Sheep Guarding Llama

The original plan for today was to be up and in to Dulles, Virginia first thing this morning to pick up the Ralstons from the airport.  That did not happen as their flight from Brazzaville in the Republic of the Congo to Addis Ababa in Ethiopa was two hours late yesterday causing them to miss their flight to Rome and on to Dulles.  So instead of today being a travel day, it is, instead, a day to hang out in Maryland and relax.  A nice change a pace indeed.

Since I was originally set to travel today and not tomorrow I am instead working today rather than tomorrow.  So I got up and got signed right in to work.

Brian drove down from Philadelphia today so that he could spend some time with John and I since we are all so close, which is a rarity.  It took him all morning to drive down, it is almost a three hour drive down depending on the route and traffic.  He arrived just before noon.

Today was not quite as hot as yesterday, but it is still rather warm for Maryland in June.  Definitely not hot like Irving but the humidity is really high and we are really feeling it.

The morning, up until noon-ish, was really nothing but me working for the office.  Then, round about twelve thirty, John, Brian and I went out and took John’s 1,800 hp Pratt and Whitney jet turbine powered racing boat out for a trip over to Deep Creek for lunch.

First we took several laps around the Magothy River hitting around one hundred and ten miles per hour which is, by far, the fastest that I have ever been in a boat, let alone a tiny, little balsa wood boat on a river!  Likely the fastest that I have ever been is around fifty-five miles per hour in a small speed boat out on one of New York’s Finger Lakes.

After speeding around for a little bit we went over to Deep Creek for lunch.  I have not had a chance to eat at Deep Creek in many years.  Definitely not for three and quite possibly not for four or five years!  Back when John lived at “973”, just up the street from Deep Creek, we would eat there all of the time.  It was our usual haunt and we even walked there at least once.

When we tried to dock at Deep Creek we realized that John had accidentally left the electric, slow-speed propellers in the water and the high speed racing across the Magothy had ripped the port propeller off.  That made maneuvering in Deep Creek rather difficult and we had no real way of getting close to the dock.  The only chance that we had was making several runs at it with Brian attempting to grab the dock as we passed.  That did not work so well.

We ended up using the tide to push us slowly in so that we would not cause a bigger disaster by crashing in at high speed.  Then we had lunch.  It took us so long to get out to Deep Creek, though, that John had a post-lunch conference call that he needed to be on and he was on that all while Brian and I were eating.

I have discovered that the velvet cream crab soup at Deep Creek is my favourite.  I don’t think that I have ever had it before, but I am certain that I will be having it again.  Wow that was some amazing soup.

Getting out of Deep Creek was a little bit of a challenge as we didn’t have our steering propeller.  We had to maneuver the boat against the dock by hand and literally “shove off” to get far enough from the dock to fire up the turbine “safely.”  Then we took a run with the boat going over one hundred and twenty miles per hour during which Brian used his iPhone to grab a video of me riding in the back of the boat.  It starts off slowly and you can see the plume of water form behind me and get bigger and bigger as we go.  It was very cool.  John kicked on the afterburners too which were insanely hot.  Even at those high speeds the back of the boat is crazy hot from the turbine.

We got back to the house and I got right back to work.  Brian hung around for another hour or so before getting on the road back north.  We had some good opportunity to get some work done.  It was a good use of the time today.  The Ralstons being stuck an extra day ended up working out very well for me both that I got to hang out here and that I got some much needed rest before another long day of driving.

Today, the Tocco clan, including Dominica and Liesl, went to Enchanted Forest Water Safari in Old Forge, New York for the day.  The Water Safari was not there when I was a child, but I do have fond memorize of going to Enchanted Forest with my parents when I was very, very little.  I remember walking through the woods, taking the little train that ran around the perimeter and going on the very small ferris wheel out in the woods.  It was not a fancy amusement park but it was well suited to little kids.

