Sheep Guarding Llama

Today is our “recovery” day to do all of our re-establishing of the house.  Tomorrow is the end of the week and a long day for me as well as Liesl’s doctor’s appointment in the afternoon so today is our one day to really get things done around the house.

Very little to report today.  Quite the “normal” day.  House cleaning, putting stuff away, unpacking, work, etc.  Nothing to report.  See everyone tomorrow.

I worked this morning, as expected.  Yesterday I worked really late, until well after midnight, catching up on everything.  I was really far behind after being away for a week and I just needed to put in one really crazy day of doing nothing but playing catchup.  Today is much better.  I started the day on top of things which was a great change.

I thought that I was going to be working the early shift this week but that ended up not happening.  I only worked it yesterday and then ended up not needing to do that for the rest of the week.

I worked solid until lunch time so that I would be able to go out to lunch with everyone before the Grices leave to return back to Frankfort.  It was a little late for lunch when we were finally ready to leave the house to go get lunch.

We decided, as often seems to happen when someone is just about to leave after staying with us, to go to Grandma’s in Yorktown Heights for lunch.  Everyone had a really good lunch.  I am addicted to the bagel and lox platter there.  It is huge.  Tons of lox, big beefy tomatoes, capers, cream cheese, etc.  Rather a large meal which you do not really expect.  Then everyone had pie, of course, as well.

From the restaurant Francesca and the kids headed out on the Bear Mountain Parkway to head back north to Frankfort.  Unfortunately her GPS did not agree with the directions that we had given her and it took her through downtown and all of the construction there.  So her drive back did not start out well.  Then, once across the Hudson, the directions get increasingly confusing because of hard to see roads, missing road signs and roads that have moved since the GPS was last updated.

It ended up being an excessively long and stressful trip trying to get out of the Hudson Valley.  This part of the country is so old and is so encapsulated by its geographic diversity that roads are very confusing and hard to follow.  The Grices did eventually make it home safely.

I spent the rest of the day working.  Nothing too exciting to report.  We have tomorrow and Thursday to ourselves at home and then on Friday I actually have the day off and will have a chance to relax.  This weekend we are going to Waverly, New York to celebrate the fourth of July.

We are back home and this morning I am back to work as usual.  It is definitely nice to be sitting at my desk again with my own chair and my large monitors and the multiple displays.  Working from home is always the easiest place to work.

We have a full house this morning.  Nine people plus Oreo!  This is the most that we have ever slept here, I believe.

I was up and “off” to work right away.  Today was a busy day for everyone so there was no sleeping in and lounging about for the rest of the household either.  They got up and got ready to go and then went out for breakfast and then over to Harriman so that Joe and Brittany could pick up the new BMW 335i at noon.  They are picking up the car and then driving it straight back up to Frankfort because the car dealer is sending another driver along with them to help facilitate some of the paperwork.  It is amazing what these places will do to make a sale!

After the car was picked up, the girls (and Garrett) went to the outlet mall to do some shopping.  So they were gone pretty much all day.  It was a very exhausting day for them.

After they got back, Dominica and Francesca set to assembling baby gates around the house.  Garrett is walking, almost running, everywhere that he goes and Liesl is rapidly becoming mobile.  She is not quite mobile yet but she is definitely on her way quickly.  She is not crawling but does the tummy quiggle across the floor pulling herself forward with her hands.  She makes decent progress.

They had some logistical problems but eventually got the first baby gate up which is a lattice swing gate that separates the kitchen and entry way from the living room and dining room.

This evening they all went out and picked up ice cream from Cold Stone Creamery in Yorktown Heights and brought it back to eat at the house.  When they went out to get the ice cream they left me at home with Liesl, Garrett and Oreo all by myself!  A dangerous move indeed.

Oreo is very, very glad to be home.  He has been stressed and exhausted.  All he wants to do is to sleep.

Today I finally got a chance to get some of the photos off of the Nikon and Kodak cameras and to get some of them edited and uploaded to Flickr.  So you can see pictures of Liesl taken over the last few months now.  It has been really difficult to get pictures taken care of properly even since my desktop died a few months ago.  It wasn’t safe to have the pictures stored on my desktop as it was unreliable and I didn’t have all of the storage and software that I needed to do anything.  I am slowly getting things back together now.  The most important thing is that I am running Mozy Home Unlimited so that I am backing up all of my original images through them which makes me a lot more confident that I will not lose them.  Now I have local copies, copies on Flickr and on Mozy.

We are in Frankfort, New York again today.  Today we are here for Joe’s graduation party.  I had to get up this morning and get right to work as I am not working my entire shift like I normally do because of the graduation party this afternoon.

I worked until almost a quarter till one then we drove out to the Kitlas in Utica for the party.  We rode out with Francesca in her truck with all of us holding huge trays of miniature cheesecakes and cake balls (cake that has been mixed with frosting, rolled into balls and coated in chocolate or other glaze.)  We arrived at the restaurant just as dad pulled in after driving out from Pavilion.  So perfect timing for him.

