Lunchin' with Livy 598

Allowed myself to sleep in a little, and by the time I drug myself out of bed and downstairs it was already 615am. I took a brief step out onto the deck. It was cloudy, foggy and warm. Inside, I quickly breezed through Thursday calisthenics then poured coffee. Delivered Mindy's near 630am. She was still in bed but ready to get up.

I planned to join GD Olivia at her school for lunch around noon. As such, it just seemed to make more sense to work from home. And because I was working from home, I didn't plan to run until after seeing Bella onto the school bus. I got my laptop fired up and logged by 7am. Didn't have any pressing calls or meetings scheduled. That felt good. I was hoping for an easy day.

Like she often does when I work from home, Mindy planned to leave for school a little early. She didn't have to make breakfast. Just before she left, Bella asked me to make scrambled eggs. Sure. I made the scrambled eggs then scrapped off enough to satisfy Bella's hungry eyes. She ate most of what I put on her plate. I planned on eating some too, but not until after my run, which was still some time off. I slipped a little into the dog's food bowl too.

Bella and I headed out at 752am. We were the first ones there. Apparently Ryan and family are off to Florida. Dominic, Camden and their dad showed up next. Makayla and Chrissy joined us a few minutes later. Bus was a later than usual. Had to be close to 805am. Once was Bella was on the bus, I walked the pug up and down our street, her first such walk of the day.

Back inside, I slowly but surely readied for a run. Given the warmth, I wore a short sleeved shirt and shorts. Ran the full 4.1 miles. During my run I reminded myself how blessed I am. Like a lot of folks, too often I spend my thought cycles on negative things.

I was home near 915am. I poured another cup of coffee then ate what was left of the scrambled eggs right from the pan. They were good. Got busy with work spending most of my time working on a month long task to clean up some data. On a personal front, I was looking for the perfect photo to add to my blog commemorating our 8 years together when I remembered that when my old PC crashed I didn't bother loading archived photos from CD onto my new hard drive. I decided to go fetch those CDs from the basement. At first I was only going to load the photos from September '05, but ended up adding everything that was missing from my current hard drive collection, which was pretty much all of '05,'06 & '07. I did that in the background while working.

At 1115am I broke away from work for a shower. Wanted to leave the house near 1130am. By then it was raining albeit only lightly. As planned, I stopped at the Taco Bell on Wilson Rd in Great Western. I had Ashley text Olivia's order to me the night before. I also brought an entire box of drink boxes and planned to buy a crate of tacos, too, just in case some of Olivia's classmates didn't have anyone bringing them food. The drive-thru line was 3 or 4 cars deep. Decided to go inside. Good move. I was in and out in the matter of about 5 minutes.

Arrived at Olivia's school near 1150am. Headed inside at 1158am. My hands were full, between Olivia's order, the extra stuff I brought, and then my camera and phone. I really need to get a purse. :) Inside the school, there was a monitor of sorts herding all of us guests into the gymnasium. I was one of the first to arrive. They has all guests fill out a sign-up sheet. Walking in the gymnasium a few minutes after me was a guy that looked an awful lot like Bill B,, a neighborhoodie. Sure enough, it was he. Wasn't so sure initially. Used to seeing him in a ballcap. He wasn't wearing one then.

We sat at the same table but several seats apart. To pass time before the kids joined us, I sent a text or two to Mindy & Ashley. I was surprised when I looked up and Bill was standing there with his hand out. Said we've been neighbors for 20 years and have never formally talked. Funny, we both commented that we knew who the other was. We chatted briefly about the neighborhood crime. Bill's in law enforcement. His perspective was more representative of the facts. Mine, like most other casual residents, feel the crime is rampant. Bill shared that from a professional point of view that our crime rate was low to normal. Interesting. He also clarified that the window smashing bandit was not caught as some in the neighborhood suggested. Good chat.

The kids slowly made their way into the gymnasium Olivia was ushered in by Joyce C., the school librarian and old friend of mine. I gave Joyce and Olivia hugs. Joyce said she was having lunch with her granddaughter too - Whitney's daughter. I was hoping to meet her but didn't get a chance.

Olivia and I enjoyed our lunch. She was perhaps a little shy at first, but that soon wore off. Much like daughter Ashley has shared, Olivia has lots of friends and is quite popular. Many other kids gave shouts out our way. Olivia ate all of her lunch and then one of the many extra tacos in picked up.

