Sheep Guarding Llama

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.

Medifast Status: Day 296, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

Today is dad’s first full day in Texas for 2012.  Now he gets the full Miller children experience.

I stayed home from work today so that I could hang out with dad and the family.  I ended up having a really busy day so did not have as much time to hang out as I had wanted but really dad is here to see the girls and Liesl absolutely demands all of his available time.

Dad helped to measure and look into options for blinds for our front living room windows.  We have three large, oddly shaped living room windows that face both the street and to the south meaning that they are our primary compromise for privacy as well as being our primary windows for daylight.  When we first moved into the house there were ugly, broken vertical blinds hanging there but when we painted we just ripped those down knowing that under no conditions were we going to be happy putting those back up again.

So today we looked at several options and finally decided on getting custom double cell blinds for those windows. We really want to get cell blinds to help with the insulation because the house just gets crazy hot in the summers and anything that we can do to improve that is going to make a really big difference for the quality of living in our home.  Last summer the house could not keep itself cool even with the house air conditioner running effectively around the clock and the portable air conditioner in the play room keeping it cooler right where people were sitting.

We already replaced the window in Dominica and my bedroom which was a big point of heat entry during the summer (also southern exposure) so we hope that that will help.  Getting good insulating blinds up in the living room and play room, we hope, will make a massive difference there.  None of our windows are well insulated at all and last summer we had no means of directly blocking the sunlight entering the house either.  The attic insulation is a tiny bit better this year too.  Fingers crossed.

We will be doing a few additional heat-handling projects before the Texas summer hits but the blinds are the big ticket item for this year.  We really need them to make a big difference.  Last summer was insane.

Medifast Status: Day 295, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

We were pretty tired this morning.  The last several days have really been exhausting as we tried to get the house ready for this week and then had the huge SpiceCorps even last night that went until one in the morning.

I had to go to the office today.  I definitely do not want to stay home the day that dad arrives in Texas, that would be a silly time to burn my “at home” time.  So I was in the office all day.

I went home for lunch and helped Dominica with some of the house prep.  There is a lot of clean up to do from the event last night.  That was a lot of people for our little house to handle!

Dad was scheduled to get into DFW on Delta around six so it seemed to just make sense for me to work late and to go directly to the airport from there.  My office is a bit closer to the airport than the house and if I went home I would just be driving in rush hour in time to get there, sit down and immediately leave.

Dad ended up arriving early and I was still in the office when he called!  Oops.  Normally it takes so long to get on the tarmac, taxi, disembark and get to the pick up area that I figured that I had lots and lots of time.  Nope.  Dad was already on his way outside when he called.  So I ran out of the office and drove out to the airport as quickly as I could.  From my office cubicle to Terminal E at DFW is about twenty-five minutes for me.

I picked up dad and we drove back home swinging in to Panda Express on the way.  I have a feeling that dad has been craving Panda Express since he left Texas nine months ago.

We took food back to the house and ate while sitting around the play room.  We did pretty much nothing tonight.  We are all very tired.  Dad especially after his flight.  It went well, though.  He made good time and had a moderate layover in Detroit.  I think that he is happy with the weather that was waiting for him in Texas.  It was really nice and it was snowing, I believe, in Detroit as he went through.

Medifast Status: Day 294, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

Dominica and I were exhausted when we woke up this morning.  The painting all weekend really took it out of us.  Today there is a crazy amount of cleaning to do now that the painting is done.  We were unable to really do any cleaning this week because of the painting so the house is actually is pretty rough shape.

I went in to the office this morning but planned on staying home to work this afternoon so that I could help with the immense cleaning tasks.  I came home at lunch but got stuck working the entire time that I was home and then it turned out that I was needed in the office and I had to rush back down to Irving.  Dominica was not very happy.  At least Maggie was planning on coming over early so that she could help Dominica with watching the girls to make it easier to clean the house.

I left work as early as I could and rushed home.  The house really looked amazing.  Dominica did an awesome job of cleaning today.  I immediately got to work digging out tables, cleaning the patio and doing other setup tasks for Dominica.  It was great getting some time to visit with Maggie.  We have not seen her in many months and she has had a gallbladder operation since the last time that we have seen her as well.

It was a mad dash to try to get things done in time for the SpiceCorps event tonight and people started showing up quite a bit earlier than expected and I was not able to get some things that I had wanted to get done, done.  Things like the video camera and streaming feed so that people could watch the event remotely.  It was quite stressful trying to get as much done as we did.

Joe brought over a projector and screen that he set up so that the guys from Unitrends who were sponsoring this evening would have that for their vendor presentation.  It was good that he did, having the projector kind of gave the room a focal point to reduce the “milling about” effect that holding the SpiceCorps in the house sort of engendered.

We had RSVPs for about fifty people and the real world turnout turned out to be roughly thirty four which is a very respectable number as well as a good percentage of those who RSVP’d.  The presentations went well – we had three tonight – and overall I think that people had a good time and the event appears to have been a success.  The use of the house seems to have gone over well.  I think that we will do that again.

The last of the stragglers were still hanging out until around midnight!  We had one casualty that needed to be escorted home so it was around one in the morning when I got back from delivering him back out into the country.

Tomorrow we will be busy trying to get the house ready for dad.  He arrived late afternoon to DFW.

Medifast Status: Day 293, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

It was grand to come out to the living room this morning and discover our house completely bathed in sunlight.  It feels like we just bought ourselves a whole new house!  I can’t believe what a difference the painting and cleaning has made.  This is awesome.  We were not planning on just how much the changing out of the blinds and the paint were going to alter the look of the house.  This was time and money well spent.

Today was a day of continued painting and a lot of it.  We got started straight away this morning and worked at it all day.  In between coats we worked on getting what parts of the house that we could ready for tomorrow.  I put in a lot of time today up in the attic.  The garage is looking much better with a lot of the stuff that was piling up in there moved up to the attic instead.  Now we can move around and find things, well some things, that we need.  The garage has been a major issue for us.  Getting stuff up to the attic is really critical.  It seems like half of our kitchen supplies remain out in the garage.

The painting went on late tonight.  We knew that leaving any for tomorrow would be a disaster.  We ended up painting until two in the morning!  But everything was done.  The entire living room is painted and there is enough time for the paint to dry before SpiceCorps DFW meets here tomorrow and that leaves the entire day for cleaning.