Sheep Guarding Llama

I was up at a quarter till seven this morning.  I hate having to start the weekend like this nearly every week.  Having a chance to sleep in now and then is kind of important.  I worked from seven until nine.  Not a busy day and very unfortunate that these short deployments always require that I be up so early on the closest thing that I get to a day off.

After nine, Dominica, Liesl and I went down to the “coffee bar” in our apartment complex for the special quarterly omelet breakfast that they do every so often.  They bring in a catering firm that does really good omelets.  It works out really well.  They get seventy-five to one hundred residents coming down and meeting up with each other every time that they do these.

After breakfast I settled in to work on the exam for the rest of the day – which I did.  I worked from about ten in the morning till around midnight.  What a long, exhausting day.

Dominica spent the day playing Dragon Age Awakening which she finished.  She has gotten a ton of use out of those Dragon Age games!  I hope to start playing them myself as soon as this exam validation is over.

Work today.  The usual for a Friday.  Very busy all day.  I came home for lunch and hung out with Dominica while Liesl mostly slept.

After work I had to spend what little time that there was this evening working on the ASP.NET 3.5 exam that I am validating.  Doing a test validation, especially one for a programming exam, is an insane amount of work.  In this case there are two hundred and twenty two questions that I need to pour over and ensure that each one is correct, worded well, meaningful, applicable and relevant.  No small task.  A single question can easily take ten minutes.

So I put in an hour or two doing this today but my real plan is to work on this all weekend doing this and to get to bed on the early side tonight so that I am rested and able to really focus once tomorrow comes.  I am also scheduled to be up early tomorrow to do production releases so I do not get to sleep in at all either.

After this weekend, Dominica and Liesl are leaving early in the week to go down to Houston to be with Francesca.  They are staying for the weekend so that I can spend my time at home with Liesl rather than them being gone over the weekend but, of course, with all of the work that I have to do this may not work out as well as we had hoped.

Nothing too much to report from today.  Work has been crazy busy and I am getting worn out.  Lunch today included a run to La Cima with one of the guys from the office.  The lunch menu looked really good so we just could not resist.

I talked to Dominica and she had me bring home lunch for her.  Today was my first time getting food from the buffet rather than ordering from the lunch menu.  That worked out great.  The price is fantastic as is the food.  This is definitely the best lunch value that I am going to be able to find.  I am going to be making an effort to eat here far more often.

I brought Dominica her lunch and she was thrilled with how cost effective and easy that was.  She had not realized that we could get the buffet to go which really makes lunch quick and affordable for us.  The club is really allowing us to eat far better than we used to.  I think that Dominica is going to get addicted to sending me to the club to get lunch for her.  It is very hard for her to go because Liesl likes to go to sleep at exactly eleven thirty – right at the earliest that we could go for lunch – and does not wake up until just when lunch would be ending.  It is fine for when I bring lunch home or we eat at the apartment but it does not work at all for going out anywhere for lunch.

Back to work this afternoon and then I left a little on the “early” side (five thirty, hardly leaving the office early) to run over to La Cima again for Happy Hour and the artist reception.  Brian got there just before me.

We had a good time hanging out at the happy hour and the artist showcase seemed to go well.  We were there to support them mostly and hung out until the show was over.  A few paintings were sold at the show too.

I grabbed some pub grub from the bar as take out to take home to Dominica to make the evening easier.  Brian and I left on the early side around seven or seven thirty.  Pretty good for me leaving an after work event.

Once we ate dinner, I had to spend a few hours getting set up and working on a certification exam that I am validating this weekend.  Now that I am finally done with my class at RIT I am able to focus on this exam that I have had and get it done.  It is a tremendous amount of work and has to be turned in by Monday so that is going to be my focus all weekend.  No “fun time” for me until next week.

Today is our orientation at La Cima as new members.  There is so much that goes on there and so many options and benefits that we need a special orientation class just to get the hang of how to do things at the club.

I went to work early this morning and had a busy morning.  Work has been pretty crazy recently.  I took the car this morning so that we could get to the club more quickly.  It was very warm today so I didn’t want to walk to work and get all sweaty before going to the club for lunch.

At eleven thirty I ran over to the house to pick up Dominica and Liesl and we were off to the club after about fifteen minutes.

The lunch and learn was at noon in one of the small meeting rooms at La Cima.  This was my first time getting to eat in one of the private rooms.  We were crammed in pretty tight with one surprise person plus Liesl taking us just over the room’s rated capacity.

We got lunch and a ninety minute talk on the ins and outs of working with the club.  It is amazing how much there is to know – both with how to use the local club but also how to travel and use other associate clubs when we are outside of our home market.

After lunch I dropped the girls off at home and returned to the office.  A busy afternoon and then it was time to rush home, pick them up again, and return to La Cima for our regularly scheduled Wednesday evening pasta night.  We met up with Brian, as usual, and had dinner in the main dining room.  We are loving our Wednesday ritual.  Cost effective and fun.  Liesl really likes it too.  And it costs us less than when we used to order in pasta from a delivery service which was nowhere as good as this and didn’t come with such a nice setting either.

I was pretty exhausted this morning after having been up very, very late last night finishing up my class for RIT but boy was it a huge weight off of my chest this morning to know that I had managed to finish the class completely and that I finished it a week ahead of schedule.  Eighty papers in eight weeks – that is ten papers per week for the last two months.  Ugh.  I am so glad to have that over and out of the way.

Today is my day to relax and celebrate.  I still have to go to work but at least I do not have to write anything.  That is very important for me today.

After work, Dominica, Liesl, Maggie, Reg and I all went to La Cima for dinner.  This was there first time ever going up there.  We ordered our dinner and then, while on a trip to the restroom, I realized that Brian was sitting at the bar.  Apparently he had been sitting there the entire time but we had all missed him when we had gone in.  So he came into the dining room and joined us for dinner.

Everyone had a really nice time.  The food was awesome, as usual.  After dinner we came home and pretty much it was off to bed for us.  I am completely exhausted and really need to start working on catching up on my sleep after this crazy past few weeks.