Sheep Guarding Llama

Liesl really slept last night.  We went to bed around ten thirty and she pretty much slept all night long!  This was definitely the most sleeping that she has done yet.  Quite impressive.  We were definitely not expecting her to allow us to get this much sleep already.

I got up just after eight this morning and showered and got ready for the day.  Then I came down and visited with everyone, since they were already up, for a little while before heading down to the basement to get to work.

Dad, aunt Sharon and uncle Leo went out to Pastel’s in the Beach Shopping Center to get breakfast before hitting the road.  They woud have just eaten on the road but they wanted to be able to see Dominica and Liesl before they left.

Everyone took off around eleven this morning.  Now Dominica and I are alone with the baby.  Alone for real.  No one to pass her off to and no one arriving in a few hours for the “next shift.”  Just us and Liesl.  Now it gets scary 😉

I had a really busy day at the office.  It is a very busy time of year so it is not unexpected.  I did get a chance over my lunch break (which isn’t so much a break as I am constantly on my BlackBerry and checking in on requests) to play a little of Fable 2.  Dominica started playing it herself this morning but then decided that she wanted to play Fable 1 before getting into the sequel as it truly is a sequel continuing the story from the first installment (or so I am told, I am playing them out of order.)

Today is definitely a relaxing day for us.  Liesl slept well last night but we are still tired.  We spent the evening relaxing in the living room with Oreo and Liesl with a fire in the fireplace that burned most of the night (two artificial logs done sequentially.)

The fire didn’t go out until late so Dominica, Oreo and Liesl all went to bed and I stayed up waiting for the fire to die down enough so that I could close the glass doors and go to bed.  It took about an hour before it was safe to wrap things up.  I played a little Fable 2 while I was waiting.

I didn’t even get to sleep in until it was time for work this morning because I got paged out to keep working on the same problem that there was last night at eleven that was not wrapped up during the overnight shift.  So I only got about six hours of sleep at maximum if that.  Dominica and Liesl slept for a while longer.

I managed to get a bunch more Liesl pictures edited and uploaded to Flickr this morning.  Using the Nikon with the SB-600 SpeedLight really makes it easy to take pictures in the house.  What a blessing that I bought that SpeedLight more than a year ago.

Dad, aunt Sharon and uncle Leo went out to Pastel’s for breakfast late this morning around ten and brought back take out for Dominica and I.  My morning at work was extremely busy.  It was just one request after another coming in as quickly as we could handle them.  There are a lot of people out this week making it very difficult to keep up as we also have to figure out what to do with all of the requests which normally are handled by other people and no one is running triage.

After breakfast dad, aunt Sharon and uncle Leo set to work working on installing the “drip tray” under the washing machine which is located on the second floor of our house.  Why a washer was installed without a drip tray to protect the structure of the house I have no idea.

While installing the drip tray (which doesn’t fit as there is no room at all in that tiny space) they discovered that the dryer was installed completley unsafely and that it really wasn’t working.  The dryer vent was smashed so that almost no air could get into it and the lint trap was so full of lint that it held water!  It is a miracle that the thing didn’t blow up for the previous owners.  It appears that they installed it themselves instead of having an installer do it for them which would explain why it matches all of the faulty wiring, missing GFI and sloppy paint all over the place.

Hours were spent working on the washer and dryer.  We even considered running out and buying a new dryer because there were so many problems.  It was a pretty major project.  Eventually they figured something out though that will hold us for a while safely but with the dryer sticking into the hallway slightly.  Sometime after Christmas dad is planning on coming down again depending on the weather.  Maybe in January or February if we get some nice days.

Work remained pretty busy all day and I didn’t get a chance to leave the “office” until after seven making for an eleven hour straight day.  Pretty long.

There wasn’t much chance for an evening after getting done after seven.  We had had a really early dinner around five thirty that aunt Sharon and uncle Leo picked up from Beach Shopping Center.  So now that I was done with work we just hung out in the living room with Liesl and watched The Gameplan again.  Even though we have Hulu and Netflix and CBS all working via PlayOn on the PS3 there is no easy way to sort through all of the available material and the Netflix queue only includes stuff for Dominica to watch and no one felt much like watching many of her picks.

