June 17, 2009: Ramona Does a Final Visit

Getting out of bed was a little tough this morning, but I was still very happy that I had taken the time to play Oblivion for a while last night.  It will likely be quite a while before I get to play it again and sometimes you just have to have some nice, relaxing downtime or you just go crazy.

We did as much house cleaning as possible this morning before Ramona arrived.  She got up to our place about half past noon.  She had a long drive up from Pennsylvania.  This is her last time visiting us before she moves to China in a few weeks.  She is going to Shanghai for the summer and then moving far into the interior, near the Mongolian border, to teach English for the year.  She will have Internet access from there and a phone so we will hear from her regularly but it will be a year before she returns to the US.

As soon as Ramona arrived we packed up and headed out to Pastel’s for some lunch.  Liesl was a little unsure of whether or not she remembered Ramona as it has been quite a while since they have seen each other but they were best friends again in no time.

Lunch was nice and I was able to “work” via BlackBerry for a while so that we could hang out there and relax a little bit.

When we got back from lunch our new DVD collection of bikini beach movies, starring Frankie and Annette, had just arrived from Amazon.  We were all excited to watch them tonight after work.

I didn’t have to work too late tonight.  I was done around seven, I think.  Then we ordered in dinner from Forno’s and put in Beach Party, the first of the Frankie and Annette beach movies.  This one was from 1963.

It’s amazing how cheesy and ‘b’ movie movies from the sixties can be!  That was really something to watch.  It was funny in a total trainwreck sort of way.  A few beers are a definitely must-have when watching these movies.  It’s incredible to think that these were well known movies of the time.  Today they would definitely be direct to DVD movies that no one would even realize were released.

While watching the movie Dominica commented on how incredibly weird it is that that movie was made just fifteen years before she was born.  Watching it feels like looking into a distant, disconnected past.  But really it was only barely before we were born.  Only thirteen years before I was born.  The last movie that Frankie and Annette did together released when I was about twelve!

After that we watched Bikini Beach which was even worse than the original.  This one was from 1964.  They were turning these movies out at break-neck pace.  They did multiple movies in 1965.  They definitely did not take very long to film.  Talk about low budget.

Dominica went to bed around eleven thirty and Ramona  around midnight.  Dominica was still reading when I got to bed, though, at one thirty and I could hear Ramona was still on the phone in her room.  I had wanted to get some work completed before turning in.  Never enough time in the day.

Tomorrow Ramona is leaving us in the early afternoon, right after lunch, to drive up to Maine for the weekend to go camping in the never-ending rain.

June 16, 2009: Finally a Video Game Day

Liesl seems to be back to her old self today.  Her tooth is in and she likes to play with it with her tongue.  If you try to look at them she hides them.  She is very funny.

Today was quite busy again.  And the rain has returned after having just a single day off.

Dominica and I decided to go out and get some lunch today.  So we went out to Pastel’s and got omelets.  They were yummy.  Liesl sat in a high chair at the table beside me and clearly had a look about her like she felt that she was being a big girl and was very proud to be sitting at the table instead of sitting in her car seat.  She was very happy all through the meal and was very engaging with everyone who passed by.

After lunch we ran out to Yorktown Heights to hit Clemente Cleaners to drop off our dry cleaning and to talk to their tailor about my newest suit.  The sleeves on my suit are far too long.  The tailor thinks that she can have my suit fixed by Friday which is important because I need it for the wedding this weekend.  I am having the sleeves fixed, a button moved and buttons added to my suit pants so that I can use suspenders instead of a belt.  Nothing from Casual XL Male has suspenders buttons in it which is really frustrating that a shop dedicated to larger sized men doesn’t accommodate the most obvious things that they would need.

Back to work once the errands were done.  Oreo and I stayed home while Dominica and Liesl went back to head to the post office, Kohl’s and some other shopping.  She had a bit of shopping that she had wanted to do so that worked out well.

The new drives for the Proliant DL185 G5 arrived today and I had a chance to finally get that server built and tested out.  I had thought that those drives would not be arriving until the end of the week and that I might not have enough time to get the server put together before we had to leave for the weekend so this was a real blessing.