While out at Enchanted Forest today, Liesl developed a fever and was not feeling well at all.  Once they realized how hot she had become they left the park right away and headed back to Frankfort.

Mostly we just relaxed this evening at the Nicklin house.  It could not be too wild of an evening since I have to get up quite early tomorrow and get on the road.  The Ralstons are still on target to get in to Dulles tomorrow morning so the original plans for today are just pushed off until tomorrow.

We stayed up probably a bit too late this evening talking.  It was not all that late, though, I probably headed off to bed around about midnight or maybe even a little earlier.  I have to get up at roughly five thirty tomorrow which is not terrible but I have been working pretty hard on making up for lost sleep so even though it is not that early I still need to be careful not to push it too much.

I have been reading, and quite enjoying, the business classic “The Peter Principle” from the late 1960s which lead to another classic that I really like, “The Dilbert Principle.”  It is a pretty short book which I plan to finish reading this week.  I’ve wanted to read it for a decade and just never got around to doing so.  So I am happy to finally be getting it out of the way.

Quite late, probably around eleven, Dominica called to tell me that Liesl’s fever had gotten quite bad and that she thought that she needed to go to the hospital.  Dominica gave her a cold bath to bring her temperature down but she was way too warm and we did not feel that it was worth the risk of having them go to sleep in case she got warmer during the night.

So not long before midnight Dominica took Liesl to the emergency room in Utica.  They had made it into urgent care but urgent care would not see a child under two years old so that time was all lost and they had to go to the emergency room anyway.

It was a busy night at the hospital and it took a very long time before they were able to see Liesl for more than a few minutes.  They took her temperature right away and it was one hundred and four point six!  No wonder she has been unhappy all day.  They gave her some Motrin and then she was stuck waiting for hours before she really got to see a doctor.

Once she finally did get to see a doctor, they determined that she had a double ear infection.  Poor little girl.  No wonder she is not happy.  She got some medicine and her fever was down a bit – to one hundred and two point five – before they came home early in the morning.

There is also a virus going around that causes a high fever and may be the cause of the fever rather than the ear infections.  That is expected to pass in another twenty four hours or so and is nothing to be concerned about.  If it is the virus that caused her fever then she is lucky that that caused her to get checked out for the ear infection when it might have gone unnoticed otherwise.

Top legal minds at the National Pork Board are confused about the existence of unicorn meat.  I’m guessing that a diet of nothing but bacon has done wonders to the brains of these distinguished lobbyists.  Perhaps the pork board hires small children to be their legal council?  How does the reality of unicorns sneak by these people?  What can we, the adults, learn from this debacle?  We learn that the pork people are both evil and mentally challenged.  While we can provide any actual proof one would assume that the correlation among the things we know (evil, dumb, eat lots of pork) is likely.

Today is my second father’s day and I am very sad to not be able to spend it with Liesl.  Liesl (I suspect Dominica’s involvement here) did leave me a Father’s Day card on my desk back in Las Colinas before she left for New York, at least.  Today would also have been my mother’s birthday.  She was born on a father’s day as well.  It just occurred to me, as I write this, that my mother and my daughter were both born on floating holidays and that they were both born on the least likely window where the holiday was on their birthday on the year that they were born.

I managed to sleep in quite a bit this morning.  Oh boy did I ever need that.  I probably slept for ten hours or more last night and woke up on my own this morning.  I feel so much better.  I am quite surprised that that is all the more sleep that my body felt that it needed given that taking tonight’s rest in combination with Thursday night’s rest I have still not quite gotten two nights’ worth of sleep and that doesn’t even take into account the fact that I did not sleep Friday night whatsoever!

Once I was up and showered and went down stairs to join the land of the living, John, Frankie (who is now six and a half) and I went out to Annapolis to do some quick shopping and to grab some lunch.  We tried going to our old stand-by, the Double T Diner, in Annapolis but as it is father’s day the place was completely packed even though it was just eleven thirty.  So instead we went up route two to a pizza place up there and got lunch.

