Sheep Guarding Llama

I was tempted to just call in to work today but decided that I really did need to work and that Final Fantasy XIII would have to wait until I got home this evening.  I know a lot of guys at work who took a day or two off when Grand Theft Auto IV released.  Surely FFXIII warrants a day at home with Mt. Dew and chips!

The weather is great again today.  It has been great all week.  Every since we returned from Las Vegas.  We are loving it.  We’ve actually had to have the air conditioning on for the past few days which is crazy in mid-March!

I walked home again today for lunch.  Definitely getting my exercise this week.  No time to play my game at lunch though.  Actually I took a short lunch and headed back to the office.

After work I walked home and got about three hours to play Final Fantasy XIII this evening.  This is the most that I have gotten to play a video game in a very long time.  I talked to Jen and she is many hours ahead of me at this point, though.

Liesl is making some massive strides in her development this week.  She has learned several new words like apple, ball and keys.  She is able to say all of them so that we understand her and her general communication skills are really improving.  She really knows what we are saying most of the time.

Liesl really seems much older this week.  On Sunday night, I think it was, we sat around watching some videos that my parents took of me around Liesl’s age and it is amazing how much more advanced she is than I was.  At her age I really seemed like a baby but she really does not.  She seems like a small child.  She is so active and engaged and self entertaining.

Today is the big day – the North American release of Final Fantasy XIII for the Playstation 3.  According to Amazon, I should expect the game to arrive this afternoon.  Pretty cool.

The weather was nice again this morning and I walked to work.  It appears that now that we are in March the “wintry” weather here in Texas has subsided and we are solidly on to spring.  No remotely cold days now for some time.  This is much more of what we had been expecting to see here.

It was a very busy morning and I did not get to go to lunch until rather late.  I walked home again.  This is working out that my normal lunch crew is taking a class at the office and cannot make it to lunch with me because I need the exercise of walking home for lunch as well as the cost savings of eating at home.  Although we did some calculations and the savings at lunch time are nominal compared to going out to eat in Texas but at dinner it does save a bit.

When I got home at lunch Final Fantasy XIII had just arrived!  I was excited and had hoped to have had a chance to play it during lunch but Liesl woke up just after I arrived and there was no way that she was going to let me play a video game and eat lunch rather than play with her.

So I walked back to the office and worked all afternoon.  While I was working this afternoon Jen from Houston ran to Game Stop and grabbed herself a copy of FFXIII and ran home to start playing it before I could get home and play it.  The race is on.  I didn’t get to leave work until a little late this evening so Jen was way ahead of me in the game.

I got home around seven o’clock.  Dominica made dinner while I fired up the PS3 and got started with the latest title in the Final Fantasy series.  The first impression is really something.  This is the first 1080p PS3 title that I have seen and Square clearly knows how to tweak the platform.  Stunning doesn’t even cover it.  This game is insanely gorgeous.  I played for about two hours tonight and the whole time I was just completely amazed by how great it looked.

There is no question that FFXIII is much like its FF7 predecessor in that it is built mostly out of movie-like cut scenes and the gameplay is completely linear so you end up basically walking through a really, really long movie.  I am really looking forward to being able to get into this game and see how it goes.  I haven’t played a Final Fantasy when it was new since FF7 back when I had a first generation Playstation and lived in Greenleaf Meadows with Josh.

Very little to report on today.  We are back in Irving as of last night and today is Monday so I am back to the office today.

Today the weather was nice and without any warning we went from bright sun to torrential rain and pretty serious hail.  I was at my desk and didn’t notice a thing as I do not have a window looking outside unless I stand up.  Dominica called me to ask if I had seen the weather.  It had caught her by surprise.  This is her first time seeing a midwest thunderstorm sneak up on her.

I had noticed the storm coming from the southwest when I walked to work this morning so I was too surprised although the ferocity of the storm was more than I would have guessed.  I normally walk over to the office and spend a few minutes just standing out front cooling down as it is a vigorous uphill walk the last half of the distance and I tend to get pretty warm.  So I just stand in the breeze cooling off and sipping my coffee which gives me a chance to get a feel for the weather of the day.

I walked home for lunch today.  The storm had passed and it was bright and sunny again although I had to take the extra long way around the driveway rather than through the lawn since it was completely underwater.

