Liesl has a new Fisher Price stuffed seahorse that she loves.  Dominica bought it earlier this week from Amazon.  Liesl fell in love with it instantly.  That and her music-box giraffe are her two bed time friends.  She hugs them while she sleeps.  She is so adorable.  The seahorse plays music for five or ten minutes slowly getting software and has a glowing tummy to help her fall asleep more easily.  It works really well.  She instantly throws her arms around it and snuggles with it until she is asleep.

Around three in the morning, after having tossed and turned and gotten up and down checking on Liesl, Oreo came in and needed to be taken outside for a walk.  So I got up and took care of him.  That took me from mostly asleep to completely awake.  I laid in bed for another half an hour while Oreo jumped on and off of the bed trying to decide what he wanted to do.  Finally at three thirty I couldn’t take it anymore and I got out of bed having completely given up on sleeping altogether and headed down to the basement to just start work rather than laying in bed thinking about all of the work that I was not getting done while not sleeping either.  Oreo followed me down immediately and happily made himself a bed on the theatre couch and was as happy as could be.

It is not all bad.  I have a lot of work to do and being able to get to it early on a Friday morning does give me quite the jump on things.  My first task was clearly down my email.  My inbox had skyrocketed to one hundred and fifty items in the last few days and I find it cripplying to have a full inbox.  I need things cleaned out to be efficient.  I also closed tons of tickets at work.  Those are hard to do during the day when email requests are pouring in non-stop.

I got a lot of posting on SpiceWorks completed as well.  Significant progress there.

The Ralstons are coming down tonight to visit and to prepare for their departure to the Congo.  It is really weird to think that their going away party was yesterday and already they have pretty much seen everyone that they know for the last time before becoming completely isolated deep in the African jungle.  They are expecting to arrive in Peekskill around ten tonight.  Hopefully I will be done with work by then.

Tomorrow Art and Danielle are hanging out here and Michael is hanging out with his grandmother who is helping ship down the luggage and stuff that is going onto the plane with them.  Tomorrow we also have to pick up the cargo van early in the morning.  Then get it all packed and ready to go to the airport.  Sunday should be a day completely off.  Then most of Monday will be spent getting everyone ready and off to the airport. They have an afternoon flight and because it is international and because they have so much luggage they need to be there well ahead of time.  Then Dominica and I have to return the cargo van.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car in Peekskill called today to tell us that they found a van for us.  That is great.  We were going to have to drive to a further location to get a van if they did not come through with one.  So now we have about sixteen miles less driving that needs to be done on Saturday morning.  That is important as I have a lot of work that needs to be done on Saturday morning and it was going to be tight.

Dominica realized today that we had forgotten to get our photo inspection done of the new BMW that is required for automotive insurance in New York State!  Craptastic.  So we were going crazy trying to get that taken care of today.  We managed to get it fixed but just another thing that needed to be done on a very busy day.

Dominica and Liesl also went out grocery shopping for a bit.  Since the Ralstons have had a lot of opportunity recently to be eating out they are looking forward to home cooking this weekend.  So we needed to stock the kitchen so that that would be a possibility.

Today I became the top posted on SpiceWorks.  The top all time poster.  A pretty major achievement.  The people whom I displaced to get to this point put years into getting to the levels that they are.  I did not just squeak past either.  I have a sizable lead that is constantly growing.

Work was really busy today and made it really hard to get ready for the Ralstons to come visit.  Dominica put in a ton of time cleaning the kitchen and it really looks awesome.  I did my best to take care of the floors and whatever else I could get to around the house when time allowed.  There really was not very much time.

I was still vacuuming when Art and Danielle arrived around a quarter till nine.  They had left Mt. Morris around three and made pretty decent time on the drive down.  Michael did not come down with them but was coming down with his grandmother and her partner who were bringing a minivan full of all of the luggage that would not fit into the PR5.

So just a few minutes after arrived at our house, Art, Danielle and I piled into the BMW and drove down to the Peekskill Train Station to rescue Deb, Lisa and Michael who were stranded there due to the crazy downtown construction.  Deb and Lisa are staying at the Peekskill Inn right on Main Street overlooking the river and the train station.  Quite a nice location – if you can get to it.

We came back to the house and hung out until a quarter ’till midnight.  We were all really exhausted.  Even Liesl was up later than usual – until probably nine thirty.  Art and I just sat in the basement talking while I kicked off Handbrake compression jobs to run through the night.

When it was bed time we realized that the house was still quite warm and was not cooling off enough to make it comfortable in which to sleep.  So we decided that it was time to turn on the air conditioning for the first time this season.  We have not yet run the air conditioning since we bought the house.  We were somewhat trepidatious of doing so as we did not want to find out that it would not run.  Twice we have rented homes – once to find out that the A/C was completely broken and once to find out that it was not even installed – so we get nervous about this type of stuff.

