Sheep Guarding Llama

I got paged out at five thirty this morning which is not what I was looking for on three hours of sleep.  I worked for an hour and then went back to bed.  I ended up “sleeping in late” a bit this morning but it worked out fine.  I was really exhausted after getting to bed so late and then getting called out in the middle of the night.

Tomorrow I am covering the early morning shift at work so I am starting at six thirty.  I will work until nine and then Dominica, Liesl, Oreo and I are jumping into the SUV and hitting the road for Frankfort.  Our goal is to get up there around lunchtime and then I will get back to work once we arrive.  It is going to be a really exhausting day.

I did some shopping on Audible and picked out several books to have ready for the trip.  Dominica and I are going to be doing a lot of driving this week and it will be nice to have some books to listen to on the road.  These days I have not been getting that much of a chance to listen to any good books so I am looking forward to it immensely.

I got some important bill paying done today.  Our “six month deferred” bills come due this month for the furniture that we bought for Liesl and for the basement so that is hitting us rather significantly.  Luckily we had planned for it so it is okay but ouch.

It was another long day of work.  But productivity continues and I cannot complain.  Getting things done is such a change from the way that things have been for the last few weeks that no amount of work is a problem as long as the workload is decreasing and things are being accomplished.

After work was over I came upstairs and we spent a bit of the evening watching back episodes of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse via Hulu.  We had to watch a few episodes tonight because if we fall behind the episodes drop off of Hulu and if that happens we will be stuck not being able to watch any until the BluRay of the series releases and who knows when that will be.  So even though we have tons to do tonight we decided to take some time and watch a few episodes to make sure that we are safe.

Tonight Liesl was very fussy and Dominica decided that it was time to let her try sleeping in her crib in the nursery.  She has never spent any amount of time in her own room before.  We have kept her stuff in there for a long time but she has always slept with us between our pillows on the bed with Oreo at her feet.  She is just going to sleep there for half of the night until we go to bed which will happen sometime in the wee hours of the morning, but it is still a momentous occasion for our little girl to be sleeping in her own room.

After we were done watching Dollhouse I headed down to the basement to wrap up another hour or two or work that I needed to complete before going to bed and Dominica went upstairs to work on packing for the trip tomorrow.  We are going to be out of town for a week so we have a lot of packing to do.  We drive to Frankfort tomorrow and are there for two nights.  Then we drive to dad’s house on Sunday and are there for two nights.  Then we drive back to Frankfort for one night.  Then on Wednesday night I have the professional advisory board meeting at Onondaga Community College which is in the late afternoon.  Once that meeting is over in Syracuse I will drive back to Frankfort, pick up the family and drive on down to Peekskill.  So we won’t be back home and back to normal until a week from today and at that point we will be really, really exhausted.  Then, if the calendar is correct, we will be in Philadelphia for the weekend after that.

We are thinking that on either Sunday or Monday nights we might make our annual trip to the Silver Lake Drive In in Perry, New York to go see Star Trek. The timing is perfect.  School is not out yet.  The drive in is open and the weather is fairly good, and it is the only movie of which I know that is coming out this year that I care about seeing at all.  So that will be really nice if it works out.  Going to the drive in in the X3 wil probably work well.  The crappy thing is that the Ralstons won’t be able to make it.  That has always been our thing – going to the Silver Lake Drive In.  We’ve met them there for years.  This would have been our last chance to do that.

Katie (@kweenkmatt) went and saw Star Trek tonight and said that it was awesome and that everyone should go see it.

Francesca (@francescagrice) has made the leap into the world of microblogging and is now on Twitter.

Dominica (@dominicamiller) has been doing a lot of work this week to start keeping up her own Twitter feed as well as Liesl’s (@liesllee) and to write in Liesl’s blog.

I finally got a chance to start heading for bed at ten till two in the morning.  Ouch.  This is going to be a very short night.  I am going to be very unhappy in the morning.  I am going to be desperate for coffee, that is for sure.

I got up early this morning and got to work a bit before I usually do.  Today is going to be a very busy day.

I worked all morning trying hard to get ahead so that I would have some flexibility this afternoon.  It was a hectic morning.  Not bad, just busy.

We did a quick lunch at the house while I kept working.  Then Dominica and Liesl ran to OfficeMax to pick up name tags and Sharpies for the SpiceCorp meeting tonight.

Once they got back from OfficeMax we ran out to take Liesl to her doctor’s appointment.  We ended up with a late 1:00pm appointment today which was far later than I had planned.  I hadn’t realized how late we were going to be today.

The doctor’s appointment went really well.  Her height and weight are right on target.  Her doctor says that she is doing well in the “baby Olympics.”  She was months ahead when she started turning over both directions before two months old.  Then when he learned that she also was sitting up on her own around four months he was extremely impressed and said that she is way ahead on her development track.  Dominica had told him that Liesl was sitting up for one minute at a time but later today she was sitting up for more than five minutes at a time.  So Liesl is even farther ahead than her doctor had thought.

After the appointment we ran home, dropped everyone off and then I headed straight out to get to Warren as quickly as possible.  I had been scheduled to be out at Warren for most of the day but nothing went as planned.  The traffic on the way out to Warren was really bad and it took forever to get there.  It was almost four when I arrived at the office.  Kind of a pointless exercise really.  A lot of people that I had gone to see were already gone for the day.

