Sheep Guarding Llama

This morning I thought that I was feeling a bit better and got up and walked into the office.  The morning went well and I did not get the impression that I was not doing okay.  I was clearly still sick and very congested but I felt better than yesterday and thought that I was on the slow road to recovery.  Wrong.

While I was at the office this morning Dominica went out shopping to Best Buy to take advantage of the pre-Super Bowl sales and picked up a 40″ 1080p LCD display for $450.  We just could not pass up that deal.  The television had gotten some pretty good reviews too.  No one was claiming that it was as good as a Samsung or anything like that but that it worked well and was amazingly good considering the price at which it was being sold.  The sale was only going to last until tomorrow so she ran right out to pick it up.

Dominica also hunted around and found a GameStop that had the new, slim 120GB PS3 in stock as a lot of places were out of stock on them and got that too so that we will be able to watch DVDs, BDs, Netflix and play some games again.  We have Dragon Age: Origins for the PS3 sitting on the shelf in the house taunting us and we both want to play it so this will work out well.  That game is supposed to be huge so we will easily be able to make due without any other games for the entire time that we live in Tuscan Villas without ever needing to play anything else.  It would be amazing if we got through that game in a year so we have a lot of buffer.

On her way back to the apartment Dominica picked me up from the office.  It was about twelve thirty so perfect timing for lunch.  We went out to On The Border as I was in the mood for a “traditional” fish taco.  On The Border had several new menu items that worked for us vegetarians which was very exciting.  I got the grilled mahi mahi fish tacos and Dominica got an avocado enchilada which was excellent.

After lunch we stopped back at the house so that I could help Dominica unload the car.  We had just walked back to the apartment from the car with Liesl and Oreo and had not moved anything yet when I went into the bathroom to blow my nose – which I have to do quite frequently since I have a sinus infection.

While blowing my nose I suddenly got the “fuzzy” feeling in my left ear just like I do when I get high blood pressure or if I am going to pass out.  Then, almost instantly, the world started spinning like crazy and I grabbed the sink and went to floor as fast as I could.  I had no way to keep my balance and thought that I was going to be sick but figured that I would black out before actually getting sick.

I put my head down on the floor and breathed heavily and was able to hold on to consciousness and after a minute was able to stumble into the bedroom and lay on the bed for a little bit.  Dominica was in the other bathroom and did not know what had happened.  I was laying on the bed with Liesl jumping on me when she came out and I explained what had happened.

So so much for feeling better.  Now I am feeling like total crap.  I did not end up passing out but now I have a migraine and my whole head just feels awful.  I had left my SafeWord at the office and I cannot work from home without it so I did not really have the option of just staying at home but I sure could not walk back to the office either.

Dominica drove me back to the office just long enough for me to go in and get my SafeWord and to let the guys at the office know that I was really sick and would be working from home for the rest of the day.  Then back to the house.

I worked a normal busy Friday evening.  Dominica cooked dinner and we just ate in.  After worked wrapped up I focused on writing my paper for RIT.  That took an hour or two.  This is the last of the three reflection papers that I have to do for class.  I am now seventy percent through the main body of the class (will be eighty percent tomorrow after I complete the homework for this week), have done the midterm and the three reflection papers.  All that is left is a few weeks of class discussions and the final project – which I hope to start working on this week and maybe even complete.

After my paper was done and submitted we sat down with our new television and Sony PS3 and popped in the final disc of the first season of Torchwood.  We have been waiting more than a month now, almost two in fact, to watch the last two episodes of the first season and it has been driving us crazy.  So now we finally know how the first season ends.  That show is awesome.  We are looking forward to getting the second season now.  We are also going to try the Sarah Jane Adventures which is the third portion of the new Doctor Who universe.  The other two shows are so good we really want to check it out as well.

By the time we were done with all of that it was a little late and quite time for bed.  I originally had quite a lot of work to do tomorrow morning but my boss did it for me tonight and I now I get to sleep in and relax a bit in the morning.  While I like getting the overtime I really do need some time to relax and sleeping in is very important.  Tomorrow should be a relaxing day now.  Dominica is looking forward to that as well.  We are visiting family in Arlington in the afternoon.

