Sheep Guarding Llama

So our plans for Europe now include: Starting our trip by flying into London and taking the train to Nottingham where we will be hanging out and acclimating to Europe and the time change for four days.  While there we will have a couple of days of just staying in Nottingham and “doing nothing” and one or two days of me taking the train in to London by myself to go into the office.  Then from there we will be taking the late evening high speed Eurostar train from London to Brussels.

Instead of doing a full week or more in Belgium like we had been planning we are now, because we were able to make so many changes, limiting that to only three days there with one of those days being the day that I run SpiceCorps Antwerp.  From Brussels we will be heading to Koblenz, Germany on the train to give us a chance to see the Rhine on our first free weekend in Europe.  From Koblenz is where our plans drop off quickly.  We are not sure what we want to do after that point.  That leaves us with nearly a month of unknowns before we have some solid knowledge for the end of our trip.  We know that we are flying home from Lisbon and for safety we plan to be in Lisbon for the final three days of our vacation.  And we know that we are approaching Lisbon from Madrid.  So, basically, we have our entire first week nailed down as well as our final four days.  That leaves almost four entire weeks yet to fret over.

I went in to work this morning.  The sun was out and the rain has finally stopped.  It has been raining for two full days.  It is a little warmer today too.

I had a lunch meeting today that decided to meet at the Tilted Kilt in Lewisville.  So I drove up there and got a free lunch which was great.  This was not my first time visiting the Kilt but it was the first time getting food there.  I got the grilled salmon in whiskey cream sauce and it was surprisingly good.  I think that Dominica would really enjoy that.  Most of the menu is a little less calorie careful but the grilled salmon is pretty good.  I got a large Caesar salad as well.

After lunch was over Dominica needed me to swing over to the house so that I could drop off the credit card so that she could go out shopping today with the girls.  I ended up having some work stuff come up while I was at the house so I jumped on and started working and ended up getting “stuck”.  By the time that I was going to go back to work it was late enough that that really did not make very much sense.   So I stayed home and worked while the girls all went shopping.

I was wrapping up with work when Dominica got home.  She picked up dinner for herself at Panda Express while she was out so she ate that and we watched a few episodes of the first season of Lie to Me and hung out with the girls. It was a nice, relaxing evening.  We did not have too much going on.

At a quarter until midnight I got paged out by the office and I had to log in and work for an hour and a half on the phone.  Dominica went to bed and left me up to work on my own.  I was rather later than I would have liked when I managed to head off to bed.

I had been thinking about going out for a walk tonight but it turned out to be raining, again, so best that I did not go since I got paged out and it turned out raining.

I worked from home today.  The rain continued much of the day and it has been pretty cold.  One of our coldest days so far this year and it is the first day of spring.

It was a productive day at home, mostly.  I love staying home on rainy days so that I can get some time to enjoy the weather.

This evening we had reservations to go see the special Dallas Zoo show that came to Brookhaven Country Club.  We left home at five twenty.  The girls, well Liesl at least, were very excited.  Liesl was talking about going to see the zoo at the club all day.  She kept asking what animals were going to be there but as we didn’t know we had to placate her by selling her on the idea of it being a surprise.

We got to the club at a quarter till six which was perfect because it gave us forty five minutes to eat out dinner, which was very good, before the show was scheduled to begin.  Dinner was quite good.  There was poached salmon which even Dominica liked, eggplant Parmesan, fettuccine Alfredo, a very oniony salad and many items for the non-vegetarians as well.  We did pretty well.  Liesl liked that fish sticks were added to the kids buffet choices today too although she was unable to eat much of anything as she was so excited waiting for the zoo show to begin.

At six thirty I took Liesl in and she sat on my lap on the floor to watch the show.  She was so excited that she was bouncing upside down.  She did an excellent job keeping still and obeying the zookeeper’s instructions throughout the show.  She was quiet and mostly stayed seated.

They had a lot more animals than we would have guessed.  They had an owl, a South American armadillo, a two toed sloth, a large constrictor, a scarlet macaw, an American alligator and an African penguin.  Maybe they had more but those are the ones that I remember.  It was a really good lineup and all of the kids really had a good time.  It was a good show and a great change of pace.

