Medifast Status: Day 126, Down ~53lbs
The temperatures have really broken now. Dominica got up early this morning and went out for her run. She is really dedicated to her C25K program. I’m impressed.
I slept in a bit with a very snuggly Boston Terrier and then, when I got up, I headed outside with the girls to relax in the fresh air. It was actually quite a bit colder than I had anticipated and I actually had to come back inside to get a fleece jacket to wear in order to keep warm. A fleece and warm coffee out on the patio. You would not have thought it possible just two days ago.
I continued to read Lonely Planet’s immense tome on Italy as long as the battery on my Kindle lasted today. Dominica finished reading her book on traveling in Europe with kids, read some of Lonely Planet’s guide to Switzerland and bought a Kindle book on Florence and Tuscany from Rick Steves. Our Kindles are going to be absolutely loaded with European travel information by the time that we get there in May. We are going to have every inch of our trip memorized at the rate that we are going. That or we might not have any idea where we are going at all.
After my Kindle died I read a little bit more in one of our paper-copy European guide books and then we watched Under the Tuscan Sun via Amazon’s VOD service as it was the best Italian film that we could find. Netflix does not appear to have films like Roman Holiday or the classic La Dolce Vita. So we had to improvise. Overall we weren’t too impressed and when towards the end of the film the combination of Amazon’s service and PlayOn stopped working we just gave up and decided it was not worth the effort to complete the film.
I’m feeling very worn out today. The excitement of last night and this morning is a little bit overwhelming and we are now stuck waiting to get the paperwork for the consulate filled out and to get into contact with them, hopefully tomorrow. Until then we want to start considering the possibilities but doing so could do nothing more than get our hopes up. We are stuck in that horrible state of not knowing and not being able to make plans. My regular readers will appreciate how stressed that can make me. I’m good with change but I like to be able to plan, too.
Going through six months or a year of tracking down all of the necessary paperwork for Dominica and the girls will be fine as long as the consulate has told us that we are expected to be successful at the end of the process. Putting in the work is fine. Putting in the effort not knowing if it will turn out or not is very stressful.
Dominica is busy working on tracking down language learning resources. We are going to attempt to learn at least one foreign language before we go to Europe. Originally the plan was that I was going to focus on German and Dominica was likely going to focus on French. Given the current situation we are seriously considering changing those plans and learning Italian.
We watched a little more of Star Trek: Voyager tonight and then went to watch House Hunters International (watching shows on Italy, of course) when Andy called me back after I had been trying to reach him yesterday. He and I ended up talking for about five hours from eight in the evening until one in the morning.