March 26, 2012: Rockfish Mondays

Back to the work week.  Very little to report for today.  Some days are just like that.

Went to Medifast at nine this morning and did my check in.  It wasn’t a great check in but it was cautiously good.  I’m nearly back to my low weight and making progress.  We decided that I have to begin “transition” at Medifast, even though I am a few pounds away from my original goal, because if I do not I am going to be unprepared for getting to Europe.  My body needs to be back to “normal” food before we get there or things are going to be really tough.  So this week I get to eat all of my veggies again, not just the low carb ones, and next week I get to start having fruit again.  That will be nice.  I miss a lot of those flavours.

Work was work.  Went home for lunch.  Had a half hour meeting with Dell today.

After work I stopped at Rockfish and picked up dinner for the family.  Dominica always wants me to get Rockfish on Fridays but they take forever on Fridays because they are busier and I always have to work late so I am tired and trying to get home.  Mondays is the only day that makes sense because the club is not open so we aren’t wasting an opportunity to eat there affordably in exchange with spending more at Rockfish.

Slow night, we are a bit tired after the concert last night.  At least we pulled off a nice walk after the concert and got ourselves some exercise.

March 25, 2012: Pink Martini

Today is my birthday present day.  Dominica got me tickets to see one of my favourite bands, Pink Martini, play at the AT&T Performing Arts Center in downtown Dallas at the outdoor Annette Strauss Square venue.  We have never been there previously and are really looking forward to the concert.  We’ve had it on our calendars for some time.  This is the first concert that we have seen in a long time.  Probably the first since we saw Allison Kraus play in Rochester.  That was a very long time ago.

We spent the morning working on some light cleaning and a lot of vacation planning.  We had some soul searching discussions about what exactly we are attempting to accomplish and did some hard thinking about where we will realistically be willing to consider living.  Based on that, we have eliminated Bolzano, Italy and Innsbruck, Austria from this trip and will be using the time to instead go to Munich, Germany where we will be spending several days getting to know Bavaria.  We are very close to having a set schedule for our trip now.  There are fewer and fewer days left floating around and most of that float is within a single country.

We did some cleaning today as Dominica’s cousin Ashley and her kids are coming over to babysit this evening while we go out.  So that took an hour or two.  And we had to get ready to go.  Really, between a little cleaning, getting ourselves ready to go out and discussing our travel plans the day was completely eaten up.

Ashley came over before five.  At a little after six, Dominica and I drove to the train station, parked and grabbed the train heading to downtown Dallas.  We are loving that we have figured out this whole train thing.  It is really making living in Carrollton that much better.  It has opened up downtown Dallas to us and makes us feel a lot more like we live in a city like we are used to rather than being completely isolated out in suburbia.  I can see why Plano is such a popular place to live with the train line running up there as well.

The ride downtown was nice and easy.  Very relaxing.  This was Dominica’s first time getting to take the train without having the kids in a stroller so it was a lot more comfortable than what she has done in the past.

We arrived downtown with plenty of time to walk from the Pearl Street Station to the AT&T Performing Arts Center.  That was a trivial walk, maybe two blocks.  We got in, got our tickets printed and got our seats.  I ended up getting really good seats without knowing the venue so that was very fortunate.  It is an open air venue and appears to have been sold out with a ton of people using the lawn seats.

The weather was perfect tonight for a concert in north Texas.  Warm but not hot.  Early spring in Texas is wonderful.  This was an ideal night for an outdoor jazz concert – really could not have been nicer.  Annette Strass Square is really nice for this type of event.

Pink Martini came out and put on a great show.  We had a really good time.  They really know how to put on a live show, extremely entertaining.

After the show we walked back to the Pearl Street Station but we looked at the schedule and knew that we had some time before the train would come so we decided to hoof it all of the way through downtown to the final station in the opposite direction, to West End.  It is surprising just how small downtown Dallas is.  I’d say that the entire length of downtown is not much longer than the length of Wall Street alone in Manhattan.  A short jaunt in NYC would allow you to encircle Dallas more than once.

We got to West End long before the train was going to come so we hit the McDonald’s there, which is absolutely disgusting, and grabbed a quick bite for Dominica for dinner and some sodas to enjoy while we waited for the train.

An uneventful train ride home.  We were back by a little after ten.  A very nice birthday present evening.  We are hoping to get to go see the Gypsy Kings at the same venue pretty soon.