It was a really good turn out for the party.  The party went from around one until four.  Just as the party was wrapping up Joe got called by our BMW dealer in Orange County and found out that he was going to be able to pick up the 2007 BMW 335i that he has been trying to get – the same one that we test drove the last time that they were down.  So our plans are changing and he needs to come down to Peekskill tonight so that he can pick up the car tomorrow.

Then it was back to the Tocco’s.  Dominica and I packed up and left very shortly after having left the party.  We have been away from our home for the past nine days and are definitely looking forward to being at home again.

Francesca and her kids as well as Joe and Brittany have been talking about coming down to visit in Peekskill for a little bit so everyone is driving down with us tonight.  Joe and Brittany road with Oreo and I in the X3 while Dominica road along with Francesca and family in Francesca’s Toyota.  That was there was someone in each vehicle that knew the way.

The drive back down to Peekskill went well.  Nothing really to write about.  Slight traffic around Albany but that was about it.  It was just a little after nine when we pulled into the parking lot.  It was definitely nice to see the house again.  I have found that when you own a house you miss it a lot more than you do if you are renting a place.  There is something magic about returning to a property that you actually own.  I always felt that way when we would go back to the house in Geneseo after we had been away for a while.  It was so neat to walk into your own house when you had gotten used to not having had it.

I was very pleased to discover that the long running h.264 compression job that I had left running while we were away ran almost flawlessly and that over a week of continuous compression had been completed.  That was a very useful use of the time that we were away.

We were all quite hungry and wanted to order in from Forno’s but they closed just as we got home so that was not an option.  So we phoned in an order to New City Diner and then Joe and I drove out there to pick up dinner.  They ended up giving us some free extra desserts while we were there – just small samples of some of their pies.

We got back to the house and discovered that every single meal was wrong – mostly just by a little bit.  My meal was completely wrong.  Brittany’s was almost completely wrong.  Joe’s was slightly wrong.  Most of us were missing all of our sides.  Dominica and Francesca both got ice cream-based meals in which the ice cream was forgotten.  It was a disaster.  Seven wrong meals.  Francesca called to complain and they just hung up on her after telling her that either we could drive down there and pick up some pickles or else tough.  They claimed that since they charged us only for the food that we received that they were under no obligation to do anything else – even though they charged us, in most cases, for food that we had not ordered – not simply less overall food.  They were really rotten about it.  Brittany then called and yelled at them for a bit.

Nothing will come of the mix up, of course, except that Dominica will never let me eat there again.  So much for one of our staples restaurants in town and our one all night place to eat.  This is going to be a real problem now.

The food issue really put a damper on the evening.  Very crappy introduction to Peekskill.

There is a lot to be done today so even though it is a Saturday I had to be up on the early side so that I could get right to work around eight.  I worked pretty steadily all morning trying to get as much done for the office as possible before I had to leave for the day.  It was a very busy morning.

Tony had to cancel for the SpiceCorps meeting today which, in a way, worked out well for me because it gave me an extra half an hour before as well as after the meeting.

I left dad’s at a little after eleven and drove up to Gates to the Tim Horton’s near to the Tinsletown Movie Theatre next to i490.  Three guys were there ahead of me and I was right on time.  They were easy to pick out as SpiceWorks-type IT guys 😉  There is no hiding us, I guess.

We had a really good meeting.  Ended up having eight people show up which is not bad at all for an IT SMB manager peer group in Rochester on a Saturday!  I was very happy with the turnout and the group that we had.  I am really looking forward to our next event which will be in Syracuse sometime probably around August.

The meeting lasted about two hours.  Very good discussions.  These meetings are definitely valuable as an SMB IT Manager and IT Professional resource to meet up with people having similar issues and concerns.  Really nice to connect with other people dealing with problems on the same scale.

The meeting wrapped up a little after two.  From there I grabbed another coffee and drove back to dad’s house.

I worked from around three to five at dad’s wrapping up some stuff that needed to be done.  Then the X3 was packed and Oreo and I got on to the road to go back to Frankfort.  Dad is coming out tomorrow too but just for the graduation party.  He will not be staying for too long.

On the drive I continued listening to “The Great Bridge” through which I am making really good progress. I am on the second half of the book now.

I did some light work this evening and that was about it.  I forgot my SafeWord card that lets me access work so I didn’t do anything for the office tonight but called dad to have him read me off my key prior to him leaving tomorrow since I need remote access so that I can do my Sunday shift.

This evening the family sat around watching Princess Protection Agency on the Disney Channel and then, after the movie, we watched several episodes of shows like Wizards of Waverly Place.  WoWP is actually really good which is rare for the Disney Channel after they’ve become famous for making stuff like Hannah Montana.

It was around one in the morning when everyone finally got off to bed.