I had a lot of work to do today and ended up working solidly until eleven thirty at night.  Normally I like to be in bed by ten thirty but there was just far too much to do.  I have been really wanting to play a video game for days and have not had the chance at all.  So tonight I decided that I was just going to do it anyway.  So at eleven thirty I popped in Oblivion on the PS3 and started playing.

Dominica stayed up with me and read a book on her Amazon Kindle while I played Oblivion.  I had a really good time.  I really missed having this downtime.  I played for four hours!

When I started playing I found that my last saved game was from February 4th!!  Four and a half months since I have been able to play anything at all.  Crazy.

In my four hours I managed to complete one entire new quest that was triggered right as I started playing (Lifting the Vale) which was pretty fun and I also completed one quest that had begun just before I had last saved the game (Spies).  I also raised my character from level five to level seven.  It was very good progress for one night of gaming.  Too bad I won’t get a chance to play again for a really long time.

It was three thirty in the morning when we finally headed up to bed.  Ramona is coming down to visit us tomorrow sometime in the morning.  She is expecting to arrive around noon or so.

June 15, 2009: Liesl Settles Into Her Second Tooth

We were right as to why Liesl was so unhappy yesterday.  Today we could see her second tooth had come in.  She now has both of her front, bottom teeth.  She is growing up so fast.

Liesl still wanted a lot of attention today but was a lot more like herself than yesterday.  It was, more or less, a normal day.  Yesterday was just madness.  Liesl was so unhappy we just didn’t know what to do.

Today we could really see Liesl’s second tooth.  It was more than theory now but very obviously a second tooth was not there in her bottom gum.

It was a heavy work day today.  I had to catch up on a bit from yesterday.  Had been hoping that I would get to play a video game today.  I’ve been wanting to take some time to play a game for the last few days and really thought that I would get to do so today but it turned out not to be the case.  I worked until it was quite late and it was time to go to bed, more or less.

I watched some television with Dominica and Liesl.  Liesl wanted to hang out with me quite a bit and eventually fell asleep between my lets on the recliner while Oreo snuggled next to me.  Not great for productivity but awfully cuddly!  This is what being a dad is all about.  Everyone snuggled on the recliner.

The rain came pouring down tonight.  It caught us off guard and our bedroom got soaked.  The bed was all wet as was the floor.  I had to use the Bissell wet vac to clean everything up.

Dominica baked fresh banana bread this evening.  This time she remembered the sugar which she forgot last time.  Much better this way.

We watched The Gilmore Girls and then Hotel for Dogs and headed to bed shortly after Liesl fell asleep.  Luckily she slept pretty well today so much be getting better now.  Yesterday was really tough.

Hotel for Dogs was pretty cute.  Definitely a kid’s movie.  The little puppy Boston Terrier, Georgia, in it was adorable!  But the movie was sad too because it dealt with abandoned animals and animals being destroyed.  Very sad.  Lots of very cute doggies, though.

June 14, 2009: Liesl’s Second Tooth

Today was incredibly long.  I had to work today, obviously, but that was not a problem.  It was a very light day and it went quite well.  Liesl is teething, though, and that is a killer.  Her first tooth came in last Sunday (one week ago today) and today her second tooth is coming in, and she is quite unhappy.

Liesl decided that the only thing that would make her happy was having her daddy around.  So I was holding her almost the entire day.  She did not sleep well last night at all, presumably because of her tooth, so she was really exhausted today which just exascerbates the toothache.  Because she was in pain she was unable to nap as well so she just got worse and worse throughout the day.

I did manage to do just a tiny bit of reading and finished “Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science Using Python” from the Pragmatic Programmers.  A great book for someone looking to get into serious programming but who does not know where to start looking.  A little more advanced than a normal “learning to program” book but it does start from the beginning and takes you through a lot of concepts very quickly.  It is a condensed version of a collegiate introduction to computer science class.

I gave Oreo his bath today.  He has really been needing one.  The weather has been cold bit it is pretty warm today so I figured that this would be a good day.  He is so good about taking his baths.  He just stands in the shower and takes a shower like a person would.