After work I just came home and we just relaxed.  Dominica cooked dinner and we watched Torchwood: Children of Earth the miniseries that had arrived on BluRay from Netflix.  We’ve been looking forward to this for a while.  We had four episodes to watch (out of five, we had seen episode one previously) so that ate up the entire evening.  We are now completely caught up with Torchwood with the Brits.  We are all awaiting a new season now.

Tomorrow is the big day… release day for Final Fantasy XIII.  It has been a long time since I got a video game on release day.  Dominica bought me FFXIII for my birthday and Amazon is set to have it delivered tomorrow afternoon.  So I get to start playing on release day.  I am pretty excited.  This is the biggest PS3 release yet and we are years into the platform.

It is Sunday.  Boy is my schedule screwed up this week.  It really, really feels like it should be a normal work day today.

We got up this morning to some very warm Houston weather.  Dominica, Francesca, the kids and I all drove out to Kelly’s for breakfast.  I have eaten their food before but this was my first time actually getting to go to the restaurant.  It was really good although they were really busy and didn’t have enough booster seats or high chairs for the little ones.  So Liesl had her first restaurant meal sitting in a normal chair like a big girl.

I worked from the Grices’ today.  It was a decently slow day at the office.  We hung out in Houston until mid-afternoon and then packed up and hit the road to drive back up to Irving.

Not much to report.  Got back home and then it was off to bed.  Tomorrow back to work and the real world.

It was a rough morning this morning.  I slept in as long as I could.  Dominica and Liesl were up and watching television before I got up.

I eventually pulled myself out of bed and got to work.  Someone did a bit of my work last night for me, which was awesome, so I had a bit of free time this morning.

We discovered, though, that the soy milk that we had bought just two days ago was bad.  So we needed more.  I packed up and headed out for the insanely long walk across the street.  Even just going right across the street I think that it takes upwards of twenty minutes to get there walking through City Center.

I hit Walgreens and got just enough soy milk to get us through back to Texas.  Then I walked next door to the McDonald’s on the strip and picked up a surprise breakfast for Dominica and I.  It is a funny thing, eating at McDonald’s on the Vegas strip.

I walked back to the hotel and we ate breakfast.  Then it was just packing to be done and getting out of the hotel.  Our shuttle was scheduled to get to us at noon which was our checkout time.  That was very convenient.  At the same time Andy and Miranda were scheduled to take a helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon.  Hopefully they were able to get up and get out to that.  It would be horrible if they missed their chance to take that tour.

We got to the airport without major incident.  We had plenty of time before our flight so Dominica sat with Liesl while I scrounged around for food.  I ended up getting us veggie burgers from Ruby’s Diner which was not too far from our terminal gate.  The food was actually extremely good.  I wish that we had more time to actually eat there properly.

The flight from Las Vegas to Houston went much, much better than the flight did in the other direction.  This time we checked Liesl’s massive car seat so that we did not have to deal with it on the flight.  That made the whole experience that much happier simply by not requiring us to lug that awful thing all through the airport.  It is just too much to have that much luggage wherever you go.

On this flight Liesl was far happier than she was on the other flight.  She got to sit in the seat like a big girl which she likes and she had room to move around.  It also gave Dominica and I tons more room as well.  Liesl was happy and slept most of the way.  Dominica watched some movie that was on and I just relaxed.  The flight was about three and a half hours which seems very long but if you look at a map, Houston to Las Vegas is a very, very long distance.  The American West really is a massive, massive place.  It is misleading if you don’t travel across it regularly.

We got into the airport in Houston at eight.  Brian was waiting for us as we got off of the plane.  We just got the car seat from the baggage claim and he was right outside with our car.

We drove over to the hotel where Jen was waiting.  This was the first time that Dominica and Liesl got to meet Jen.  From there we all went over to Waffle House just down the street for some dinner.  There had been no food for us vegetarians on the plane other than some carrots.

After dinner we dropped Brian and Jen off at the hotel where they were working and then drove on down to League City on the other side of Houston arriving there around ten thirty or so.  We were exhausted and just went straight to bed.  I did hear from Andy this evening and they did make it to their helicopter tour.