I worked at the office until six thirty and then drove up to Morristown to make the SpiceCorp meeting.  The drive went fine but upon arriving in Morristown I discovered that there was an ambulance convention or a parade or something and there was no way to get anywhere in town.  It took as long to get around Morristown as it took to get from Warren to Morristown.  What a pain.  I hate doing things in Morristown.  That is the worst planned town ever.

I got to Grasshopper off the Green at seven.  Got in and got set up.  We ended up having thirteen people show up for the very first New York regional SpiceCorp meet up.  It was a really good group.  We had been hoping to have had more people but it was still a very good number and a great group of people.

The venue was not exactly ideal.  It was loud and the staff apparently didn’t understand why we were there because they set us up for dinner rather than a meeting at the bar and gave us a bit of a hard time about not having enough people show up.  The waiter, at the end of the night, tried really hard to scam us into a 36% tip.  He used the automatic tip of 18% and then tried to secretly apply it to the bill twice.  Then he argued with three of us about how by using a credit card there was this “magic” additional 18% that showed up on the card that didn’t show up on our bill.  What a joke.  I can’t believe that he thought that he would get away with that.

The meeting went until around midnight then the last of us headed for home. I am very pleased with how the meeting went and am really looking forward to the group getting together again.  We all seemed to have a good time and it seemed to be productive.

The drive home was really crappy.  Heavy rain and sporatic fog on the drive home.  Took almost two hours.  Not a happy drive.

Dominica was still up when I got home a little before two.  We went straight to bed.

After getting the ball rolling on getting real work done again yesterday I was able to continue today.  It feels really good to be able to get stuff done.  I have been really stressing out recently just running around in circles without being able to get any work done which, obviously, causes me to just fall farther and farther behind even though I am working constantly.  Very frustrating.

Tomorrow I have the inaguaral meeting of SpiceCorp NY out in Morristown, New Jersey.  That will be a nice break being at the grind around the clock.

Today I was finally able to take a bit of time to spend with Liesl.  We have been getting limited time together for the past week and it was awesome to really get to hang out a lot today.  She is really growing up.  She is sitting up on her own all of the time now.  She has been doing this for a while, but now she is doing for longer and longer periods of time and is very visibly getting stronger and stronger.

Liesl and I were both very happy today because we got a chance to play and visit so much.  I see her every day, but today we got a great deal of quality time together and a bit of it during the day rather than in the late evening which is much better.

Lots of daddy / Liesl bonding today and a good deal of work was completed as well.  I am definitely starting to feel better.

My desktop is continuing to work and I am finally getting real work done again.  What a relief.  Today was my big work day.  I spent the day starting to get caught back up on everything that I have fallen behind on the last week or so.  SGL is a bit behind but at least I am starting to see a glimpse of sleep.  Nothing major today.  Just work.

Thanks to Francis for turning me on to JoshBlog’s Logic Gate Simulator.  Simple and tons of fun and it teaches about logic gates!  Can’t go wrong.  This is pretty much as good as those electronic kits that you get for kids but with less mess and free.  Every kid should play with this to learn about logic gates.  Adults really should as well.  Good stuff.

Today ended up being a really awesome day.  There wasn’t so much work as to keep me buried and for the first time in a long time I was actually able to make real progress and to really feel like I was being productive.  I got right to work building that Window Server 2003 machine that was such a problem yesterday.  I had a good plan for it today and was able to go pretty quickly with this fresh attempt.  The secret for this type of install is to have Server Pack 2 downloaded as an ISO file so that you can mount it up to the virtual machine and get it installed before ever even configuring Internet access.

I spent the whole day working but unlike a lot of days where I work and work and end up just spinning my wheels and getting exhausted I actually got a ton accomplished today.  That felt really good.

After work tonight I decided that I really needed to take some time and get some exercise.  It was too cold for Liesl to go out for a walk because it was raining.  So I just went on my own.  I walked downtown looking for coffee.  Of course, being in the New York Metro area, there was no coffee to be found.  The New York area is the sleepiest area I have ever known.  Everything closes so early around here.  I’ve never seen anything like it.  I am so not used to how laid-back life is down here.  It is very frustrating as an Upstater to come down here and have to deal with how slowly everything moves.

There was a lot of activity going on downtown so I walked around and found the Cinco de Mayo celebration underway.  They had the downtown streets blocked off and live music and stuff.  Had we been down there early in the day there had been a lot of food.  But, of course, it was all gone by the time that I was even ready for afternoon coffee let alone dinner.

Since I was already out and walkingI walked all the way across town, went up North Division Street to Highland to Constant Ave.  then crossed over and came back via North Division and took Cortlandt over to Broad and came back home that way.  About three and a half miles in total according to Google Maps.

It was a good walk and the hills definitely make it a challenge.  I listend to IT Conversations while I walked.  It is one of the few times when I get a chance to catch up on my listening and I really appreciate it.

After my walk we actually got some time to just relax as a family.  I am so glad that I was able to complete that server build today.  I did not need that hanging over my head for another day.