Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 225, Down ~71lbs

I got up at six this morning and put in a few hours working from home before going into the office.  Work was very slow again today.  And the weather was great too, warmish but overcast and drizzly.

Dominica decided that she wanted to girls to go in and see Santa Claus at Brookhaven tonight so we made reservations for tonight there.

I went home for lunch and watched the girls while Dominica went out for an appointment.  Luciana slept most of the time.  I got some work done as Liesl was in a quiet “play by herself” mood.  She would come in and check in with me in the office every few minutes but was having a great time just being on her own.  She is very good at playing by herself.

Liesl is starting to pretend to write words now.  A big developmental step.  She knows that words are made up of letters and she wants to be able to write things.

All afternoon work was very slow.  This is great.  I’m mentally catching up and don’t feel so overwhelmed.

I left work at a good time, got home and helped Dominica to get the girls ready so that we could load up and head on out the door.  Our dinner reservations were for a quarter till six which does not leave a lot of extra time.

Dinner this evening was not in the Grille but was in the main building in the Garden Room or something like that out in the back by the pools.  It was a good turnout this evening.  Dinner was great too.  For us on the menu was seared sole in a rockfish shrimp sauce that was really good.  There was also this cheese and potato stack that we totally should not have been eating but could not resist in any way.  My dad would have loved that.  There was a really good cheese selection tonight too including an excellent one loaded with cranberries.

Liesl ended up being really shy when she went up to see Santa Claus.  Luciana thought that it was all great fun. Liesl decided to not talk and to hide her face nearly the whole time although she was somewhat excited to see Santa Claus since she had seen him on her train ride in Grapevine a few weeks ago.

Liesl is doing incredibly well with her potty training.  This is two second full week of going out to dinner on a regular basis without a diaper.  She has not had a single accident and has used the restroom each time that we are out.  It will not be long before she is sleeping without a diaper on.

After dinner we came back home.  Luciana was in bed almost straight away and Liesl was not far behind.  Both Dominica and  I had a bit of work to do so we spent the evening today that.  No shows or video games at all for us tonight.  She worked primarily on Christmas shopping and I worked on the server that needed to be built.  I am hoping that I can get that server shipped tomorrow to get it out of the house.  It is in the way and making it hard to clean because it is in the way.

Once this server is out of here, my next order of business is going to be to get the other servers moved into the server room and racked, even if the power in there is no yet ready for them to be powered on quite yet.

Medifast Status: Day 224, Down ~71lbs

Ah, the freeze has started.  This is the best time of the year.  The financial industry’s present to its employees – nearly a month of hardly any work to do.

It is dark and dreary today.  But warm.  It doesn’t seem like it should be raining but I keep seeing things wet everywhere so I am guessing that there are bursts of rain when I am not looking.

I had my first Medifast appointment today in nearly three weeks.  I’ve been so busy that I just was unable to get in there.  That an my new trainer there kept insisting on trying to schedule me on days that were unlikely to work so once we started missing appointments we just kept missing them.  I don’t know why she felt it so necessary to get me off of the proven time period that has been working for most of a year.

I’m not down any weight by my weigh in was positive with my water and muscle weight up while my fat weight is down.  That means that at least I am continuing to tone up even if I am not slimming down.  I was able to buy more Medifast food today which was quite the relief as we have been without the food that we really like for quite some time now and that has been making the diet nearly impossible to stick to.

I came home at lunch today and hung out with the family for a while after my Medifast appointment.  Dominica and I were very happy to have our food again.  Even Liesl has been craving a Medifast Smores bar.

One of the best things about the freeze is that I pretty much never get caught late in the office.  I’m not out particularly early, but I am able to get out at a nice time rather than dealing with lingering and late coming requests well into the evening.  So I am able to reliably get home and put in some time with the family.

Unfortunately I had a lot of work to do this evening once I got home so we did not have much free time to do anything.  Both Dominica and I spent most of the evening working and got very little time to do anything together.

My paycheck finally arrived today.  It has been a month since I have seen one and the checks that I have seen have been small because of the furlough that has been draining us since September.  We’ve now made it through the furlough and through the “missed paycheck” after the furlough and should be getting full checks again on a regular basis.  So tomorrow I get to start paying the bills again.  Pheww.

Medifast Status: Day 223, Down ~71lbs

It was not all that relaxing of a Sunday.  I had to work all day for the office and in my spare time I was cleaning up tickets, building a server and more.  We did manage to watch some more of How I Met Your Mother but not very much.

It was a nice day but not as relaxing as one would hope.  But today is the final day of the “working year” in finance and the freeze begins this afternoon.  So tomorrow is when the real relaxation kicks in.  Today is still a busy day.

I got a lot of work done today, but I can’t wait until tomorrow.  I am so looking forward to the freeze.

Medifast Status: Day 222, Down ~71lbs

Today was a mixture of work and watching How I Met Your Mother.  I am on call for the office this weekend and while there was not a ton of work there was a certain, steady amount.

There was some scheduled work for me to do today as well.  It was supposed to be handled by someone else but they didn’t manage to do it so I had to step in.  So instead of starting late, like around noon, and working into the evening like we are supposed to do on weekend I actually ended up needing to start at ten in the morning so it was actually a pretty long day for me.

We broke down and decided to get Panda Express for dinner this afternoon.  We have been crazing it.  So we gave in and I ran out and picked up our steamed vegetables, honey walnut shrimp and golden treasure shrimp.

Not much news for today.  It wasn’t a quiet day but very little happened of note.

Medifast Status: Day 221, Down ~71lbs

Today is one of my busiest days of the year.  I have been bracing for this all week.

I got up, showered and worked from home for about an hour before going in to the office at nine.  It wasn’t too bad this morning but that did not last for long. Work picked up as the day progressed.

John and I did manage to get away for lunch.  We drove out to Brookhaven for the lunch chef’s table.  It is Friday and they were doing a whole seafood lunch thing.  There was the salad station, some chipotle shrimp with noodles, tuna salad, crab cakes, fried mac and cheese, seafood chowder and a few other shrimp-themed entries.  It was quite delicious and I am very glad that I decided to come out to Brookhaven today.  And boy is it cheap.  Even for my guests it costs no more than going to Rockfish or someplace like that for lunch and they are quite reasonable as well.

After lunch the afternoon just took off into a frenzy of deployment preparations and then the deployments themselves.  What an exhausting day.  I got back from lunch at about two and worked until nearly nine in the office.  I have to work all weekend as well as technically the freeze does not kick in until Sunday afternoon and this just happens to be my weekend in the support rotation.  Lucky me.

I dragged myself home and helped Dominica to take care of the girls.  She was at her wits’ end from the girls driving her crazy all day without any break.  So I got home and helped to take care of them.

We are out of Medifast food, more or less.  We’ve been scraping the bottom of our food stores for the last week.  We are desperate for a restock of Medifast food.  We’ve been on an austerity budget and trying to buy as little food as possible which, at the moment, includes eating all of the Medifast meals that we don’t really like and, in many cases, skipping them altogether and just eating whatever is in the pantry.  At least we are doing a good job at cleaning out the cupboards but not having good Medifast food is making it increasingly difficult to stay on diet in any way as we are not getting the formulated protein that we need.