November 24, 2011: Thanksgiving

Medifast Status: Day 206, Down ~70lbs

Dominica and I got home around five this morning before anyone was awake.  We didn’t want the kids waking up without us home.  We got in and Dominica got about one hour of sleep before Luciana got her up.  I managed to sleep for several hours, snuggling with Oreo, before needing to get up myself.

The Grice family left to go to Thanksgiving with Bennie’s family today so after about ten this morning we had the house to ourselves for the majority of the day.  We set about cleaning like crazy.  The house really needed it and this was our chance to really make a difference quickly.

We got hours of cleaning in and the house looked much, much better when we were all done.  We didn’t get nearly as much as we would have liked to have gotten done but it is much improved.

We tried to just grab Panda Express for lunch today.  I even went through the effort of driving out there to pick it up and discovered that nothing was open.  I had warned Dominica of this but she was confusing “Chinese food” from a national chain with food made by people who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving – back home we only have Chinese restaurants that are non-chains and they are almost always open on Thanksgiving and many other holidays making holidays at Chinese restaurants something of a natural tradition.  But with the big chains here in Texas that does not work in the same way.

So I ran back home and picked up Dominica and the girls and we went to IHOP which is always open.  Lunch was tasty.  Then back home.

We did some “real” work today too but not a ton.  It was great to be able to relax and do pretty much nothing.  My brain needed to just shut down for a bit.

This afternoon I managed, for the first time in eleven months, to fire up Oblivion again.  We finally got the speakers, the B&W 300 series, hooked up to the Onkyo in our bedroom and the television has been up on the wall and Oblivion has been located so finally, basically for the first time since we moved from the apartment, I am able to get back to this game and maybe, just maybe, complete it sometime soon.  I am 219 hours into the game and am just in the home stretch of wrapping up loose ends here and there.  But I really want to get it done.  I am ready to be done with this game and completely move on to something else.  It was a great game but it has lasted too long without a strong storyline for me.  The open world aspects have been great but I need more depth to keep me engaged for this long.

I am very much in the mood to wrap up the games that I have had in progress.  It is time to explore some new games.  I spend years playing just a few really large games and once in a while it is nice to complete one and move on to something else.  It is really amazing how few games I ever actually play.  I’ve completed only three games (Fable 1, Fable 2 and Fable 3) since Liesl was born!  That’s not very many.

I didn’t get much Oblivion time in.  Maybe an hour.  But at least I have it all set up and I am able to just pick it up and play whenever the opportunity allows now.  A few hours here and there and maybe I can work my way through it.

The Grices got back fairly late.  We hung out for a while and very late Dominica and Francesca sent me back to IHOP to pick up pancakes for the family.

After everyone went to bed Emily and I stayed up and watched our BluRay helicopter tour video of Austria.  Boy is there ever some beautiful places in Austria.  I can’t wait to get to go there.

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