Sheep Guarding Llama

This morning I had to get up and work for the office for a little while.  I put in a few hours of work then it was time to get on to the road.  It was just after nine thirty when we were loaded up into the car and headed out the door to take Oreo over to Ft. Worth to visit Maggie for the weekend.

Maggie has a border collie and two pugs so Oreo is going to have a dog party weekend.  He really like Maggie and he likes having dogs with whom he can play so we are hopeful that he is going to really have a good time over there for the weekend and not really miss us.  It has been a long time since we boarded him at Doggie Paradise but we are hoping that he gets a similar feeling and is happy there and does not really notice that we have been away for any length of time.  We are so thankful that Maggie is able to take care of him – what a difference that makes in us being able to travel.

It was around ten thirty when we managed to pull out of Fort Worth and hit i35W South down towards Waco and points south.  We were originally supposed to meet up with someone from Rackspace in Round Rock at noon but they ended up needing to cancel so our scheduled freed up and we had a lot of flexibility on the day.  It was good that we had that on our schedule, though, or we would have probably been running much later.

We had just missed Andy and Miranda for a late breakfast so we just grabbed fast food on the road and checked into our hotel in Round Rock.  I got my laptop online and put in a few hours working on papers for my class while Andy and Miranda were still downtown Austin sight seeing.  It was a good use of time and I managed to actually get a lot of work done this afternoon which made me a lot more comfortable for the rest of the weekend.

Once we were able to coordinate with and get together with the Wests (how weird is that – this is our first time seeing them since the wedding in Las Vegas) we just went out for a drive to see the area.  They are already pretty happy with Round Rock and they like Austin in general.  They are, like us, mostly interested in areas in which to actually live, not touristy type stuff,  so they’ve been looking at Round Rock, Cedar Park, North Austin, etc.

We started by hitting Round Rock Donuts which is, of course, the biggest selling point of the Round Rock area.  They were pretty full from dinner but once they tried Round Rock Donuts they both stuffed themselves anyway because they are so awesome.  It was pretty late in the evening when we got over to RRD but there was still a decently long line at the drive up window so they got a bit of the impression as to how popular these donuts are around here.

We drove out to Pflugerville so that Andy and Miranda could get a feel for the area where we are hoping to be able to buy a house sometime in the next year and to see how close that is to Round Rock itself. If Andy and Miranda really do get a place in Round Rock and we get a place in Pflugerville it will be only ten minutes, at most, in between them.

From there we drove down to Austin proper as Dominica had never actually seen the city.  So we did some driving through downtown and down to SoCo. We cruised Congress which gave them a good idea of the cultural life of the south side of the city which they had not seen during their own adventures.  From there we drove out to West Lake Hills, the exclusive area on the west side of town where people like Michael Dell live.  What a beautiful area that is!

We decided on an early evening.  Everyone wanted to get some sleep.  So back to the hotels on the early side.  I managed to get some more of my papers written after getting in for the evening so I am looking like I am good shape to be able to have them done for Monday when they are due.

We have a lot of stuff planned for tomorrow in Austin.  It is going to be a busy day.

This morning Andy and Miranda flew on down to Austin so that they could spend the weekend checking out the city.  This is the first time that either of them has ever been to Texas.  They are pretty excited to be looking at Austin.

I had been hoping that things would be slow and that we would have been able to have gone down to Austin today too but that was not to be so I had to go to work this morning.  So I spent the day at the office working and we are planning on going down to Round Rock tomorrow morning.

I had to work pretty late tonight.  I have to work tomorrow morning too which is a bit of a pain.

Brian and Tara went ahead on down to Temple, Texas last night.  So today ended up being a normal work day for me.  I went into the office this morning and almost forgot that I had a Rackspace and Magento event in Dallas tonight.

I left work a little bit early and drove over to Dallas to make it for the ecommerce hosting event this evening.  Getting over to Dallas was easy but once I got there I was going crazy trying to find the event because, as it turned out, the address posted for the even had two numbers transposed which had be searching the wrong side of the road one block down from the actual address and only because I made a wrong term and went out way too far did I end up stumbling on the place by accident!

Luckily I wasn’t late, though, and ended up making it at a very good time.  They had free drinks and food at Sambuca and even valet parking.  A nice venue and they had a good turn out too.

The event went really well.  Brian, Maggie and PSX from SpiceWorks were there so we got to hang out.  A good showing from the SpiceCorps DFW crew.

After the event we got a chance to do some good networking and then Brian, PSX and I got a chance to go out to dinner with the Rackspace crew for sushi and drinks.