We headed off to bed around ten thirty.  Not too bad.

Dominica, Liesl and I really slept in this morning.  It was nine thirty or possibly later when I finally went downstairs to see how everyone was doing and Dominica didn’t come down until at least ten thirty.

The title of the latest James Bond film is Quantum of Solace. Solace, of course, means to comfort in sorry or consolation.  Quantum, people often assume, means something small but actually it means something is measurable.  So a quantum of something means that it is a measurable amount of something.  A gallon of milk is a quantum of milk.  A foot of string is a quantum of string.  So is a thousand miles of string.  So literally the movie title means “A measureable amount of consolation.”  The worst part of the title is the fact that consolation is inherently non-measurable.  Not only is the title silly and pathetic but it is completely oxymoronic!

Most people dismiss the title as being silly thinking that it means “a small amount of rest” but this isn’t the case.  Nothing about the term quantum infers that the consolation (which is not the same as rest) is small.  It could mean that there is a massive amount of consolation or comfort.  Using the word quantum is making a case that what is unique and special about this movie is that they will be demonstrating some sort of consolation which can be measured in some way.  What a bizarre and impossible though.  Hollywood really needs to start highering high school graduates to double check things before they spend big money making them into movies.  The inability for the entire movie industry to fail to display the education of a third grader continues to amaze me.

Overall it was a pretty quiet day here in Peekskill.  It is Sunday and we are all resting quite a bit.

Dominica and I spent some time just relaxing in the living room with Liesl while everyone else went out shopping for a while this afternoon.  I got a chance to really play some Fable 2 again.  Dominica is really enjoying just watching me play the game.  There is so much storyline and important events happening that it is a lot like watching a movie (much like Dragon Quest VIII.)  For those wondering how far through the game I am, I am just completed “The Crucible” but have been spending a lot of time on side quests, jobs (like Bounty Hunter) and on achievements.

After shopping everyone returned but not long after they went back out to New City Diner for dinner while Dominica and I stayed at home.  Then they brought dinner home for us.

This evening everyone watched a 1970s Sean Connery, Don Sutherland film about a Victorian era British train robbery.  Nothing gripping but it was cute and entertaining.

I got paged out at eleven this evening and worked for an hour before the overnight shift came on and took over from me.

Dominica and I stayed up rather late tonight watching Kate and Alley on Netflix because we were waiting for Liesl to wake up to take her bottle (she gets a bottle now at night so that she will sleep for a little while.)  That ended up keeping us up until after one in the morning.  I am back to work as usual tomorrow so I do need some sleep.

I was very tired when the alarm went off at a quarter till eight this morning.  I dragged myself up, got dressed and headed down to the basement to get to work.  Everyone but Dominica and Liesl were already up.  Dad and aunt Sharon were already in the living room hanging out even.

Liesl did pretty well last night.  We are starting to learn her rhythm and are mostly getting her to sleep longer and longer through the night.  It isn’t nearly as bad as everyone has prepped us for it to be.  We are definitely struggling to get sleep but, for the most part, Liesl sleeps during the night.

I ended up having quite a lot of work that needed my attention this morning.  I had been hoping that it would be a quick and light day but that was not the case.  I ended up working into the afternoon!

We all skipped breakfast this morning and then, by lunch time, realized that there was no food in the house and that we were in dire need of food supplies.  So, after an hour of planning, we finally got a grocery list together and sent some brave souls out to the Stop and Shop to pick up supplies for lunch.  The plan for dinner is to send me to Villarina to get amazing pasta – perhaps lobster ravioli.

We had a late lunch.  Then everyone went shopping at Villarina and Dunkin Donuts in Mohegan Lake while Dominica and Liesl stayed at home.  It was a relatively quick trip.