The lunch break flew by. Olivia was very anxious to take me to her classroom and introduce me to her teacher, Ms. Something or other. Sorry, can't recall her name - Ms. Haison, maybe(?). Anyway, her teacher is young and very attractive. Dressed to the hilt. Frankly I was a little surprised. I offered to leave the extra tacos and drink boxes but she shared that she couldn't accept them or take part in allowing the kids to eat/partake. School district rules. No worries. Olivia proceeded to show me around the classroom, including some work she'd done and then her desk. She also introduced me to a handful of peeps as her pawpaw. One kids said, "pawpaw? Is that your dad?" I laughed and shared that I was her grandfather.

Before I left Olivia insisted I pick her up and swing her around. What a hoot, she is. Said our goodbyes, but not before she asked about having another overnight soon. Sure, Livy. I stopped by the office on my way out to see if they might want the 9 or 10 tacos and drink boxes. Mrs. Thomas, who I recognized the face, is the school office administrator. She and her family grew up in Valleyview like me. They lived on Dibblee, just up the street from the Chilcote's. She was more than happy to take the food. Shared that they would definitely eat it. Said she loves Ashley and Olivia. Apparently her daughter and Ashley hung out at Bishop Ready.

Headed for home. Decided to take an obscure back way, making sure to drive by our old house on Wiltshire. Stopped long enough to snap a couple photos from my car. Good memories of that house. Arrive back home sometime around 115pm. Stayed busy with work all afternoon and in the background kept loading old photo CDs onto my hard drive.

Soon the kids were home, Jacob near 3pm and Bella near 4pm. And I think Mindy arrived home close to 415pm. By then the cloudy skies from earlier were giving way to clearing. Nice to see some sunshine. Expecting a quick warm-up on Friday with temps approaching 85. It's not supposed to last, though. Rain and only a high of 70 for Saturday.
Wrapped up work around 515pm. However, I remained at my desk loading CD after CD of photos onto my hard drive. It's a slow tedious process. I would keep at it all evening between running Bella to gymnastics and then dinner. In the end I think I loaded about 50 CDs worth of photos.

Amongst are some real keepers of the kids. I'm very glad I've captured so much of their childhood on digital media. They'll certainly appreciate it later in life. My digital photo collection now contains about 54,000 photos, and most from the last decade.

Mindy asked if I would be willing to take Bella to gymnastics versus doing the pick-up. That way she could focus on making dinner, which she was making inferno chicken - a family favorite. Sure. I thought she might ask that. No worries. There's no denying that the drop off is a far tougher experience than the pick-up. Way more traffic. She suggested I take the back way: Fisher to Phillipi/Georgesville to Broad St then get on 270. What I did was take Fisher to Phillipi but continued on Georgesville all the way versus getting on 270. The stretch on Georgesville between the casino and the gym was slow going. Still, I got Bella there with 5 minutes to spare. Kelly (the good one) was just arriving with her kids.

Traffic heading north on 270 wasn't an issue. Was back at home by 610pm. Mindy had dinner ready seemingly the instant I walked in the door. We enjoyed inferno chicken, Bob Evan's macaroni & cheese, and bread. It was really good. Dinner and clean-up were behind us by 645pm. Felt good knowing that I could relax since Mindy was doing the pick-up. Incidentally, we left a dinner plate in the microwave for Bella. While Mindy was away, I finished adding all of the photos. That was another one of those tasks that's been dangling out there for several years - 4 to be exact. Glad to have it completed.

My next task was to fix an issue with iTunes where lots of recently added music wasn't showing up or playing correctly. Would get a locate file message each time I went to play a particular artist. That took a while to get corrected. Looks like when I imported them from the original CDs I didn't do it right. Had to do and import file/folder on each one. That was a bit tedious too. Took about an hour to fix. When Mindy & Bella returned from

Stayed busy on my computer until 915pm or so. By then Mindy had already headed up to bed. I watched a little of the Thursday night football game between the Eagles and Chiefs. Despite all the talk about the Eagles Oregon-like offense, the Chiefs were kicking their butts! I headed to be around 11pm after falling asleep on the sofa for a spell.