonny with a Chance and Soap.  Liesl and I read a bit and played.  We just had dinner at home this evening and then it was off to an early bed time for all of us.

I was planning on having the day completely off to relax at home but shortly after getting up I got called from the office and ended up spending several hours on the phone on conference calls supporting a production outage.  At least it happened early when Dominica and Liesl were just waking up so it wasn’t really wasted time so much.

It is an extremely hot day today – no going outside for us.  Today is play with Liesl day for me.  We got tons of time today to play together and we read book after book.  We hung out a lot yesterday but got quite a bit more today.  Nothing is better than spending time with my Liesl.

Liesl has been napping for long periods every day so during the weekend this has given me a lot of time when I really should not be in the office working which pretty much leaves hanging out in the living room playing video games.  I managed to make it all of the way to the very end of Dragon Age: Origins.  I did not complete the game but am at the very final moment now.  I just need a bit of time when I can focus on working my way through the final battle and it will all be over.

I managed to set up the living room workspace again so that I can attempt to be productive when I am not in the bedroom at the main desk.  Having to abandon my workstation whenever Liesl is sleeping – which is all through my lunch period and pretty early in the evening – is seriously impacting my ability to be productive but because I am giving up the time to spend it with Liesl – the time is just turning into video game or video watching time which I would prefer to avoid most of the time.  So having a workstation set up in the living room that is ready to go whenever I need it is going to help a lot, I think, in allowing me to remain productive throughout much more of the day.

I spent some time testing out a dc5750 that I just received recently from eBay.  That has been needing to be done for some time.  It is so hard to get enough time to do all of the things that I need to do every day.

I was up pretty early this morning so that I could log in and start work at seven.  Of course, as there often is, there was a problem logging in.  It turns out that right during a production deployment window and during a SAN migration they had decided to do maintenance work on the remote access servers.  Great planning.

I eventually got logged in and worked until around one in the afternoon.  It wasn’t too much work, it was just spread out all morning.  It was a pretty productive day and I was able to spend a lot of time with Liesl.

I got a chance to play quite a bit of Dragon Age: Origins today and I am very close to wrapping it up.  We got a chance to watch some of the third season of the Wizards of Waverly Place which is slowly showing up on Netflix as the episodes get transferred from Disney.

Mostly the day was spent just hanging out with the family at home.  We did not go anywhere at all.

It was extremely hot today, bouncing off of one hundred degrees.  It didn’t feel all that bad but it is warm, there is no doubt.