Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 248, Down ~72lbs

I stayed home as today is the last work day of the freeze.  No requests all day.  Nothing at all.  I do have worked lined up for Sunday morning, however, as the freeze lifts tomorrow afternoon so, as always happens, someone begs me to work on Sunday so that they can get a jump on their projects.

This evening, at eight thirty, I went out to go to ballroom dancing lessons at the Hotel Intercontinental where our friend Chris is teaching the intro lessons.  I got out there but the lessons were canceled for tonight just as I arrived so I picked him up and we went up to Sullivan’s off of Trinity Mills where all of the dancers go after the lessons are over.  We were there too early so just hung out in the lobby for a bit.  The bar there is live band and twenty one and over only.

There was a good crows and we listened the band Chinatown play.  They were very good and I have them on my Facebook page now.  They played a good mix of music and I think that Dominica would really like it so I am going to try to get her to come out when they return here in mid-February.  Chris danced a bit, being a dancer.  I danced just a little but I am a little like a flailing walrus so am looking more for lessons than to really go out dancing although actually dancing would help with getting a few hours of exercise in so I plan to try that as well.

Sullivan’s is incredible handy for us as it is right down the street from our house.  I had no idea how close it was or that it even existed.  Nice place.

I got home not too late and we were off to bed pretty quickly.

Medifast Status: Day 247, Down ~72lbs

We called around to the regional Costcos and they told us that the Rug Doctor is not stocked so we will need to order it online.  So Dominica placed the order for our Rug Doctor today and hopefully we will have it next week.  We got the Pro X3 which is MSRP’d at $799.  The Costco price is $349.  Quite a deal.  Even a refurbished Pro (not X3) is $425.  This was the best deal that we could find on any Rug Doctor by far.  We are very excited.  We love having clean floors.

It is a quiet day.  I’ve been working on getting the new server racked in Toronto without any success yet.  A lot of my projects are currently waiting for that to get completed.  I am very hopeful that that will be done this weekend so that I can get to work.

I am terribly behind, yet again, on SGL.  I am doing my best to get caught up.  I am writing this on the seventeenth but I have had notes sitting on my desk at the office for two weeks with what happened each day so that I could provide accurate updates.

This week is the last week of the freeze so I am trying hard to spend time at home with the kids.

Medifast Status: Day 246, Down ~72lbs

I went in to the office this morning.  Nothing unusual to report there.  We were going to go with Jenn to Costco today to see about getting a Rug Doctor but decided that there was reason enough for us to join ourselves that we decided that we would just go on our own and join at the Costco three and a half miles from our house.

I left work a little before noon to run up to the house and pick up Dominica and the girls.  We drove out to West Plano and hit the Costco there.  We decided to try out the upper level membership as we are hoping to use Costco pretty heavily now that we have joined.  Their prices really are quite good.

The Costco did not have the Rug Doctor, or any Rug Doctor, that we had wanted so we will likely have to order that online.  We did some shopping while we were there and got some clothes, food and coffee.  Costco has the Donut Shop coffee that we drink with the Keurig at roughly half of the price that we pay at Walmart for the same coffee so that is awesome.  That alone will easily pay for our membership!  We just have to be diligent about buying our coffee there and not letting it run out.

I decided to just stay home after going shopping.  There is plenty to do at home and no reason to be in the office whatsoever.  There is nothing going on there at all.  I love the freeze.

Medifast Status: Day 245, Down ~72lbs

I got to sleep in just a little this morning because I wanted to go to the Denton County tax office and get the Mazda transferred from New York to Texas.  The office opens at nine, I believe, so I did not have to get up all that early to get in there.

The line was not too bad at the tax office when they opened this morning although the parking lot was completely full.  It took me about two hours to get everything done that I needed to do including getting my insurance switched from New York to Texas officially.  So now the Mazda is officially Texan.  Now that we have that done our next task is to get Dominica and my driver’s licenses switched from New York to Texas.  That requires more paperwork than I have at hand so I need Dominica to dig that up so that we can deal with that.  That is for another day and is done at the DMV rather than at the county tax office.

I finished reading “High Five” this morning and started reading “That’s Not In My American History Book” while I was waiting to get all of the paperwork done for the car.

I went home and ended up just staying there until after lunch since it was so late by the time that I was done getting the car taken care of.  Then I went in to the office this afternoon.

Medifast Status: Day 244, Down ~72lbs

Today is Monday but because of when the New Year’s holiday fell today is a day off from work.  Banks are closed today.  Yay!  Dominica and the girls are driving up from Houston this morning.

I did some more floor cleaning and general cleaning around the house to get ready for Dominica to come home.  The floor is really looking good in the living room now and I got the kitchen all cleaned too.  The house is at record clean levels.

I listened to a little more of “On the Road” but could take no more and decided to take a break from the book and listened to most of Janet Evanovich’s “High Five“, the fifth book in the Stephanie Plum novels.  These are very entertaining novels and one of the few “light” novels that I let myself read along with the Kinsey Milhoune mysteries of which I have read all but the latest.  Sadly by Audible version of “High Five” is only available in abridged so I get the much shorter version of the story.  I hate when they do that.  Normally both versions are available but for some of the early Stephani Plum novels there is no unabridged option.  It is only a few of the many books, at least.

Dominica and the girls got home pretty early on.  They made good time and had no issues on the drive – other than the car smelling of spilled milk laced with onions.  The car kind of reeks at this point.  Dominica has the car covered in baking soda but it is not doing very much to soak up the smell.  This is going to require a rather thorough cleaning project.

Dominica was really impressed with how great the house looks.  I did both a lot of organizing as well as a lot of actual cleaning.  Liesl loves having the living room empty so that she can just run around and use the space freely.  Now that Luciana is crawling having an expansive, clean floor surface will be important too.

We were lazy today and decided to just get Panda Express as our last horrah to our time off from our diets.  We watched some Hulu Plus and relaxed.  Finally at home, just our family.  Liesl has been ready to come home for some time.  For days she has been saying that she wanted to come home.  She misses her house, her routine and her stuff.  She has a lot of toys and when she is at home she regularly rotates through them so being away from home there is no way for us to bring anywhere near as many toys as she is likely to want to use during that time frame.

Liesl and I took advantage of the open living room floor to do a large Dora the Explorer floor puzzle together.  Liesl thought that that was great fun.  She loves puzzles and doing a large one on the floor was very cool.  It is a real puzzle so very hard for a three year old to do but she did surprisingly well, I think, in helping me to put it together.  She puts the pieces together herself and can match many of them.

Tomorrow I am back to work.  The holidays are over but we have one week of the freeze left so this week will be completely slow.  Probably the slowest week of the entire year.  I will be in the office tomorrow but may be home much of the week other than that.