Sheep Guarding Llama

Even on the weekends it is nearly impossible to get a full night’s sleep. My alarm went off and before eight in the morning I was logged in and waiting for my colleagues from Bahrain to come online and to get started with the work that we have this morning. I went to bed just after midnight last night. So it wasn’t exactly a short night’s sleep but it wasn’t a long one either. Rather than a catching-up night it was more of a holding-my-ground night.

I am extremely thankful that the apartment is so clean and that we have managed to do so much with the living room and office. The addition of all of the plants really has helped and the clean desks really make a difference when I stumble out here early in the morning.

Dominica and Oreo got up just after ten. There is no sunlight today so Oreo was not clamoring to move into the living room early. But he, and the plants, got a lot of sunlight this week so he (they) can’t really complain.

We got lunch from Airlie Cafe. We didn’t realize before that we can get food delivered from there. So we had them bring it over for us. That was a nice change. I was busy working and Dominica hates going out alone to get take out.

I ended up working about six hours today – until two in the afternoon. This is par for the course these days. My Saturdays are always really long but I can’t figure out why so much assistance is needed. But the timing is pretty good. Starting at eight means that I do a bit of the work while Dominica is still asleep so it doesn’t really cut into our time together too much on the weekend.

I took a break after wrapping up for the office and we played a few games of The Settlers of Catan. Dominica kicked my butt in almost every game.

Dominica and Oreo spent the afternoon napping while I did some work. At seven thirty we headed out to Manhattan to meet up with Kit and Jay. Jay is playing drums for Abby Mott who is performing at the Knitting Factory at 74 Leonard tonight.

We took the path over to the WTC and from there followed the directions to take the E train to Canal even though I felt like walking was better. It turns out that Canal is even farther from The Knitting Factory than the WTC is. So that was a bit of a waste. It ended up taking half an hour longer or maybe more. It was almost nine when we finally arrived at The Knitting Factory.

We actually made it there at the perfect time. Just in time to hear one band coming off that we weren’t interested in and got to listen to the Country Devils who were very good. We bought their CD. Kit bought their CD as well. The Country Devils are from Baltimore – same as Abby Mott.

Abby Mott was very good too. It was neat getting to go out and see live music in Manhattan. We never take advantage of being so close to the city and it is definitely nice to do it for a change.

We got home around midnight and Oreo was very glad to see us but did not have any accidents even with us being gone for so long and so late at night. We walked him and then were off to bed.

I slept until the very last possible second today. I was still completely exhausted when morning rolled around. Oreo has been really tired this week too. So I am staying home today because I am so tired. This actually worked out really well as I was needed solid all morning and I could not have possibly gone into the office anyway.

I thought that today was going to be dreary but the sun came out this morning and it was pretty nice. Another good day for our plants which are now taking over the apartment. Today I have at least one plant in every window of the entire apartment plus two in the one window and the ivy on the counter. Maybe tonight we will manage to hang the ivy on the wall with the new wall hooks that Dominica picked up for it. Over the weekend I plan to get my “Fragrant Herbs Grow Kit” kicked off in the hopes of soon having a windowsill of herbs by my desk.

Oreo didn’t feel very well this morning. He slept in and got sick several times. He is acting alright, though, and running around and playing like he normally would so we are guessing that he just had a little bit of an upset stomach. He ate a bit of marrowfat peas last night and we think that that might have been rough on his sensitive tummy.

Last night we did some research on our rose bush and figured out that it has a mildew infection from when it got dried out really badly last week. So we did some research on remedies and think that we have a fix so we have that a try last night. We are hoping that it will pull through. It has had a rough time of it already.

Today is Newark’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade. It comes right down Mulberry Street and is quite visible and audible from the apartment. I had no idea that that would be today. So I took the little Kodak V1253 and took some quick videos from the living room window until my memory card filled up – which didn’t take very long. The video portion turned out not too bad but the audio was garbage and I can’t use it at all. So the videos are silent. Oh well. Any sound that would have been on it would have been overwhelmed by the whine of the cooling tower from Catholic Health Services next door anyway. These are my first real 720p videos and I hope to have them posted soon.

