Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 274, Down ~74.5lbs (26lbs to go)

I am feeling much better today and went in to work this morning.  I held back and worked from home for about an hour to give myself time to feel sick before making a final determination but by nine thirty I could tell that I felt fine and was in the office by around ten.  I often don’t feel sick when I first get up so giving it an extra hour often gives me a chance to figure out if I am going to be sick or not.

I came home at lunch, a little late knowing that I was going to be at home a little late, and did one phone call after another for a couple of hours.  It was a crazy mid-day for me.

At two Dominica had an appointment at the salon so I was home watching the girls for what we thought would only be twenty or thirty minutes but turned into over an hour putting me into a bit of a rush to get back to the office when she returned.

The office was dead this afternoon and Dan and I decided to make a run to Centennial on the Northwest Highway to stock up on bar supplies.  I have a pretty complete set of the more traditional base items for a bar but need the schnapps and liqueurs often used for flavouring.  Without them so many of the drinks that people expect a bar to be able to make just cannot be done.  It is rather amazing how many drinks this includes.  You need far, far more different types and specialty drinks to make so many everyday cocktails.  I never realized.  At least all of the stuff that I need now is the really cheap stuff.

I went back to work but everything was dead so I went home at a good time.  I swung into Brookhaven on my way home and grabbed dinner to take home.  That was quick and easy.  It is too bad that we cannot eat potatoes because today’s chef’s table was the baked potato bar that looked awesome.

We watched a couple episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise this evening.  Now that we are into the normal  episodes it is a little bit better than it seemed to be in the pilot but only a little.  Overall the show is weak compared to its predecessors and is not grabbing us much at all.  Dominica is really not into it.  I am only moderately interested.  It just lacks something that TNG and Voyager had.

Medifast Status: Day 273, Down ~74.5lbs (26lbs to go)

I stayed at home today after going home sick from work yesterday halfway through the day.  I did feel somewhat better today but not well enough to go in to the office and sit there being sick all day.  There was no reason to do that.  Yesterday afternoon was the only time that I felt really, completely awful.  Today it is more of a slight sinus infection with eye irritation.  I am sure that I will be all cleared up by tomorrow.

The weather has been just crazy awesome this week.  We opened the windows yesterday and are even leaving them open at night.  It is February and we are getting fresh air in the house.  Amazing.

FireFox 10 came out today.  I already have it installed.  So far… I can’t tell a difference.

I put in some time paying the bills today.  We are starting to get caught up after the furlough of the fall.  It is painful but we are getting back on our feet.

This afternoon Oreo had a vet appointment.  His vet is happy with his progress and he is going on to a very different medicine regimen now.

Dominica did not feel like going anywhere today but I wanted to get dinner from Brookhaven so I drove down there and got the buffet (chef’s table) for Dominica and I and the usual kids’ selection for Liesl.  Liesl always gets cheese pizza, broccoli and a cupcake.  For us tonight it was creole style fried fish and fried green tomatoes and giant salads with blackened shrimp.  In reality we should have foregone the fish and tomatoes and just gotten even larger salads which were healthier and absolute delicious.

Tonight we began watching Star Trek: Enterprise.  We only watched the first episode which, as expected, was a double header.  We ate dinner while we watched.  It wasn’t bad, the premise is that this series takes place one generation prior to the original series which is kind of interesting to see the take on “how it all began.”  The first episode failed to really grab us, though.  It doesn’t have the same feel that made TNG and Voyager so good.  We will give it a chance but it isn’t looking to be so much a classic as a “for fans only” kind of series.  This is our last series of Star Trek.  After we work through these ninety six episodes we will have seen every episode of every Star Trek series.  Each series, at least at one point, watched completely in order from beginning to end.

We are kind of hard core like that.

Medifast Status: Day 272, Down ~74.5lbs (26lbs to go)

Finally down another pound and just in time to go to my Medifast appointment this morning.  I was supposed to have an appointment there on Friday but I could not make it as I was home sick that day so I had it today instead.  I hit a new low weight on my weigh in this morning at home and matched it when I got in to Medifast around lunch time.

I was in the office this morning and was sneezing quite a bit.  Before I left to go to Medifast Dan said that I sounded sick and that I should be staying at home.  Once I went home for lunch I was feeling worse and worse and decided that I needed to stay home once I got there.  Dominica took one look at me and said, “You look awful!”  I could barely keep my eyes open due to the heavy sinus irritation going on.

So I worked from home all afternoon which was nice as I got more time with the girls although it would have been much better had I not felt so awful.

