February 24, 2012: Luciana’s Birth Certificate

Medifast Status: Day 297, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

It is Friday so I needed to go in to the office today.

I couldn’t come home at lunch today because I needed to use that time to go down to the Dallas County records building and require Luciana’s birth certificate.  Texas does not give these out and waits for you to request them.  We need it in order to get her her passport so that she can come with us to Europe which is happening pretty soon.

Work was busy and I was unable to leave the office until one.  I drove to the Royal train station on the Green Line and caught the train going downtown from there.  Taking the DART to downtown is way easier than driving and parking down there.

I got to the records office and everything was going quickly and smoothly until… they couldn’t find any record of Luciana!!  Oh boy.  I called Dominica to let her know.  It was a good thing that she could not come through the phone to throttle someone because she surely would have done so.

After a bit they were able to get confirmation that the records office with the state in Austin had Luciana in the system so at least she exists and is documented.  I got stuck waiting for about forty-five minutes while they worked with the state offices to attempt to get the records released to Dallas County and to them be able to print and certify them in the county office.  There were many calls to Dominica during this time during which she was ready to jump on a train and come down to the office herself.  Best that we kept that as a backup option.

It took quite some time but by the end of the day we had all of the necessary paperwork in hand.  Back on the train and back to the office for me.

This evening, after work, I got home and no one really felt like doing much of anything.  It came up that there is a Latin Seafood restaurant right down the street from the house.  And I mean right down the street.  So close that it is a trivial walk, even with strollers.  And on flat ground.  With sidewalks the whole way.  I mean it doesn’t get much closer.  We’ve been seeing this restaurant for a long time but never remember it when we are ready to eat.  It is in a really weird location and we just never think of it.

So tonight I mentioned it and dad said that he would like to try it out.  So we headed on over.  We took the car because it was late and there were so many of us.  Often, I suspect, we will just walk, though.  That is just too convenient.  It is literally half the distance of walking to our local Peruvian restaurant or pizza place both of which I have walked to previously.

The restaurant was pretty slow for a Friday night.  I wonder how they stay in business.  We were concerned that they would not be able to handle customers in English but our waitress spoke decent English and it wasn’t bad.

The food was very good.  Dominica was quite surprised when her dinner consisted of an entire fish – as in, a fish looking at her while she ate it.  Getting head-on fish is not something taht we are used to.  But the food was all very good.  We really enjoyed it.  It turns out that this is actually a Salvadorean restaurant.  We are discovering that there is a lot more Salvadorean food around us that we would have guessed.  This is likely going to turn into one of our usual spots.  Nice to have some serious variety.

This evening Dominica went out to work with Joe on getting some ntg.co swag made so that dad can ship it back to New York with his stuff to get it to Danielle.  The big item that I know is being made is an orange rhinestone t-shirt (orange rhinestones on a black t-shirt) for Danielle to wear.  I am not sure what other stuff she is having made.

Dominica ended up being out really late working on the swag stuff so Oreo and I ended up staying up really late too and I was super exhausted when we finally went off to bed.  The t-shirt looks really cool and Dominica had a bag made too with the same logo also in rhinestones.  I think that Danielle is going to be really excited.

Dominica needs to go back tomorrow because she did not manage to get everything completed that she needed to do tonight.  It was just too late.

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