Sheep Guarding Llama

Oreo and I are still home today as my desktop has not yet been fixed at the office.  No complaints here.  The person who broke it did me a huge favour as the last few days have been insanely hot.  I am told by locals that Sunday was actually hotter than yesterday or today but that we missed it since we were in Ohio where it was warm but not crazy hot like this.  Dominica saw the car register 101° on her way home!

I just worked at home today.  Nothing exciting.  Very much a “normal” day.  Boy am I glad that I did not have to walk all the way across the island today.  Way too hot.  I would have felt awful by the time that I arrived at the office.  Oreo is still worn out from last week and this weekend too so he enjoyed his sleep.  He is on antihystamines because of his grass allergies.  He is so itchy.  It is very sad.

We had just a relaxing evening.  We are taking it easy this week trying to get back into the groove of being home.   Dominica decided that she wanted to go to Frankfort this weekend to see her parents as we haven’t been there in a while.  So we are leaving Friday night to go up there. I have to work Saturday morning or else we would have waiting to travel until them to get a little more time at home.

Hot. Hot, hot, hot. There is little else to say about today. Dominica checked the weather mid-day and Newark was registering 102°F (which is 39° Celsius!) And it was sunny too, so just stepping outside meant that you were melting.

Dominica took the day off from work because she knew that she would be so tired that she wouldn’t be able to go to work. I slept from five thirty until seven thirty and then logged in and got started. For some reason I was needed before eight so it was good that I was online early. Two hours of sleep isn’t very much but I’ll live. I got a lot of rest last week so I am feeling pretty good regardless.

Today wasn’t too busy at work – good thing.  It would have been awful otherwise.  My desktop at the office was broken (long story) while I was out last Thursday so I am not heading down to Wall Street until that issue gets resolved.  This is giving Oreo a nice break to stay at home with me and to relax.  He will be home several days this week at the very least.  Staying home with Oreo saves us $30 to $50 per day because we don’t have to pay for me to travel (which is almost nominal given the awesome PATH pricing), Oreo’s daycare, Dominica to drive Oreo to and from daycare or for me to eat in Manhattan.

Dominica came home which is much earlier than usual since she didn’t have to get Oreo.  On days when he is home she gets to leave about fifteen minutes later and gets home thirty to forty minutes earlier.  It is a much shorter day for her.

We spent the evening just relaxing and went to bed early.  I needed to catch up on some sleep.  Later in the week I will get caught up on SGL.

Dominica and I slept in quite late this morning.  It was eleven thirty by the time that we were ready to leave the hotel.  We tried to have breakfast with dad at Luna’s but it was far too hot and sunny to be able to leave Oreo in the car.  We drove around looking for someplace to eat but gave up.

We went over to my aunt Cheryl’s house early to see if they needed any help getting set up for the party.  Everything was already ready but we got some time to visit since we barely got a chance to see everyone last night.

We stayed at the graduation party until around eight in the evening.  It was really hot and sunny all day but pretty good weather for a graduation party.  We had intended to leave around five to get on the road back home but didn’t really want to cut our weekend so short.

The drive home went pretty well.  Much better than I would have expected considering it was a sixteen hours on the road weekend for me without Dominica driving a single bit of it.  During the trip we finished listening to Sue Grafton’s latest novel “T is for Trespass” which we have on CD.  “T” is the 20th novel of the Kinsey Millhone series.  Just six more books to go before the series is done.  We didn’t feel that this book was up to par with the rest of the series, though, it completely lacked any personal story on the main character and the plot was weak and the characters far less realistic than in previous books.  It was suddenly like Kinsey had become an idiot and had no idea what she was doing after having been smart in so many previous books.  It is sad that the ongoing story of Kinsey seems to have derailed.  For several novels in the middle of the series it seemed like Grafton was really going to delve into Kinsey and letting us get to know her but in this book she was flat and lifeless as if none of the nineteen previous books had ever occurred.

It was around five in the morning when we finally rolled in to Newark.  I wasn’t really tired and didn’t really need any caffeine while driving.  I had one energy drink about halfway through the trip just because we had stopped someone where to get fuel and to use the restroom so I picked it up.

I got up this morning with very little sleep and met dad and our cousin Bill and his wife Carol down in the lobby of the hotel to go out to Luna’s in Alliance for breakfast.  I knew that there wasn’t going to be very much time for me to see anyone today so I figured that getting up and getting very little sleep was the better option.

We had a nice breakfast and were back to the hotel around ten or ten thirty.  Dominica got up then and showered.  Then she and dad went to my grandparents’ house in East Canton for the day while I set up camp in the Comfort Inn to work all day.

I worked until just after six in the evening doing remote desktop migration support. I enjoy having a break from my normal work and doing something entirely different.  Even desktop migration support is fun and challenging and I am always learning new things.  The work itself was fine and there was plenty of time for me to just relax and read “Dreaming in Code” in between things but it ate the bulk of the day right away.

I hopped into the BMW, put the top down and ran from Alliance to East Canton over to my grandparents’ house where everyone was just about ready to sit down to dinner.  Min, Gwen, Monica and I sat at the “kids'” table and had Mahi Mahi that Gwen cooked on the grill and everyone else had hamburgers or something similar.  I didn’t get to visit for long because I was needed for more work.  So I was only there for about an hour and a half.  Maybe a smidgen more.

I worked from eight until one thirty in the morning.  What a long day.  I had been planning to just run back to the hotel, work for a little bit, then run back to East Canton for a fire in the firepit and euchre or something but dad and Dominica returned to Alliance around ten to call it a night.  So that was that.

Work today was busy.  It was a long day.  I worked twelve or thirteen hours as I did the early morning shift starting at six thirty in the morning and running until Dominica was home and we were ready to leave for Ohio around seven thirty in the evening.  It can be an exhausting life sometimes.

We hit the road as soon as I was clear from the office.  Nothing like starting a drive of more than seven hours after putting in a full day and a half of work!

The drive went well.  No complaints there.  We made good time even with Dominica’s more-frequent-than-normal stops and our eating dinner at a McDonald’s on the road.  I felt great, though, probably because of the four day vacation, and was able to drive all the way out to Alliance, Ohio without any caffeine and was wide awake when we arrived after three in the morning.

We got to the hotel, the Comfort Inn in Alliance, check in and got unpacked.  We were both wide awake so I read “Dreaming in Code” for a little while and walked Oreo while Min watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force on television.  It was around four in the morning when we finally fell asleep.