We finished Star Trek: Voyager today.  We both felt that the double-length final episode was rather anti-climactic and not a good ending for an otherwise awesome series.  I’m not sure if Dominica feels that Voyager kept up with The Next Generation but I would certainly rank it as being competitive with that series and, in some ways, it was superior to it.  Without a doubt, Voyager was the spiritual successor to TNG in a way that Deep Space Nine completely failed to be even though DS9 was of a closer era and shared more staff and crew.  TNG and Voyager really feel like they “go together” whereas many of the other series including the original each seem to stand mostly on their own and are disconnected from these two that seem to almost act like one, long series that simply switched from following one ship to anther halfway through its run.  To TNG fans I highly recommend taking the time to watch Voyager.  It is available on Netflix so few people have any excuse for missing it now.

Medifast Status: Day 271, Down ~73.5lbs (27lbs to go)

Today was a mix of trying to get caught up on my backlog of work and getting in family time.  I used Dominica’s workstation much of the day so that I could stay out in the living room with the girls rather than hide in my office.

Since we finished watching all that there was of How I Met Your Mother yesterday, today we moved to watching Star Trek: Voyager as we are on the final season and very near the end of the show.  Only a few episodes left to go and that entire show will be over and done with.  We got up to the final episode today and just have the very last one to watch and that will conclude the entire fourth series of Star Trek.  After this only Star Trek: Enterprise remains for us to watch and we will have seen every episode of Star Trek ever.

I mixed some drinks today.  One of my first real tests of my bar tending skills.  A friend of ours who used to work in IT but now makes signage and other swag stuff (I have no idea what that stuff is called, I just call it all swag – printing on things for marketing) came over and is helping us figure out what to do about getting some lighting, shelves and a sign for the bar.  It is going to be really cool when we are all done.  We need to buy bar stools soon too.  Right now everyone just has to stand at the bar which can be awkward.  Once we have stools it will be a halfway decent place to work from a laptop too.

Medifast Status: Day 270, Down ~73.5lbs (27lbs to go)

Dominica had wanted me to go out and to do some shopping for bar supplies last night but it was late and I did not feel like going out so we postponed it.  We weren’t going to be using anything last night so it didn’t really matter.

This morning I got up and went out first thing in the morning and drove up to Centennial up on Parker and Josie which is brand new.  I’ve never driven that far up Josie before to the region of Carrollton known as Hebron.  It is like wilderness up there.  Nothing but fields.  Very strange.

The new Centennial that just opened there is awesome.  Hardly anyone using it as it is so remote so parking and everything is really easy.  I spent quite a bit of time shopping and ended up with rather an impressive lineup for our bar including nearly everything that we could possibly need for mixing drinks.  It was rather a sizable haul that I brought in this morning.  We have gone from being severely understocked to incredibly well stocked in one fell swoop.

I am really happy that we found such a nice liquor and wine store so close to the house.  We thought that we had to drive a really long way to find one which is what we have been doing previously.  This is very close and very convenient – no tollways, no traffic and no crowds.  Not to mention it is in the country rather than in a rough part of town.

I came home and was home for a few hours.  Today is our relaxing day.  Dominica is still recovering from her bought with strep throat but is feeling mostly better today.  She should be right as rain by tomorrow.

Dominica sent me out to do some additional shopping at Target in the early afternoon.  We needed some food items and bar supplies like a jigger, strainer and hand juicer.  While I was out I ran over to Tom Thumb to grab some produce and swung by Centennial again to fill in the gaps on what we had already bought.  I had missed a few things once we had done an inventory.  We are well stocked now with items like Cointreu, Triple Sec, vodka, gin, vermouth, cognac, Canadian whiskey, scotch, Irish whiskey, rye, bourbon, tequila, sloe gin, rum, flavored rums, spiced rum, liqueurs, etc.  Enough to make most anything.  It is truly amazing how much you have to have in order to be able to mix drinks for people.  Just a set of basics is an onerous amount of alcohol.

Add to that the mixers that you need on hand.  We have Sierra Mist, ginger ale, Mountain Dew, Pepsi, Coke, tonic water, seltzer, club soda and cranberry juice.  Plus then there is grenadine, lime syrup, limes, lemons, oranges, bitters – the list goes on and on.

This afternoon I spent almost entirely with Liesl and Luciana.  We hung out and played, read and snuggled.  It was a great day and the weather was amazing too.  Dominica and I finished watching the sixth season of How I Met Your Mother and, as of this evening, we are now completely caught up on that.  Nothing more for us to watch on Netflix until the seventh season comes out which will likely be a while since it is airing currently.  They have already been picked up for an eighth season so there is a lot more to watch in the future.