Sheep Guarding Llama

We are home, just us, for a few days.  Now for a little, tiny bit of a normal schedule for a few days.  I am back in the office today.  No news worth reporting.  Brian and Tara will be coming up tomorrow to stay with us for a while.

Had to get up nice and early this morning so that we could get right on the road down to San Antonio.  Jen stayed with us in Round Rock last night to make things easier for this morning.  We had originally all planned to meet up at Round Rock Donuts this morning but then we decided that we all wanted the additional sleep and decided to skip that.

We were doing pretty well on time this morning, which is not normal for us at all, and Brian, Jen and I were able to leave Round Rock fifteen minutes ahead of schedule!  That is, more or less, a miracle.  We took Jen’s Mazda PR5 (Dominica’s car) and left Tara with the Trailblazer and Dominica with the X3 so they were happy being left behind as they remained mobile.

The drive from Round Rock to San Antonio went much faster than I had anticipated.  I cannot believe how easy it is to get from Austin to San Antonio.  I am so used to the massive distances between things in Texas that the very quick trip between these two cities seemed impossibly short.

We spent several hours at Rackspace getting our tour.  We had several meetings throughout the day and got to see a lot of the facility there.  It was very cool.  The facility that they have there is one million square feet and is a world renowned office facility that was quite interesting to experience first hand.  It is unbelievable how big they are now.

We wrapped up at Rackspace around two in the afternoon.  We drive straight up to Austin and dropped in on SpiceWorks.  We got there around three thirty and stayed till six thirty.  Jen and I have been there previously but this was Brian’s first time meeting all kinds of people.  We had not meant to stay there that late but a lot of people that we wanted to talk to got caught in a meeting that was supposed to till five but went till almost six.  So our plans got messed up a bit.

From there it was up to Round Rock to meet Dominica.  From there Jen drove back to Houston and we drove Brian up to Temple to drop him at his hotel there.  From there Dominica and I drove up to Fort Worth to pick up Oreo from Maggie.  It was almost ten thirty when we finally got up to Fort Worth.

Oreo had a great time this weekend.  He got tons of attention and had all kinds of fun playing with the other dogs and having a backyard in which to play.  He even slept in the bed with Maggie and her husband.  It’s like a vacation for Oreo.  He was very happy to see his parents though.

Today we are serious Austin tourists.  I have never gotten to do anything even remotely touristy in Austin before so this will be a lot of fun for me.  Dominica has also never done anything like this in Austin since she has never been here before yesterday.  Andy and Miranda have actually done more of the tourist-type stuff here that we have since this is their third day of doing that stuff.

We all got breakfast on our own and then met at our hotel, the Comfort Suites in Round Rock, so that we could carpool downtown.  On our way out of the hotel we swung into McDonald’s across the street to get iced coffee.  Dominica has gotten addicted to their iced coffee recently.

Our first stop for the day is the Texas State History Museum right in the heart of Austin.  It is a rather new museum and a very popular stop for people wanted to learn about Texas.  We got there about fifteen minutes before the museum opened so we just hung out downtown for a little bit.  It is a really nice day in Austin.  Perfect weather for Andy and Miranda to be down visiting.

We put a few hours into the Texas State History Museum.  It was fun but it did not take very long for Liesl to get bored.  There was a lot of great history to learn and I feel like I learned more from that museum than most students likely learn going through school about Texas history.  I was very happy that the museum did not appear to do anything to cover up the fact that so much of Texas’ history and existence was centered around the slave trade.  So often that is glossed over but they covered it very well here.

Part of the time Liesl was in her stroller but she tired of that quickly so we let her run around a bit.  For a long while I was stuck in a single exhibit with her just running back and forth in one room.  It was all that she wanted to do.  It kept her happy but everyone just left us there so I was stuck with her just hanging out there with nothing at all for me to do and if I tried to take her out of the room she would get all upset.

We had to cut the museum short a bit because Liesl was getting museumed out.  Originally we had thought that Dominica, Liesl and I would go to the Children’s Museum while Andy and Miranda hit an art museum but by the time that we were done at the Texas State History Museum we were pretty confident that Liesl would not put up with another museum and the Wests were not exactly feeling like going to another either.

So we walked out west using Miranda’s GPS that was in her purse and got some pub grub at a little English hole in the wall pub down there.  We had some time to kill before going on the afternoon Duck Tour of the city.

After the pub we walked up to the state capital building which I had not seen before.  Andy and Miranda toured it yesterday so they gave us the quick run down on the facility.

We went to the tourist office thinking that that was where we had to catch the Duck Tour.   When we went in we discovered to our horror that this was the “capital” tourist office and not the “Austin” tourist office.  As in, this is the place to get information about the capital building not the “capital of Texas” which is, of course, Austin!  Oh no.

We had walked to the capital building and we were a very long way from our car.  We were also a rather good hike away from sixth street where the Austin tourist office was located as it was explained to us by the capital tourist office.  The capital tourist folks were kind enough to call down for us and let them know that we were definitely coming and on our way and would be there as quickly as we could since we totally missed the window to be there in order to get a seat reserved!

So we fast walked as quickly as we could many blocks down to sixth, bought tickets and got ourselves prepped to take the Duck Tour.  We were pretty tired and hot by the time that we got onto the tour Duck vehicle.  It is a good thing that it is not a very warm day or that would have been really bad.  Liesl thought that the quick tour of Austin from her stroller was pretty cool, though.

The Duck Tour was a lot of fun.  We need to remember to do that more often in more places.  Dominica and I last did it in Halifax on our honeymoon and really enjoyed it.  They have them in Albany, Montreal and many other places that would be fun to do.  The tour took us into Lake Austin formed by the Tom Miller Dam which we found very entertaining.  One of the passengers on the tour was a girl who was celebrating her twelfth birthday.  So while navigating the “lake” the tour guide attempted to let her drive the boat which mostly resulted in us going in unending circles and Dominica getting a bit seasick.  The tour was a lot of fun altogether and we got to see a lot of stuff that we otherwise would never have seen.

From the tour we had to walk a very, very long way back to the car.  We ended up doing many times the walking that we had intended to do today.  It was great exercise and we had a good time seeing the city.

Our evening schedule was getting pretty tight so it was a quick race back to the car then to drive up to Round Rock to the hotel for a quick refresh and then to La Margarita to meet up with everyone for our big dinner that we had been planning for some time.  We had a really good turn out with Brian and Tara; Andy and Miranda; Dominica, Liesl and I; Jarrad and Jen.

After dinner it was back to the hotel so that I could get back to work writing my papers for class.  These papers are really overwhelming.  I am exhausted from dealing with them.

Tomorrow morning Andy and Miranda are flying back to Rochester.  Brian, Jen and I are driving down to San Antonio to get a tour of the famous Rackspace world headquarters “The Castle” that is located down there.  Then tomorrow night we return to Las Colinas.

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.