I have a lot of work that needs to be done tomorrow morning before we can get the cargo van from Enterprise at nine so it is going to be a busy day for me.

I had to spend the day working which was too bad because we will get such limited time to spend with the Ralstons before they leave the country.

Art had come down to the basement and we were talking when Danielle called downstairs to tell him that Global, their missionary agency, was on the phone.  This was the call.  The official “you can book your flights – you leave on May 25th” call.  It was really neat that it happened while they were here.  It was very cool to get to be a part of that moment.

After the years of planning the immensity of the move to the Congo tends to wear off on those of us who have gotten used to the idea.  Seeing the shock and panic as Art and Danielle realized that they have to be on a plan in thirty-two days to central Africa and will not be seeing anyone again after that brought it all home.  They already have a ton of travel plans over the next month too so they are already down to things like “only one more chance to go to church – maybe, and not likely – at their own church!”  That’s weird to think about.

So much of the day was spent getting plans together, making calls, trying to calm down.  You can imagine.  It is finally real.  They have been working towards this for a really long time.  They rented out their house and moved out several weeks ago and Art had just recently left his job so that they would be able to go really soon and they have been saying “maybe the end of May” for a while but it was not official and had a really good chance of not happening until the news came through today.

The call came in around eleven or eleven thirty.  For roughly two hours Art and Danielle were going as fast as they could getting calls made and taking care of communications.  They have important documents that need to be obtained, money to be moved, approvals to be processed, embassy to be contacted and more.  At one thirty we all went down to Pastel’s for lunch.  Art got the Belgian waffle with strawberry preserves which is the same thing that he got the last time that he was here.

Now the reality of “this is the last Belgian waffle” starts to set in.  From this point out there will be few, if any, duplicated meals.  Each meal is likely to be their last of that particular example of Western fare.

Within a few hours they had their flights booked.  They are flying out of JFK on the 25th of May in the evening.  That is a Monday.  They are coming to our house in a minivan loaded with everything that they yet own, which isn’t very much, that will be going in their luggage on the plane on the 24th and spending their last night in the industrial world at our house.  Then on Sunday evening I will be driving them to the airport alone and will be dealing with the minivan return and that stuff.  No one else is going both because it would be a logistic nightmare but also because it will be so emotional.  This isn’t a vacation or a short term mission trip.  This is moving to the Congo with the intent to possibly not return and definitely not to return, if at all possible, for a minimum of four years.

Everyone was excited and nervous and a bit over-excited so we all, Dominica, Liesl, Art, Danielle, Oreo and I took a two and a half mile walk around Chapel Hill.  We figured that some exercise would help everyone to relax.  As long as we were in the house there were just too many last minute details that needed to be handled.

The walk helped a bit.  It was good because we really needed the exercise as well.  This week has been awful for our diets.

I worked again for a while after the walk.  A few hours.  Then Art and I ran to Best Buy a little after eight to buy another laptop for Danielle.  She has a newish Toshiba but the motherboard is starting to fail and if a computer dies in the Congo, that’s it.  No more computer.  Best case scenario is six months to get one sent from the states and six months is not very likely.  A year is probably more likely.  And any files on it will probably be lost.  They had bought the Toshiba new to go to the Congo; it didn’t survive long enough to even make the journey.  So we went to Best Buy and picked up a Compaq that was on sale.  Just $430 for a really nice unit.  It was quite a good deal.  They are taking three Compaqs with them when they go.  They each have one.

When we returned from Best Buy we all ate dinner together.  Danielle had cooked tilapia in Balsamic vinegar, dill and garlic, mashed potatoes and asparagus.  Probably their last tilapia.  They can only get catfish and Goliath tiger fish (Hydrocynus goliath) in Impfondo and neither of those looks very tasty at all.

We stayed up talking for a little while but everyone went to bed pretty early except for me.  Always more work to do so I headed back down to the basement and ended up working until four in the morning!  It is going to be another night without sleep for me.  I have only had one “full” night’s sleep all week.

The Ralstons are hoping to leave shortly after noon tomorrow so that they can get to their next stop on the travels early in the day.  They are driving from Peekskill to Painted Post, New York.  Probably about four hours on the road.  Not too bad.  We will get lunch before they leave and then they will leave from there.  They are going to be really busy for the next thirty-two days.

The Ralstons still need funds to support them while they are in the Congo working at Pioneer Christian Hospital.  If anyone is able to help support them it would be really wonderful.  As it is they are going over there without enough current support to allow them to stay.  So their hope is that they will be able to raise additional support while they are there.  If they do not their will have to leave the hospital to come back to the United States in order to raise additional support.