I am home sick today.  Just a sinus infection,  I think, but quite a bad one.  Liesl was really  that I was staying home today.  It has been a long time since I stayed home with her during the week and we really miss the time together.  I try to come home for lunch most days but often she is asleep when I do and we get nearly no time together and sometimes none at all.  So even though I am sick this makes for a very nice day.

We are very excited as our furniture is coming today.  We have been a full month now without any and it has been really hard.  Although, in reality, it is amazing how quickly this month has passed.  We have been living pretty Spartan up until now.

Today actually wasn’t too busy at the office.  Being home helps as I get many fewer questions when not physically sitting with people.  But it was a relatively quiet day as well.

We waiting all day for the furniture and it did not end up arriving until quite late – nearly five o’clock.  It is very exciting though, we got a “new” couch, chair and coffee table.  Definitely nothing fancy but very serviceable and once we sat on it we decided that we are pretty sure that we are going to want to keep these pieces once we try to get our own house after we are done renting the apartment.

I had a SpiceCorps call at five which overlapped with the furniture delivery.  A busy evening.  I had to cut the call short so that I could run out to go to SpiceCorps Dallas which is being held in Las Colinas, just minutes away.

I got to the Aloft, where the meeting was being held, at a quarter after six.  Not as early as I had hoped but not a bad time.  Given that I am sick and that it has been a very busy evening it was as good as could be hoped for, I think.

The meeting went really well this evening, I think.  We only had nine attendees which was about what I had expected.  We had only had nine confirmed people coming so really I think that we did really well.  It is the first meeting since August so all of the momentum from the first meeting has been lost and we are effectively starting over so it will take a while to pick up steam and convince people that this is really going to be happening.

We were really fortunate this evening to be sponsored by the nice people at Rackspace.  Rackspace paid for the venue, pizza for dinner, snacks, soda and even an open bar!  They also gave a presentation on what Rackspace is doing in the hosted apps arena which went over quite well, I thought.

It was a good evening and we are planning for another meeting the second week of May.  I’m not sure how late we stayed at the meeting tonight.  Not real late as far as I could tell.  Maybe nine o’clock.  Then I drove back home.

Dominica had set up her laptop on the coffee table so that she could watch DVDs from the couch.  Liesl had gone to bed just ten minutes before I got home so I did not get to see her this evening at all although I did see her all day.

We tried to go to bed early tonight, around ten, but we discovered that Oreo had had an accident on the bed!  He has been having a really tough time transitioning down here in Irving.  We aren’t sure if he is scared, confused or if he has some sort of infection or some combination but he has been having a record number of accidents and it is becoming a real problem.  We have no idea what to do.  We have figured out that we get almost no warning anymore and often he has an accident in the hallway while taking him out.  In fact, just the other day he barely made it to the stairs and peed all of the way down the third floor stairs in the apartment building and a yellow rain fell on people down below!  Luckily Dominica was able to shout a warning that time and everyone was able to take cover before actually getting hit but boy was it every close.

Oreo got much of our bed dressings this time and we don’t have anything on which to sleep so at eleven at night Dominica went down to do the laundry.  Not what we were hoping to do tonight.  I stayed up with her until around one in the morning but being sick and needing to get to work tomorrow I really needed to get some sleep.  It would be at least another hour before the laundry would be done for the night.  At least there is a laundry room on our floor just down the hall but not having a washer and dryer in the apartment is pretty crappy at moments like this.

Oreo and I went to bed at one – we didn’t have bed dressings so I had to just lay on one sheet and roll up in one cover to try to keep warm.  Without my puppy snuggles it would have been far too cold.  Dominica came to bed around two.  She did the same thing as we were too exhausted to get up and to make the bed in the middle of the night.  It will be a rather uncomfortable night, I suspect.

Tomorrow I am going back into the office.  Much to do.  I need to get my final reflection paper done for my class at RIT tomorrow so that will help to make it a rather busy day no matter what else is going on.  We are talking about getting a television now as well.  We really need something in our empty apartment.

