Sheep Guarding Llama

It is Monday so it is back to the office.

This evening I spent quite a while reading with Liesl.  She has started doing a new thing where she brings me a book and now, instead of just handing me the book and waiting for me to pick her up or whatever, she snuggles with me on her own while I read.  So I was laying on the air mattress on the floor and she would get up and bring me book after book and hand them to me then turn around and plop herself down against my shoulder between my head and my arm.

We also read in the big closet for a while.  She found several “new” books that I have not read with her before and we read one after another.  We found one new word book that is just several pages of big pictures of objects with their names on them to help her learn to identify objects and words.  We started just looking at it and, like I do with one of her other books, I go around the page pointing and saying the name.  Tonight, for the first time, she started pointing directly at the items on the page.

Very quickly she figured out the pointing thing and that I would say the thing that she was pointing at.  So she started a new game of pointing from one object to another with great rapidity.  What was amazing was that she was pointing dead on each time.  We did this for several minutes and she had a lot of fun.  It is so cool watching her develop day by day.  She is growing up so quickly.

We watched some of the fourth season of the new Doctor Who tonight.  This season is really awesome.  It must be the best one yet although I think that “Blink” remains my favourite episode.  Strangely, it is also the episode that Dominica cannot watch because she finds it so scary.  This is weird since I hate horror movies and she is oddly drawn to them.

This morning we actually slept in pretty late.  We got up and ate croissants from La Madeleine’s and corn chowder in a bread bowl from the Corner Bakery for breakfast.

I have to work today so that ate up most of the day.

Short post, maybe I will come back and edit it later.

This morning I had some work to do so I got up and worked for a few hours.  Once work was done Dominica, Liesl and I walked over to La Madeleine’s for breakfast crepes.  We loved them so much last night that we decided to just get them again this morning.  It was delicious.  We picked up some pastries for tomorrow’s breakfast as well since we were there.

After breakfast it was back to the house so that I could work for a while.  Today was not the busiest work day and I have been wanting to check out to see if there is a local Borders so I looked up the address of one on Royal several miles towards Dallas so we hopped into the car and headed east.

The drive out to Borders probably took twenty minutes at least which was much longer than we were anticipating.  We got out there and discovered that it was relatively small.  I went in and found that it has the smallest technology book section that I have ever seen in a Borders.  Very disappointing.  It took all of two minutes to determine that the selection there was useless and that I would not need to return to this store anytime soon.  Borders fail, Amazon win.  So I just ordered the book that I was interested in, the “OpenSolaris Bible”, from Amazon.

I did a price comparison between Barnes & Noble and Amazon on this book – after tax price difference was $22 on a $49 book!  Even having Amazon deliver to my door with two day shipping was that much less expensive.  Total price was like $52 versus $30!  I need to stop shopping anywhere except for Amazon.  And it costs me no gas or time to get it from Amazon either.

On the way back home we decided to make a quick run to the Corner Bakery or whatever it is called and we picked up some corn chowder bread bowls, yum.  We took them back home and just split one between us as it was getting a little late and we had dinner plans for tonight.

At about six o’clock this evening it suddenly occurred to me that my midterm for my class at RIT is due tonight!  Oops.  Just thirty minutes before needing to go meet our friends for dinner.  Not good.  Dominica was in the shower when I thought of it and I was watching Liesl so I could not start on it right away.  The moment that she was out of the shower I gave her Liesl and wrote as fast as I could.  We called our friends and delayed fifteen minutes and, in forty five minutes, I was able to complete the six page paper that I needed to hand in before eleven this evening – which I would never make otherwise as we were not likely to get home before then.

We drove out and met our friends at the Blue Mesa Grill which is about half an hour away from home in Las Colinas.  We had a really nice time hanging out and the food was really good too.  It was really nice to get out and hang out with people in Dallas.  This is our first time doing anything in the Dallas area since we arrived that wasn’t either work related or just hanging out on our own except for one very brief trip to borrow furniture which was rather utilitarian in nature.

Friday.  Walked to work, busy day.  Same old, same old.  Still exhausted from the continuing lack of sleep from Liesl being awake all night.

Our new Friday lunch tradition at the office is going to Panera Bread for their Friday New England clam chowder in a bread bowl.  It is delicious and really cheap.  Even with me buying a large coffee it is only about $6.50 for my whole lunch.  Sure couldn’t do that in New York.  Dominica wanted the Mediterranean salmon salad so I picked up one and brought it home for her on the way back to the office.

I worked late but not terribly late tonight.  Dominica and Liesl spent the evening walking around Tuscan Villas exploring.  Dominica discovered that there is an elevator that she can use which makes life a lot more convenient when you have a stroller and are all by yourself.  They had a really good time exploring the gardens and finding the fountains that we have in our apartment complex.

After their evening of walking they walked over to the office to meet me out front and then we all walked home together.  We cut through the gardens so that they could show them to me and then we walked up to La Madeleine’s to get dinner.

Tonight we discovered the breakfast crepes filled with egg and topped with a mushroom cream sauce.  They were delicious.  We are definitely going to be getting these again.  After dinner we tried to go to Jamba Juice for drinks but they appeared to have closed early and we missed them.

Today is another gorgeous, sunny, seventy degree plus day in Las Colinas, Texas.  It is very hard to believe that it is January.  In addition to having slight jet lag caused by the constant switching between eastern and central time we are also experiencing season lag as it feels like late spring but is actually the middle of winter.

Last night we had our first tornado warnings since moving here although we did not even see any rain let alone a tornado.  Not too far away from us, though, they were getting golf ball sized hail.

It was a very nice walk into the office this morning.  Busy morning and then the guys went to Firehouse Subs for lunch.  While there John and I discovered that they have their own, in-house Datil pepper sauce!  I am very excited about that.  Datil sauces are very hard to get outside of Florida.  Of course, Firehouse Subs is from Jacksonville, Florida so the Datil is their local pepper coming from St. Augustine.

On the way back to the office I got dropped off at home to deliver Dominica her sub that I picked up for her.  That tends to work out pretty well since we live so close.  Then I walked Oreo and hung out with Liesl for a little bit and then walked back to the office.  So today is only a three leg walking day rather than a full four.  I appear to have dropped two inch notches on my belt since moving to Texas which is awesome.  I walk everyday and have almost no desire to eat dessert which is really weird for me.

The afternoon at work was quite busy, as every day has been.  I ended up working pretty late tonight and after everyone had gone Dominica drove over and picked me up and we went out for dinner at Mi Cocina on MacArthur which is quite close to us here.  I had eaten at Mi Cocina the other day with the guys from the office and the food was really good so I was looking to try it again and Dominica has not had much opportunity to get good TexMex yet since coming to Las Colinas.

Dinner was quite good.  We really like the Americanized Mexican food there (it is nearly impossible to get true Mexican anywhere in the US, even in Texas.)  We will definitely be coming back and making this a regular stop.  We continue to be amazed by the low cost of food, even pretty fancy food, here in Texas.

After dinner we went back home and attempted to get to bed early as we are pretty tired but Liesl continues to be miserable.  She is teething horribly as four molars are trying to come in and she is having a terrible time dealing with it.