The plan was to do as much house cleaning this morning as possible.  Work was so busy that I was never able to even think about doing any cleaning around the house.  Dominica did was she could during the day.  There was a lot of the house that we just did not get enough time to clean by the time that the Ralstons arrived.

Art and Danielle arrived in the late afternoon.  Luckily my morning had been really busy but things were not quite so bad in the late afternoon so we did get to visit some.

One of the very first things that happened after they arrived was that Art was eating some Cadbury’s candy coated mini eggs and he broke a tooth.  Split a tooth pretty much in half.  Fortunately it was not painful and he did not have to go see a dentist about it right away.

Once my work was finally done we all drove out to the New City Diner to get our dinner.  It was rather late when we finally got out there.  Almost eight, I believe.  The dinner crowd had already gone and the people were dwindling.  Dominica got her traditional Veggie Cat Burger (veggie burger with a hash brown, fried eggplant and tons of veggies – extremely delicious.)  She gets that every time that we go there because we do not go out to eat often enough for her not to be craving it.  I got the BBQ veggie burger which I often get.  Danielle got an apple walnut salad and Art got the Philly cheesesteak which we are pretty sure that he got the last time that they were down visiting us in Peekskill.

Since we are obviously already cheating on our diets and are going to be for the next few days Dominica and I went ahead and got awesome desserts because their pasteries there are really something.

We didn’t stay up all that late tonight which was good because I was very tired.  I have gotten almost no sleep all week and it is really wearing on me.  I have a really busy work weekend too so I will not have much of a chance to catch up on any sleep over the weekend either.  In addition to working this weekend, Katie is coming over on Saturday afternoon to visit for a little while.

We had been planning on going out for breakfast when my lunch break rolled around.  We ended up getting stuck, though, as some people were out of the office and those of us who were still around needed to cover for them.  So I could not go anywhere and be away from the computer.  So we just had lunch at the house.

Even though we didn’t get a chance to go out we did get quite a bit of time that we were able to hang out at the house.  It was a pretty relaxing day overall.

For dinner we all went out to the New City Diner in Yorktown Heights.  Dominica and I have not been there in weeks.  We have really gotten used to eating at home these days.  Not normal for us at all.  What a change having a baby causes!

After dinner, Dominica, Danielle and Liesl went to the Stop and Shop to do some grocery shopping while Art, Michael and I went to Home Depot to do some shopping too.  Art and I have been looking into the wiring situation in the basement trying to figure out what needs to be done so that we can get a modicum of wires run so that it is not a giant disaster down there.

The wiring plan for the basement involves putting an equipment shelf in under the basement stairs that will be used to hold the house networking gear which includes the cable modem, battery backup system, Ethernet switch, firewall, access point and the small SAN system with 1TB of storage.  That is six separate networking devices that have been sitting mostly on or by Dominica’s desk taking up all of her available space.

Then, from the “cabling plant” under the stairs, we will be running Category 6 cabling (to handle Gigabit Ethernet speeds reliably) around the house including four runs to Dominica’s desk, four runs to my desk, six runs to the utility room in the basement, four runs to the basement theatre area (not yet built) and five runs to the living room to support the PS3, AppleTV, etc.  That is a lot of cabling.  Almost exactly 1,000ft so we had to use an entire CAT6 spool.  That wasn’t cheap.  I had wanted to run seven runs to the utility room but that would have required another spool so that is where I had to cut back to save money.

Instead of running all of the cables through the walls which is very difficult and potentially destructive the plan is to run them around on the floors or along baseboards using baseboard cable conduit and attaching the cables to the underside of desks whenever possible.  It isn’t a perfect solution but there is only so much that can be done when the wiring is not done as part of the house construction.  The one part that is going to be quite the pain is running the five CAT6 lines up next to the fireplace in the living room and bringing them up the wall by the fireplace so that they are available to the entertainment “center” there.

After we got back from shopping it was down to the basement for Art and I where I attempted to stay out of the way while he got the shelf installed and we moved all of the network gear into the closet.  Not all of the wiring is in place so an extension cord is running into the closet to keep things working at the moment.  Tomorrow he is going to add an electrical outlet in the closet to power the networking gear in there with its own plugs.  The cable modem (actually a cable bridge for those who know that all-digital devices can’t truly be modems) and the APC BackUPS 350 are wall mounted to make things nice and neat.  Everything else is up on the shelf. It really works great.

Work had to stop so that we weren’t making noise for the neighbours.  We don’t know if the people next door can hear us or not when we do house work so better safe than sorry.  We have not heard anyone else yet except for when major tile construction is going on next door so we are probably safe.