Our big news is that I have gotten paid today!  What a relief that is.  This is my first paycheck, other than getting paid for a single day, since we left New York in late December. Obviously we have bills piling up and we have been becoming a bit concerned that there was never going to be any money and that things were going to get really bad quite soon.

Today is Wednesday and that means that it is dollar oatmeal day at Jamba Juice.  So before work I walked over there and picked up a large Coldbuster smoothie for myself and eight oatmeals to take into the office.  I swung back to the apartment and dropped off one oatmeal for Dominica and then walked to work.  It was a little late by the time that I finally got into the office but I did not want to get myself up too early today as I am still not feeling well from my sinus infection and I need sleep in order to get better.

I came home at lunch today.  I really was not feeling all that well.  I had another call at lunch today that ate up pretty much all of my time but it looks like we have managed to line up some sponsors for SpiceCorps events which is awesome.  Getting good sponsorship seems to be key in getting good attendance and interest going.

This afternoon while I was at work Dominica went out furniture shopping.  We are just getting used furniture rather then buying new or renting.  That makes it far cheaper as we really only need it for six months.  It was too late in the day by the time that Dominica got over to the used furniture warehouse so they were not able to deliver it today but they will be delivering tomorrow.  Only one more evening without furniture.  We can not wait until we have something on which to sit!

I was really feeling bad this afternoon and decided that I needed to leave work early today.  So at four I came home.  Not a real early end for the day but it was definitely better than staying rather late which is what usually happens.

For dinner tonight we ordered Thai from Blu Ginger and I walked over to get it.  We did our best to get to bed early tonight.  I am going to stay home from work tomorrow.  Maybe being home will help me to feel better.

Still feeling a bit under the weather today.  My sinus infection is not getting any better.  I did get some sleep last night, though.

Off to work today but nothing exciting to report.  I came home for lunch today but ended up being on the phone for my entire lunch time at the house and had to run right back to the office.

This evening I worked on getting SugarCRM installed on Rackspace’s Cloud Sites.  The installation was pretty smooth.  This was my first time hooking up a database driven application on Cloud Sites and it required me to modify some system settings to get it working properly but it went well and runs great now that it is installed.

I hope to get a chance to install several different applications on the Cloud now.  It is very unfortunate that only PHP, Perl, Python and ASP.NET apps are able to run on Cloud Sites at this point.  I would really like to see Ruby on Jails and Java available on it.  If a Java container was available then I could try out LifeRay or Glassfish Web Spaces on it.

Got up early this morning, which is surprising considering what a long weekend it was.  But given all of the stuff that was done over the weekend I felt that I should probably get up early and get on the phone and check in with people to make sure that everything was working okay.  Dominica slept in for a little bit but was up pretty early as well.

Dominica ended up having a rather busy day.  She was on the phone almost all day dealing with migration wrap up stuff.  It was a good day for her overall though.  It could have been bad but was really just busy.

At lunch I came home and helped her out with a few issues that she was having and hung out with Oreo and Liesl.  I am feeling a bit under the weather today – probably from the late nights this weekend.  I have a sinus infection or a cold or something similar.  It is very hard to tell.

After work this evening I came home and Dominica was going to make dinner but I reminded her just how long of a weekend it was and what a busy day she had today and she agreed that we should probably go out to dinner.  I was in the mood for pizza so we went to Boston’s.

We went to Boston’s and I got the 32oz Shiner Bock.  I am very glad that they have a 32oz size which is a more appropriate beer size than you normally get in the US.  In Germany beer comes in a liter which is 33.8oz so this is just a tiny bit smaller.  Close enough though.

Liesl had a great time at dinner.  The manager came over to check on us and Liesl decided that the manager needed to hold her!  We were about the only people at the restaurant so the manager took Liesl and walked around with her.  All of the staff was really doting on her.  They gave her a balloon too.  The manager’s mother and daughter were the only other people eating at the restaurant so Liesl went over and hung out with them.  Liesl thought that it was a really great time.

We ate way too much food and then headed home for the evening.  Our goal for tonight is to just get to bed and to catch up on some sleep.