It is events like this that make us so glad that we have switched to Brookhaven instead of La Cima.  This was a lot of fun for the entire family.  This is the third kids’ event that we have gone to there and we have missed some as well.  Liesl really enjoys the stuff that they do at these so this is perfect for us.  She is getting to be old enough to participate with the crafts and activities table that they set up on kids’ night as well.  Tonight she went over to the table and they helped her to make a foam elephant mask to take home and wear.  She loved that.

I wanted to go out for another walk tonight but, like last night, it was raining.  Probably best not to go out for a walk.

After getting back from Brookhaven Dominica and I spent the evening working hard on putting together our “final” itinerary for Europe.  We spent hours pouring over maps and train schedules and trying to figure out which parts of the trip make the most sense for us, how long to spend where, etc.  Every time that we do this our plans change dramatically but we are getting closer and closer to actually going to Europe so the plans are starting to solidify.  At this point our first week is “solid” and our final half week is solid as well.  We know those bits.  But the time in between is still very much in flux.  I’ll add more details on our plans tomorrow.

We have been wanting to go to IKEA for several weeks to get a new storage unit to put in our play room and just have not had an opportunity.  Things were slow this morning and so, spontaneously, we decided to make today a shopping day.  It took us a while to get out of the house so we didn’t get to IKEA at opening time like we had hoped but we did get there around ten which is not bad.

What prompted us to go shopping today was primarily Liesl getting up and telling us that she wanted to go toy shopping today.  I’m not sure that she has ever done that before.  So we figured why not.  IKEA does have some toys so it was a multi-purpose trip.

We had an early lunch as we love eating the Swedish foods at IKEA.  Very much a special treat.  IKEA does such a great job with their little cafe.

We found a ton of stuff that we really wanted while shopping.  We got a storage unit that we are going to use in the playroom to help with organizing the abundance of toys that are collecting in there.  That was our main reason for coming today.  We got a lot of lighting too.  We got a solar powered Chinese lantern for the atrium, some walkway lights for the back yard, coloured LEDs for under the bar, a new desk lamp for me, a print of a Picasso for the main hallway and a lot of soft storage organizers.  It was a very productive day.  Plus for Liesl we got three books and some stuffed animals that go with those books.

We were gone for many hours.  We came home and spent most of the evening putting the stuff together that we had gotten from IKEA.  We also hung the series of ink drawings that Dominica and I bought on our honeymoon in Nova Scotia eight years ago.  We have had them in the original packaging all of this time and have never hung them at all.  A week or two ago Dominica picked up some nice frames for them and we got them hung down the hallway tonight.  They look really good.  Hard to believe that we have finally put them up on the wall.  It is about time.

Of course, of the places that we have lived, Carrollton is proving to be, surprisingly, our most permanent.  The house in Geneseo was only so much longer our main home than Carrollton has been.  Geneseo has hung on for a long time as our all time primary residence.  Followed by Newark.  This home in Carrollton is already months more our permanent home than the house in Peekskill was.  And we knew that we were leaving Peekskill long before that.  At this point we are still arranging construction work on this house to not even start until late October.  By the time that the latest changes are done to this house we will already have been here for two years.

The storage unit in the playroom works really well.  It holds a lot of toys which is exactly what we have been needing.  The floor has been just completely covered with toys for months and it is ridiculous.  So this is really going to help.

What I am most excited about is the two kits of colours LED light strips that I installed this evening under the front of the bar going in to the living room.  We had been hoping that having these lights would help to add some accent colour to the bar since the front paneling has been painted bright white there the light has a lot of surface off of which to reflect.  We got the lights mounted and tested it out as it got darker tonight.  Wow, they are much more awesome than I had anticipated.  I was not ready for this at all.  They look amazing.  Brighter and more vibrant than I had anticipated.  We are going to get more of these for the interior of the bar as well now and we want to try getting some to put behind a new, transparent glass clock that we bought for the bar today as well.

This evening I went out for a late night walk.  I ended up doing about five miles.  It was a good walk.  Took me over an hour and a half.  I need to get back into the habit of walking if I am going to be able to take the weight off.  I am listening to the eighth book in the Stephanie Plum series from Janet Evanovich.  I just started it tonight after finishing book seven yesterday.