This evening we all watched Transformers on BluRay again.  Apparently we really need to get things set up around here so that there is more to watch.  It is sad that we own so many shows (around a thousand movies plus scores of television shows on DVD) plus have access to Hulu, Netflix and CBS and still there is nothing to be found to watch – mostly because nothing is hooked up currently.  We also desperately need to get the new, larger LCD for the living room because no one can see this screen at all.

Tonight was an early night for everyone.  We all need extra sleep.

As everyone can see, my SGL updates are getting shorter and less detailed.  There is little that I can do about that right now.  Between spending time with family away from the computer, losing sleep from Liesl at night and all of the business going on I just am not getting time to sit down and write.  I am trying hard just to get what I am up and posted every day.

I hate that I am falling behind now with Liesl having just arrived both because this is the section that she will be looking back on fondly someday as well as because so many of you have just started reading recently and are looking for Liesl updates.  The reality is, however, that she is sleeping pretty well and not yet at all active during the day.  So other than reporting that she is healthy and doing well there is only so much to say.  I am trying hard to get more pictures now and to keep posting them every few days.  Changes happen quickly at this age so lots of pictures are important.

I decided today that we are having problems taking pictures of Liesl in the new house because it is always so dark in here.  My good camera, my Nikon D50, only has the cheaper zoom lenses right now with the fastest aperture setting being an F4 ad F5.6 at some normal settings and that just doesn’t work for anything indoors.  So I bit the bullet and bought the amazing Nikkor 50mm fixed length F1.4 lens off of Amazon.  That should provide a lot more natural light opportunities.

I talked to dad over IM this morning.  He was leaving his house around nine thirty to head down to Leicester to meet up with aunt Sharon and uncle Leo and then to leave from their house to head on down to Peekskill.  They are hoping to do all of their driving during the middle of the day.

Dominica’s parents left Peekskill at ten this morning to head back to Frankfort.  This is our first time being alone with Liesl without anyone to help out.  It’s a little scary.  It is only for several hours until my family arrives but still.

I had a pretty busy morning “at the office”.  I was really surprised when dad and the Richardsons arrived at the house between two thirty and three in the afternoon!  We were figuring that they would arrive closer to four or five or possibly later.  I was expecting that they would be making a long lunch stop and making the drive rather relaxing.

Everyone was very excited to see baby Liesl.  Unlike Dominica’s family, for whom Liesl is the fourth grandchild (and the second this year), this is the first child of this generation for my family.  So my father is a grandfather for the first time and aunt Sharon is now a great-aunt.

The afternoon was spent with everyone in the living room just passing Liesl around.  I had to go back down and work for the rest of the evening.  I came up from time to time to see everyone but it is an extremely busy Friday night so I was stuck in the basement for most of the evening until quite late.  I have to work again tomorrow as well.  Tomorrow is going to be a long morning of work.  I start at eight as usual but have quite a bit of stuff to do.  It is impossible to really get to visit with anyone these days because I am always working.  I am so thankful that I had vacation most of this week.

For dinner no one wanted to drive anywhere and I couldn’t because of work so we decided to order in.  The Chinese restaurant in the Beach Shopping Center (Emperor’s Choice, maybe?) left a menu on our door earlier today so we decided to give them a try as that was rather fortuitous.  They have a very large Chinese and Japanese menu with a lot of good vegetarian options including udon noodles which are hard to find in delivery places I have found.

Everyone really enjoyed dinner from the Chinese delivery place. It was very fast (although not as fast as in Newark where they would deliver via bicycle.)  All of the food was really good.

After dinner Dominica pretty much went straight to bed.  That was at eight.  The rest of us stayed up with Liesl until nine when it was clear that she was hungry and looking for food.  So Liesl went upstairs with Dominica and I played Fable 2 for a little while while dad relaxed and watched the game, Leo napped and aunt Sharon worked on Christmas cards in the dining room.  Everyone went to bed around ten and I played Fable for another hour and a half or so with Oreo snuggled on our snuggly recliner.