It ended up being quite a late night.  Almost midnight by the time that we were able to get back home.

Today is the big day, Brian and Tara left Little Rock, Arkansas this morning to drive the last stretch of highway to Irving with the UHaul full of our stuff.  How exciting.

I went to the office this morning but had an interview to do over lunch so I came home to do that by phone.  I’m willing to post that I did an interview because I already posted elsewhere how I was just doing it because they begged and begged me to do the interview and I had already turned them down several times.  No one expects me to never, ever interview and I don’t do it casually but this was a ridiculous interview that, while being “tough”, even if I did well (later I was told that I did awesome) there is practically no way that they could even convince me to go do a face to face interview let alone take the position.  And that’s exactly what ended up happening.  The interview went fine and they really liked me but I turned down a second interview as the company just has nothing to offer.  I had had to do the Brainbench Red Hat Linux technical assessment to get into this interview which, of course, I aced as I wrote it – ha ha.  Which the very fact that I am the assessor for this job as well as the interviewee means that they can’t possibly be prepared to hire someone at my level if I am the bar by which they measure others!

While I was on the phone I saw Brian and Tara drive past the window with the trailer. I was not expecting them until late this afternoon and we had not even gotten around to arranging a storage unit yet!  Oops.

I called into work and took the afternoon off so that we could deal with the trailer.  Brian and I then went to the apartment management to see if there was any chance of being able to get a storage unit in our building.  They have them but they are both too small and none are currently available.  So that isn’t going to be an option.

Dominica hopped online and found that Public Storage had a location right down the street so we called down there and they were able to get us straight in for dirt cheap ($20 move in and $83 per month as opposed to $215 per month up in Peekskill!)  So we set that up and we drove straight down to start unloading the UHaul.

It took a couple of hours but we got it all done this afternoon.  The ten foot by ten foot storage unit filled up quite quickly.  Dominica stood at the back of the UHaul doing her best to sort through everything as it came out of the trailer.  This is important as she needs to take a large load of baby stuff down to League City in several days for Francesca because Clara is going to need things and she is due to join us in just twelve days.  So we can’t bury that stuff in the storage unit today or we will be in big trouble.

It felt great to get the storage unit packed.  That has been weighing on us for some time.  Now we are saving money and our stuff is closer to us.  We ran across the street to fuel up the Trailblazer and for me to grab ice cream.  This was my first time ever getting ice cream at Marble Slab Creamery.  It was very good but the portions are way larger than they should be.

Then it was back to the apartment where we had to unload the rest of the stuff – the stuff that we knew was going to go into the apartment rather than into storage.  This included a lot of boxes and bins.  It probably took another hour to get the UHaul completely unloaded.  We were exhausted by this point.

The last major task of the day is to dump the UHaul.  We looked up where it could be returned and raced across town to get there before the place was set to close at eight.  We made it just as they were locking the door.  So they let us just drop the trailer and leave it for them in the morning.  Brian was quite excited to have the UHaul removed from the Trailblazer.  He’s had to deal with that for about ten days now!

Brian and Tara decided that they were not going to stay in Las Colinas tonight and instead they got back into the truck and drove on down to Temple, Texas where they will be staying for almost a week.  That is another two or two and a half hours of driving for them today.  A very long day for them, definitely.  We will see them again this weekend when we go down to Round Rock.

Dominica, Liesl and I just took the evening off and watched Soap.  We were pretty tired.  We also started going through all of these boxes that need to be sorted out.  There is a lot of stuff to sort through.  That is going to be our big project for the next few months.  We need to find anything that we can do without and get rid of it while repacking, labeling, etc. what is left so that we are as prepared as possible for our next move.

They are on the road today with the UHaul.  They made it to Knoxville last night.  Today their journey is from Knoxville to Little Rock.  Brian said that the wind remains really bad and driving has been extremely difficult.

Dominica and I are really looking forward to having our stuff again.  It will be awfully nice to actually have possessions once again.  There is so much stuff that we wish that we had regular access to.  Even if our stuff is in a storage unit at least we will be able to get to it and dig out the stuff that we really want.

In theory today was to be a cleaning day but we got very little done.  We tried to do some house cleaning yesterday but got nowhere at all.  Brian and Tara will be arriving sometime tomorrow so we still have tomorrow morning to do some cleaning but not a lot of time and Liesl likes to make a mess of the house as you go along cleaning so it is really hard to get any real amount of work done in any practical way.

Spent the evening just hanging out with Dominica and Liesl.  This is our last evening “together” without lots of other stuff going on for quite some time.