Dominica tried to work on her college classes today.  She is doing Perl programming.  The idea was that today I would have a lot more time to be able to spend watching Liesl and answering questions than most days.  That did not end up being very true.  I was able to watch Liesl more than usual – it ended up being a real necessity.  I watched her almost all day.  Not just watched her but held her almost all day.  I could never be out of her sight.

Dominica did manage to get some of her class done.  We had hoped that she would have been able to have completely finished it today.  She was lucky to just just over one quarter of it finished.  It is really hard to do homework when there is a baby screaming inconsolably for most of the day.  Very distracting.

I tried to do a little Clojure programming today as well and that really was not going to be a possibility.

Normally Liesl falls asleep around seven to nine in the evening.  We were thinking that because she had not napped today and because she had had no sleep last night (or not much) that she would fall asleep early tonight.  Not so.

Liesl sat on my lap while we watched The Gilmore Girls for most of the evening.  Having the television on helped to calm her and snuggling with me meant that she was not upset and looking for me.  Eventually, around ten or a little later.  She fell asleep on my chest.  We dared not move her in case she would wake up so I sat there motionless until midnight when she felt that she was probably so asleep that moving her upstairs would not wake her up.  It did not and she was able to go really go to bed at midnight as were we – far later than we would normally go to bed.  We have done a really good job of moving our sleep schedule forward significantly in the last month or so.  At least I have.  Now that Dominica has her Kindle she will go to bed but stays up reading for most of the night.

I managed to order my replaced hard drives for the Proliant DL185 G5 today.  Two 1.5TB Seagate drives with which to start.  I am trying to hold off buying any additional drives until I can get them in 2TB sizes and, hopefully, in the new 5,900 RPM Low Power configuration from Seagate.

June 13, 2009: Super Ultra Mega Patching Day

Liesl was really restless last night.  Dominica and I did not get very much sleep.  Dominica was up with Liesl for much of the night.

I got up at eight and so did Liesl.  She came down to the basement office with me and helped me work for about an hour.  We love our early morning office time together.  She is so happy to just go downstairs with me and watch me work.

At nine Liesl fell back asleep upstairs in her pack and play and slept for another hour or an hour and a half.  She slept for so long and so well that when she and Dominica finally got up Dominica had no idea that Liesl had ever been up with me!

I am working really hard today to try to get caught back up with SGL.  I know that the posts have fallen very far behind this week.  It has been a busy week and there was not much that I could do.  For the most part, though, it was a rather uneventful week so you did not miss much.

Liesl continues to grow and change at an astonishing pace.  It is so neat being a new father.  Every morning there is a new expression, a new sound or something.  She is not yet crawling and I think that we have several days yet, at least, before she does.  She does try quite a bit and we are giving her a lot of time down on the floor trying to encourage her.  She is almost able to stand herself up so we are concerned that she will attempt to walk rather than crawl first which is not supposed to be good for development.

Dominica and Liesl went out to the grocery store first thing this morning.  We were getting pretty low on foodstuffs so it needed to be done and our schedule does not allow for a lot of flexibility.

My work for today ended up being orders of magnitude more involved than I had imagined.  I got started nice and early this morning but that didn’t help at all.  I should have started, apparently, at nine last night and worked all through the night on this.  I am doing Linux server patching and there are so many patches to apply to so many machines and so many problems with the update process that it ended up taking for forever.  My first patch alone ended up taking eight and a half hours!  And that was with ten to fifteen percent of the machines scheduled to be patched being skipped as the patch doesn’t work properly on them!

At three this afternoon Dominica and Liesl packed up and drove on down to New Jersey to go to a PartyLight party (I believe that that is the right name) that Dunia is throwing.  So Oreo and I are left home alone.  Today was really the best possible day for Dominica to have something like this going on since I am so busy anyway.  Now I do not have to feel bad about working all day.

I worked until pretty late.  Around eight in the evening.  I also did a lot around the house.  I cleaned all through the downstairs and I finally got around to scrubbing the floor in our bedroom which was stained when we originally bought the house.  Lots of good work that needed to be done.  Very productive day.

Dominica and Liesl got home and wanted to order in dinner.  So I ordered from Forno’s and we relaxed for the rest of the evening.