After lunch we went back to the house and I worked for a while, sitting at the desktop that they keep hooked up in the kitchen.  I am working today so I need to be connected.

Later in the evening, Tommy, Cookie and George came over to the house and the guys headed out on John’s fishing boat to putz around the Magothy.  John just got a new satellite positioning system for the boat and infrared camera so we were out playing with that.  That is some serious cool stuff.

We hung out on the river for a few hours then came back and enjoyed an evening on the back deck.  It was good to get to see everyone.  I haven’t been down to Annapolis since some time before Liesl was born.  Maybe almost a year before Liesl was born for the Christmas party!

We hung out until pretty late.  Then off to bed.  I’m beat and still have a bit of sleep on which to catch up.

I ended yesterday’s post with me heading out from the office to get the car packed and to get myself out onto the road.  Jen got to the office about forty-five minutes before I was able to escape so she sat in the parking lot waiting for me to get out. Then she followed me over to the apartment and helped me to switch everything over between cars that I needed and to pack and load the Mazda for its long trip north.  Altogether that took around two hours.

It was seven forty-five when Jen hit the road with the X3 heading down to Houston and I hit the road with the Mazda on my way towards Arkansas.  That was about two hours later than I had hoped.  I had meant to have been home and really, really ready to jump into the car even before Jen had arrived but instead I was way too long at the office.  This is going to be that much longer of a night.

So my drive began having gotten only five hours of sleep, working a ten hour or more day, packing the car in the crazy heat (of the parking garage with no air flow) for two hours and then hitting the road at a quarter until eight.

The beginning of the drive went great.  I made very good time across Texas to Texarkana where I crossed into Arkansas and fueled up for the first time.  It was around midnight when I entered Arkansas.  I had been hoping to have been at least to Little Rock by this point if not already nearing the Mississippi flood plain.

Driving across northeast Texas and then diagonally across Arkansas is one long, boring drive – especially at night.  There is just nothing to look at at all.  By the time that I crossed the Mississippi River into Memphis, Tennessee I was getting pretty tired.  It was a long day and knowing how much drive was in front of me did not help.

In Jackson, Tennessee I decided that I was just too tired and that I should take advantage of it being a small town and just find a hotel and call it a night there.  My original plan did not have me leaving until tomorrow so was still well ahead of the game.

I stopped and talked to the Comfort Suites in Jackson and discovered that there were no hotel rooms in town as there was a basketball tournament going on.  Well, that wasn’t good.  I was really looking forward to a bed at this point.  I was pretty drowsy.  So I went to the gas station right next door to the Comfort Suites, fueled up, grabbed some drinks and talked to the girl working at the desk for half an hour to give myself a break from the car.  I figured that that might help with waking me up if I stood up and talked for a while.

It did help and I was back on the road shortly.  If I remember correctly it was probably about four to four thirty in the morning when I was in Jackson.  Back on the highway again for me.

I continued on to Dickson, Tennessee – having stayed there on my last trip through the area – and figured that I would stop there to get some sleep even though it was not light out and getting pretty late for getting in to a hotel.  The Comfort Suites there was really nice last time and quite affordable so I was hoping that it would work out favourably again on this trip.

While in Dickson I managed to get off at the wrong exit for the hotel and, by the time that I had trekked around looking for it and stopped to get fuel, I was wide awake again and decided that getting a hotel room now would not be prudent so I just decided to press on again.

The rest of Tennessee went quite well heading east along route forty.  At this point, the Sue Grafton novel “U is for Undertow” which I had been saving until I was quite tired, went into the CD player and I entertained myself with that for about three additional hours.  That helped a lot.

