Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 303, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

My morning started off normal enough today.  I went in to the office and normal time thinking that it would just be a normal day.  Wrong.

On my drive in to the office I made a podcast on the drive using the Tascam digital recorder that I bought a few years ago on a drive from Texas to Philadelphia.  That digital recorder is awesome.  It really does a great job and really easily.  It was a pretty rough podcast and an internal use one, not something for posting on here, but it worked out well.  My short commute is handy for limiting the amount of time that I can spend on it.

As soon as I got into the office we discovered that our PBX was hacked and was making international calls.  It didn’t take long to get it locked down but it did not make for a fun day at all.  I spent the entire day working on lock-down methodologies and monitoring.  That was really annoying.

Work was pretty busy today and I was actually so busy that I ended up working right through lunch.  Not fun, that makes for a very long day.

Today was really just busy, nothing else to tell.

Medifast Status: Day 302, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

Eric is the big nine today!  I don’t think that I have forgotten his birthday since 1992.

I stayed home today so that I could coordinate getting dad to DFW to fly back to New York.  So we were home for a little while this morning but not too long as we had to leave before eleven to get him to the airport.

While I was out taking dad to the airport the new blinds arrived for the living room windows.  Perfect timing so that he wasn’t there to help us put them up.  🙁

Medifast Status: Day 301, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

I stayed home from work today as today is dad’s last full day in Texas so I wanted to make sure that I was able to visit with him.

I took dad up into the attic to show him the work that Art had done up there.  The last time that dad was here the attic was a disaster and unusable.  Now it is great.  Not finished like a room but tons of usable storage spaces, solid floors, etc.  It is a great attic.

While we were up there we started kicking around ideas of what we could do with the other half of the attic that had not been touched yet.  At first I thought that maybe putting in a “secret” office for myself might make sense.  Put a ladder somewhere like in Dominica and my master closet so that I could access it and have an office space tucked away there.  Then we had the idea that we could finish it, put in skylights and make it into a “secret lair” for the girls.  It is directly above their rooms and we could add a stairway in Luciana’s room for access.

The idea seemed kind of crazy as we were saying it but the more we thought about it the better of an idea it seemed.  It is wasted space as it is today.  We think that it might work really well for the girls.  It would give them just tons and tons of storage capacity and a place to put a “media center” that the could share.

So we went down and talked to Dominica about it and she thought that the idea was brilliant and that we should commit to moving forward on that straight away.  We also kicked around the idea of having Liesl and Luciana share a bedroom, this would be Luciana’s current room, and turning Liesl’s current room into a dedicated guest room.  Then the girls would share a sleeping space but have a two story room with tons of space in it.  It would make the house feel like we had another bedroom and be a lot more useful when people come to visit while giving the girls a lot more space and a means to get away from each other while in the same room too.  We are really liking this idea.  Better for the girls, better for the house.  Dominica has been hypothesizing that the girls will likely want to share a room anyway, at least during the years that we will be in this house.

For dinner tonight we went to Brookhaven for kids’ night.  Then it was quickly back home and we watched the fourth installment of Harry Potter.  By the end of this trip dad has now seen half of the Harry Potter movies and he was starting to get into them.  He even wanted us to wait to watch the last four until we could watch them all together.

I’ll be home tomorrow as I am coordinating getting dad to the airport to return to New York.

Medifast Status: Day 300, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

Wow, day three hundred on Medifast.  It really does not seem like I started so long ago, but I guess that I did.  I’ve been dieting for Luciana’s entire life!

I was in the office today.  I had to get up and go in early-ish because I had my Medifast appointment this morning at nine in the morning.  So I went there before going in to the office.  That actually works pretty well so I think that I am going to be moving my appointments usually to early Monday mornings now.

After my appointment I swung in Panera next door to get some coffee as I did not have any this morning yet.  I got a free birthday pastry too, which I totally should not have, but it is for my birthday.

I picked up Panda Express on my way home and as soon as I got there we all settled in to watch the second installment of the Happy Potter movies, The Chamber of Secrets.  This time we watched with the subtitles on which made a huge difference.  It was also easier to follow since dad had now seen one of the movies already so had the basic premise of what was going on.

After we finished the first movie we decided to go straight on to the next installment, movie three The Prisoner of Azkaban.  Liesl hung out with us through all of the movies and, for the most part, really enjoyed them.  She really loves watching the Quidditch matches.

After the second movie it was pretty late so it was time to be off to bed.

Medifast Status: Day 299, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

Today is Sunday and my last open day at home while dad is down visiting.

Dad spent a bit of time today working on our furnace.  We know that it has problems and he was investigating to see what could potentially be done about the issues with it being unable to keep up with our air conditioning needs during the winter.  He took it all apart and did a bunch of investigation.  Overall he determined that it seems to be working just fine and there just isn’t enough air conditioning power to handle the load that our house demands.  He did do some work on the unit so maybe it will work a little better.

For dinner this evening we went out to Rockfish in Las Colinas.  We had dinner and had meant to go out shopping at Fry’s after dinner because dad wanted to see this place that everyone talks about but the girls were very tired and were not going to be happy being out any longer so we bailed on that idea and brought them back home instead.

This evening we convinced dad to give Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone a try on BluRay.  He has never seen any of the movies or read any of the books and had only the vaguest idea of what they were about.  So we settled in and Liesl joined us for the rather long movie.  Dominica popped popcorn on the stove for us to eat while we watched.

We made the mistake of not having closed captioning on for this movie which made it really hard for dad to follow – mostly because Liesl insists on making noise all of the time and it is pretty much impossible to hear half of anything that you watch over her.

Overall dad liked the movie.  He didn’t love it or anything but he seemed to enjoy it.