It was a busy work day. I worked all day starting from six thirty and didn’t really wrap up until seven thirty and then did a tiny bit of work after that.

Dominica made some palak paneer for dinner and baked some brownies. We played two games of Settlers of Catan (she kicked my butt both times) and then we walked Oreo. Then at ten she and Oreo went to bed and she played MySims from bed while I stayed up until midnight doing my first assignment for my object modeling class at RIT.

I have been scheduled to work tomorrow. So my first project starts at eight in the morning and my second one starts at nine. I shouldn’t have to work too late but I do have to get up early which I was hoping was not going to happen this weekend.

Tomorrow evening Dominica and I are going into Manhattan to meet Kit and Jay at The Knitting Factory. They are coming up from Annapolis, Maryland tomorrow. Jay is playing drums in one of the bands playing at The Knitting Factory. So we are going to hang out with Kit while he performs.

I was incredibly exhausted today and could only barely pull myself out of bed when the alarm went off this morning.  Having my sleep interrupted last night after having been tired already was a bit much and I never really got any sleep after that.

Dominica dropped me at the Broad Street train station on her way to work.  This is our new system for days when I am working in Warren.  It works pretty well.  I missed the first train but they come about every ten minutes and I had a book so it was fine.

I took the train to Summit and from there the company shuttle to Warren.  It was just barely before eight when I arrived at the office.  I was so tired that I was having a difficult time staying away on the train.  I have been working so many hours all week and it has really been taking a toll on me.

I was exhausted all day and had just tons and tons of coffee to keep me moving.  It was all that I could do to keep from nodding off at my desk.  I did my best to walk around and spend time seeing people that I hadn’t seen in forever as at least the motion and activity kept me somewhat useful.

I stayed at Warren until the five thirty shuttle home which was later than I had intended to stay but there was work for me to do and some of it came in late in the day and couldn’t be helped.

I got home and Dominica warmed up dinner – she had picked up some ready made food from the grocery store yesterday and we ate while watching some of A Different World.  But there was more work to be done so I only got to watch a little bit before doing homework and logging into the office to take care of a few remaining things from earlier.

I went to bed just before ten.  I will most likely be working from home tomorrow as I am so tired and don’t have enough time to catch up on my sleep and am working the early shift tomorrow.

It is a hazy but beautiful morning this morning. I was on the early morning support shift so I started working at six thirty but I am home today so that isn’t bad at all. I often prefer the early morning shift as it is a bit more relaxed than later in the day. However no one ever lets you stop working after your day is done so the fact that I work early doesn’t actually get me out of staying late very often.

It is nice coming out into the office and being surrounded by plants. Our apartment has been devoid of plant life and it really needed some. In fact, now that I think about it, I am not sure if Dominica and I have ever owned plants together or not. We had our little garden by our sidewalk in Geneseo but that hardly counted. What a nightmare that thing was. The one plants that I know I had was the hydroponically grown basil that I kept in my hot tub at Observatory Circle in Ithaca.

Even though it is all still torn apart the apartment is looking worlds better in the light of morning. The hard work yesterday has paid off and I am much happier with it now. I am also relieved to have the FVG318 mostly fixed and the Apple AirPort now a part of the network so that we have wireless again and can use the OLPC XO, the AppleTV and the Nintendo Wii – all of which require wireless. Today my job is to get job is to get all of the networking gear cleaned up and organized so that the desk looks nice.

Dominica made it all of the way to Wallington, where Oreo goes to daycare, before she realized that Oreo was not with her this morning. Hopefully she won’t do that on the drive home.

During her lunch break Dominica ran to Home Depot and picked up more gardening supplies and three more plants including a windowsill herb garden to put beside my desk.  She got three more plants: a mandarin, a cycad and a dracaena.  She also got some important supplies like a watering can and some fertilizer.

My night was very busy and I ended up working almost all night.  I worked until we ate dinner and then stayed online until around eleven thirty when I went to bed.  Unfortunately I got paged out at half midnight and had to get out of bed after having just entered into some deep sleep.  🙁  I didn’t feel very good after that.