March 24, 2012: Wichita

I got up at five thirty, showered and got ready to go.  Andrew was supposed to meet me at the house at six thirty but he accidentally fell back asleep and didn’t leave his house until well after six and he is about forty minutes away from me.  So we are rushing a bit to get up to Wichita in time.

I ran out and fueled up the car, put air in the tires and got it all cleaned up while I had some time to kill.  Andrew got to the house and woke up Dominica while I was out.  She didn’t realize that I was out fueling the car.

It was just after seven when we hit the road north.  The weather was awesome today and we made really good time through north Texas and on in to Oklahoma.  The drive up Interstate 35 to Oklahoma City roughly runs along the Amtrak Heartland Flyer train route that I took last week so this is an area that I now know.  Once we got to Oklahoma City, though, everything from there on was new territory to me.  I have only been in Kansas in the southeast corner and not even a mile into the state.

There is little remarkable on the drive through central Oklahoma and Kansas.  The terrain is actually not nearly as flat as I thought that it would be.  There was a decent amount of roll here and there.  I mean, it was flat, but not crazy flat.

The drive went by pretty quickly.  Highway speeds out there in the flat nothingness are quite high.  It actually ended up taking only five hours to get to Wichita including two gas station stops.  Three hundred and fifty miles exactly and thirteen point one gallons of fuel.  The old Mazda is still pulling nearly twenty seven miles to the gallon.  Way better than I would have guessed given the rough shape that it is in.  That car is eleven years old now!

It was about a quarter after twelve when we arrived at the Old Chicago in Wichita.  Bob from Kansas City was already there waiting for us.  There were four of us total making long haul drives in for the event.  We made great time and could not believe that we were up there with plenty of time to spare.  That really worked out well.

The SpiceCorps Wichita meeting ended up going really well.  The venue was a really good choice too.  Good food options (pizza, fish & chips, salads, etc.) and good beer options with a quiet back room where they were willing to turn off the radio so that we could actually talk.  We had a great turnout with eighteen people which, I do believe, is a record for an initial SpiceCorps group.  Very impressive.  It was a good group too with good interaction and a lot of potential.

We hung out, Andrew and I, until the very end when the last people were leaving.  So it was well after four when we finally left Wichita.  We fueled up the Mazda, a single completely full tank just barely gets me from home to the middle of Wichita, and got back on to the Interstate to go back to Texas.

The drive south was completely uneventful.  The Oklahoma sunset was awesome.  Searing orange behind us to the right with the world encircled in flamingo pink.  Not something that you get to experience in New York or Texas.

It was just before ten when we pulled into Carrollton.  Andrew headed back home and I played with Liesl for just a little bit before putting her to bed.  Luciana was already long asleep.

It was a long but ultimately very good and productive day.

March 23, 2012: Dinner and Trip Planning

Back into the office today.  Today is a short day for me (in generally, not for work) because I have to be up bright and early tomorrow morning so that I can drive up to Wichita, Kansas for the new SpiceCorps group up there.  That is three hundred and fifty miles one way.  It is going to be a long day.

Work was fine today.  I came home for lunch.  We’ve been re-watching, yet again, Rick Steve’s videos on Europe.  Now that we have a better idea of where we are going there are videos that we have not watched in a long time that are applicable to us like Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona.  The Lisbon and Barcelona shows make us really excited that we are going to get to see those places.  The Madrid episode convinces us that we don’t want to be there and are going to use that city as nothing more than a transfer location on the train line.

We are closer and closer to a solid plan.  It is truly amazing how hard this is.  We are very thankful that we have our plane tickets already so there is no chance of those dates or locations changing on us.

On my way home I swung into Brookhaven and picked up dinner.  Dominica had placed an order with me but once I got there and saw the buffet (or chef’s table, as they call it) for the evening I changed plans and got that instead.  It was a great haul this evening with New England clam chowder, baked salmon, fruit for Liesl, chocolate covered strawberries for Liesl as well, berry crunch for Dominica, a good cheese selection, good salad, grilled asparagus, etc.  I knew that Dominica would be pretty happy if I surprised her with that.

I got home and we continued watching Rick Steves’ Europe while we ate.  Dinner was awesome.

We  are pretty close, I think, to having a solid plan in Europe.

We stayed up way too late tonight considering how early I need to be up and on the road tomorrow.  I will only have four hours of sleep at best.  Argh.