Dominica and I had last listened to the first nine or more hours of “U is for Undertow” back in December when we drove down to Houston together.  We always do this – listen to books on CD while doing really long overland drives together.  The problem is that we seldom do long drives together and Dominica does not like to listen to nearly as much as I do during a single trip or she is getting sleepy and cannot pay attention to the book and so I can’t listen as she will miss large portions of it.  This seems like it couldn’t possibly be a real problem for an eleven hour book on a twenty three hour drive but I think that that highlights just how much of the time I am stuck driving while she is dozing off!

I had to go back and cover about one hour of the book that I had already heard back in December just to re-acclimate myself with the material.  I finished the book somewhere around of the end of the road in Tennessee.  I definitely think that this book is better than the last one, “T is for Trespass”, and I am happy to get a little more of the character development that was lacking in the last one.

I got on to interstate eighty one heading northeast from Knoxville and off towards Virginia.  Before reaching the Virginia line, however, I got stuck in some serious traffic and basically came to a complete stop.  I lost possibly as much as an hour waiting for traffic to clear up.  When it finally started moving slowly my fuel was pretty low so I decided to just get off at the very first exit that I could so that I could get some fuel.

I happened to pick just the perfect exit, maybe thirty minutes before the Virginia border, to discover what had happened.  The exist was packed full of people standing all over, as if the carnival had come to town, with police and utility crews everywhere.

It turns out that there was a major piece of over-sized equipment being moved up the highway.  Moving from Tennessee to Virginia.  The move was publicized in the newspaper so everyone was out for this big, local event.  Normally the thing moved during the night but, just my luck, today was the one time that they needed to move it during the day.  The thing took up the entire highway and was the length of many tractor trailers.

I stopped at the gas station across the street from where the thing was parked.  The gas station (and everywhere else) was packed with onlookers checking out the spectacle.  I talked to some of the locals and they filled me in.  This is a massive component of a nuclear power plant, they believed, being hauled up to Virginia.  They had to pour new concrete on some parts of the highway just to get it to be able to handle the weight – presumably on the bridges.  The utility crews had to travel along with it raising the power lines as they go.  The thing can’t go faster than ten miles per hour.

So that was at least interesting even if it was pretty annoying that I got stuck in that traffic on my long drive.  The last thing that I needed was to lose an hour sitting pretty much still in the blazing sun.  The air conditioning is just barely working on the Mazda at this point.  Jen thinks that we have a leak in the air conditioning system which seems pretty likely.

I was doing okay for the first thirty or forty minutes into Virginia but by the time that I hit Marion I was getting very drowsy.  I had to start working very hard to stay awake.  I stopped for food and fuel and made many rest stops where I got out and walked around for a few minutes to get myself pumped back up to drive.

The constant stops definitely slowed my progress but it did its job of keeping me awake enough to keep driving.  I can’t give up in Virginia, so close to my final destination.  The exhaustion lasted until I passed through the north of the mountains and switched from route eighty one onto sixty six heading east into Washington.  I kept fighting to stay awake until I passed Manasses when I magically got another wind and was in great shape as I drove through northern Virginia and into the nation’s capital.

The drive through DC went very smoothly – it has been quite some time since I needed to navigate the streets going across town.  Getting from Virginia and out to Maryland efficiently is a bit of an art in Washington.  I was quite pleased with myself for getting through town so well.

I got out to Annapolis as John had just gone out to the Chinese Buffet up on route two with Tristan and the kids so I drove up there and joined them for a quick dinner.  So it was probably around seven when I actually got to Annapolis – twenty three hours after having left Irving, Texas and thirty eight hours after I had gotten up with just five hours of sleep.

After dinner it was back to the Arnold house on the Magothy River.  I was pretty wired after having been in the car for so long so Michelle and I stayed up for a few hours and had a bottle of wine in the Florida room before everyone turned in for the night around eleven or so.  What a long day.  But I made it, all the way to Arnold, Maryland in a single go.  Now the big driving is out of the way and I don’t need to do it again for several weeks and I will have Francesca to split the driving with next time.