I had a horrible check in at Medifast at nine this morning.  I was up dramatically from last week.  The cheating on the diet must stop.  Last week I was at my all time low and if I work hard at it I can get this diet over and done but staying focused is key.  Dominica has really been off of the wagon and dragging me along with her.  It has really been a struggle recently.

This morning was pretty clear but the weather was supposed to turn on us today.  Texas is nearly as unpredictable as New York but I am far less prepared to read it.  Work was okay today.  I came home for lunch today and Dominica made a lean Medifast meal for us and we watched the first episode of Lie to Me.  Dominica has been telling me about this show for a while.  I like it, very much my kind of show.  Sadly I really did not want to get sucked into another television show; I have vastly too much going on to be watching television.

We all left work just a little early today because we were put under tornado watch in the DFW area and there was an expectation of hail.  I managed to get home before it got very bad.

After I got home we put in just a little time watching more of Lie to Me.  Liesl and Luciana were both asleep when I got home and Liesl slept for a long time.  Dominica said that Liesl had a bad cough and had not been feeling very well so had taken a nap.  Luciana got up like normal.

When Liesl awoke, around seven thirty, she was crying and crying from an ear ache.  She snuggled on my lap for a while until CareNow was able to see her.  So around eight thirty she and I drove to CareNow while Dominica stayed home to take care of Luciana who had gone to bed just before we left.

We ended up having a pretty long and unusual wait at CareNow. Liesl was pretty upset.  She was a little trooper and did a great job waiting as patiently as a little three year old girl can do but by the end she was quietly crying.  While we waiting I got to watch nearly the entirety of Disney’s The Princess Diaries 2.  At least it wasn’t a bad movie.  It helped to pass the time.

Liesl does, indeed, have an ear infection.  Just a mild one.  She she got a prescription and we left CareNow.  We tried to pick up the script on the drive back to the house but the CVS that we first visited was closed already for the night since it was five after ten.  So I decided that I would just come back out again after taking Liesl home to deal with it myself as Liesl really wanted to get home.  I stopped at McDonald’s on the way back and got a medium order of French fries for Liesl as a treat.  She was very happy about that.

I dropped Liesl at home and turned around and headed right back out to find the twenty-four hour CVS.  They were able to fill the prescription pretty quickly.  Then it was back to the house.

Liesl was up until nearly midnight tonight.  She was still eating her French fries, watching Dora the Explorer and snuggled with Dominica in a chair when I got back.  We gave her some medicine and pretty soon she was off to bed.  We read her a “new” book tonight that she had about animals but after reading part of it it was clear that we need to throw the book out.  It is horribly offensive with animals being brutally eaten and killed, commentary about animals needing to eat meat and other references that we don’t necessarily agree with in the first place and absolutely do not feel are appropriate for our three year old daughter to be subjected to.  Beyond the barely veiled agenda the book is pathetic anyway so we don’t feel bad destroying it.  We would donate it but we hardly want to encourage any other children to see this either.

The storm was raging like crazy all evening.  Liesl had fun running between the car and CareNow when we were outside trying to stay dry.  The wind was low so we were able to keep the windows open this evening even though tons of rain was coming down all night.  The thunder was really loud and kept waking Luciana up over and over again but she just laid in bed talking to herself until she fell back asleep so it wasn’t too bad.

Medifast Status: Day 316, Down ~77.5lbs (22.5lbs to go)

I had to be up at six this morning so that I could get in to the office for a super early morning global conference call.  I wasn’t able to get out of the house before Liesl awoke at a quarter to seven.  I have no idea why she was up so early but she was crying to go use the bathroom.  So I got her up, helped her to use the bathroom and then set her up in the playroom with some shows on Netflix.  She took her pillow and blanket out there and snuggled up with Madeline who was sleeping on the couch there.

Everyone else was asleep when I left the house.

And that is all that I know.  LOL.  I came back and found the above sitting, waiting to be posted in my system for a full year.  So I went ahead and posted what little bit I had here.  Oh well, can’t get every day.  I actually finished posting this one day on March 15, 2013.