It is really good that I did not have to stop on this trip up because instead of arriving at some crazy hour and being worthless all day Sunday I will now have all day tomorrow to visit with the Nicklins as well as time to really recover from the drive before having to do a lot more driving on Monday.

After getting to bed much later than I had anticipated last night I then got woken up at five this morning by John Nicklin calling to make plans for the weekend!  So my intended nine hours of sleep fell to just five.  That’s a large cut.

I tried to go back to sleep but to no avail.  I laid in bed for a bit but eventually gave up.

It has been a very hot week in Texas with daily temperature hitting quite a bit over one hundred.  I am going to feel downright cold when I finally get to New York!  I’ve gotten used to some pretty extreme weather.  From what I have been seeing, New York is almost twenty degrees cooler than we are here in Irving.

I ran home at lunch and spent the limited time that I had attempting to get as much ready for my trip as possible.  We decided, rather last second, that Jen was going to make it to Irving so early that she could turn right around and be back to Houston early enough to make it worth it and that meant that I would be free to make an attempt at getting on to the road tonight rather than waiting until tomorrow morning.  That should give me a lot more buffer in the schedule to make it an easier drive to Arnold, Maryland.

I have my iPod loaded up with podcasts and music that hopefully will keep me entertained while on the road.  I also have Sue Grafton’s U is for Undertow which Dominica and I never managed to finish six months ago when we drove down to Texas so I am anxious to finish now.  I can listen to a ton more audio books on a drive than Dominica can so I will certainly manage to wrap it up on this trip.

Jen arrived in Irving at a quarter till six.  Unfortunately I was stuck on a conference call and was unable to leave as early as would have been ideal.  I still have all of my clothes packing to do yet as well.  So I am quite some ways from being ready to actually get onto the road.  I had originally hoped to have been able to have left right around six or so.

Still, getting on the road tonight is better than not.  There are a lot of miles to be driven and I need to get as many out of the way tonight as possible.  Most likely I will grab a hotel room in Tennessee or something like that.  If I push on past that point I will be stuck without much access to hotels until I get to the Nicklin’s place.

I managed to go all day today without any coffee or caffeine which was perfect so that I can have some during the drive and it will do that much more to keep me awake.  I skipped most food today so I will be hungry on the drive as well.

I am taking very, very little with me on this drive so I am hopeful that I do not forget anything.  The conference call running later and later was the worst possible thing for tonight.  I lost at least forty-five minutes because of it and that will make me that much more rushed to get on the road.

My call ended at a quarter after six.  That’s it, I’m done.  I am leaving now.  No more SGL until I get to a hotel or get to Maryland!  Peace out!

Today is my last actual day completely in Texas.  Tomorrow I am off to New York.

I got nine hours of sleep last night which was great.  Been a long while since that happened.  That still meant that I was up and out of bed at seven this morning.

You know that you have been in Texas for a while when you go outside in one hundred plus temperatures and think “oh, this is pretty nice, at least there is a breeze.”  Even getting into my X3, which is black, after it has been sitting outside in those temperatures with the Texan sun beating down on it doesn’t phase me anymore.  Weird.

I took today off from La Cima.  I figured that I needed any spare time that I had to be getting ready for the trip.  So I spent my lunch time at home alone.  Then, after work, I just came straight home and spent the evening trying to get things ready for the trip.

Maggie came by around eight thirty or maybe nine to pick up some stuff that had been delivered to the apartment for her.  She was at the apartment for probably an hour or an hour and a half.  I managed to get her desktop readied for her so that she was able to take that with her this evening which was a major accomplishment.

My original plan was to do as much as I could and to be in bed by ten this evening so that I could “charge up” a big more hitting the road.  That did not work out, though, and I did not manage to get to bed until midnight.  So I will be much more tired tomorrow than expected.  That is unfortunate.  I have a lot of stuff to do tomorrow.

I am looking forward to the trip.  I have had very little time “up north” in seven months.  This is the longest that I have been away from the northeast, ever.