Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 218, Down ~71lbs

I got up at six this morning and did about an hour of work from the house before heading into the office.  When I got outside to my car I discovered that there was actually snow and ice on it!  Not very much, but some.  I had not been aware that snow was in the potential forecast for today.  It was quite cold when I stepped outside so I was not totally surprised but early December is pretty early to be seeing snow in Texas.  Back home in New York it was expected to hit sixty yesterday and today it was raining.  Not very often that we have snow in Texas and it is a nice, autumn day back in New York.

I got in to the office nice and early and the morning was pretty slow.  Not very much going on at all.  At a quarter till eleven I went out to the cafe down the street for some coffee by the fireplace.  My iPhone is acting up today and neither IM nor email are working properly.  Everyone else seems to be having issues as well.  Not fun.  Now I am disconnected unintentionally.

I got back from the cafe just in time to be hit with a huge outage that took up my entire lunch period and into the afternoon.  I was barely off of that call when another one, supporting Europe, kicked in.  So my day was quite busy and spent almost entirely on the phone.  Exhausting.

This did make it easy for me to leave the office early today, though, which is nice on a Tuesday because that is kids’ night at Brookhaven and we like to get over there nice and early for dinner.  It is slower earlier on and perfect for the kids so that they are not so tired when we go.  Liesl really loves her Brookhaven buffet.  She finds it quite exciting to get to pick her food and eat pizza broccoli all night.

I got home at a quarter till five.  The kids were mostly ready.  Luciana was demanding that I hold her for a while so I held her while Dominica got Liesl ready.

We got to dinner nice and early, a quarter after five.  Liesl ate very well.  Pizza and broccoli and some of a cupcake.  Dominica and I both decided to just do the buffet tonight.  Seared mahi mahi with a chili lime sauce, grilled asparagus, salad bar, cheese board, etc.  It was pretty good.  The food is tamer on kids’ night since it is more families and the older kids tend to eat off of the chef’s table too.

Liesl is doing really well now with her potty training.  Last week when we came to Brookhaven Dominica had gotten Liesl dressed and totally forgot to put a diaper on her.  Liesl told Dominica that she wanted to use the potty partway through dinner and Dominica rushed her down to the restrooms fully expecting to take off a diaper.  Thankfully she did not tell her to just go in the diaper since it is important that she learn to go use the restroom when we are out someplace.  Dominica was very surprised to find Liesl in panties, not a diaper!

So this week, after Liesl did so well last week without any prep at all, Liesl is going out diaperless – except now Dominica is packing spare clothes and stuff just in case.  Last week had something gone wrong there would be nothing that we would be able to do.  Liesl used the restroom twice this week without incident!  She is growing up so fast.

After dinner we came home and I watched the girls for a while while Dominica went out and did some shopping.  We were pretty low on some household essentials so it needed to be done.  We had forgotten a few things when I ran out yesterday.

Once Dominica was home we spent the bulk of the evening working.  I put in a lot of time working on some Juniper routers and then spent a bit of time working on the DL385 G7 which is shipping to Toronto this week.  I can’t wait to get that bad boy racked and spun up.  That is some sweet kit.

Around midnight I managed to log into Dragon Age II and knocked out a couple of smaller side quests.  Nothing too major but I wanted to get some things done so that the story kept progressing.  I played for maybe forty-five minutes.  Towards the end Dominica came in and sat on the couch with me and watched me play for a little bit before we finally went to bed around two in the morning.

I’m going to be pretty tired tomorrow since I am getting up at six in the morning these days.

Medifast Status: Day 217, Down ~71lbs

I should have known that if I took the time to have a nice weekend that I would pay the price today, and I did.  What a day it turned out to be.

I weighed in this morning and thankfully was down a full pound.  It has been three weeks since I was last visibly losing weight so I am pretty pleased to see progress finally this morning.  Not very much progress, but something.  We have been suffering from giving in to snacking and holiday foods.  There is just so much food around the house.  And then we discovered Panda Express which is not the worst thing ever for the diet but we were going there way, way too often.  An occasional treat at best.

There was a threat of light snow this morning, but I did not see any.  It was a chilly day, nonetheless.  Snow was certainly an option.  The house was very cold and we have discovered that living in a house in Texas on a slab means that no matter what you do the floor is always very cold and you need to have something thick on your feet at all times.  My feet are aching today from how cold they are continuously.  The carpet helps a little.  Not much.

I worked from home for a little while this morning then ran in to the office a little after ten thirty.  It was a busy morning.

I came home for lunch and had hoped to get to play Dragon Age over lunch and wrap it up.  I had stayed up until one this morning thinking that I might be able to beat it last night but that didn’t happen.  The side quests kept tripping me up.  So I finally gave up on it thinking that I could come back to it today.  I fired it up, played for less than ten minutes while starting to eat lunch, but then I had to go do a call.  I knocked out one really small quest and that was it.

My lunch ended up being eaten over the course of three calls.  No breaks for me.  This was an exhausting lunch hour.

Back at the office it was relatively slow.

Dad sent me this link of the World’s Fifteen Best Cities In Which to Live.  So far I have only been to two of them: Toronto (15) and Ottawa (14).  Both of which I know very well, however.  I am surprised that neither Montreal or Halifax made the list, both of which I would likely choose over Ottawa and definitely over Toronto.  Not that Toronto isn’t awesome, I just prefer the other three.  Of the remaining thirteen cities on the list Dominica and I expect to be visiting Amsterdam (12), Bern (9), Geneva (8), Dusseldorf (5), Munich (4), Zurich (2) and Vienna (1) while we are over in Europe in a few months and we might stop by Frankfort (also tied for 5) while we are there too, but that one is less likely.  So at the end of our trip we might see eight more of the top fifteen for a total of ten.  I will have been to some pretty impressive places.  Considering that part of the goal of the trip is to determine areas in which we would like to live it appears that we are making some pretty good choices as starting points.

After work I stopped by Walmart and did some grocery shopping.  Just some quick stuff as we were out of some essential ingredients to being able to eat other food that we had in the house.  And Liesl was nearly out of her “purple chocolate milk” – Walmart brand Pediasure.

I got home, had a snack, played with Luciana for a little bit and settled in to work for the entire evening.  I worked until just after midnight.

Dominica had a really long day too and effectively worked all day.  We were both really exhausted when we knocked off around midnight.

Liesl is loving doing her advent calendar every night.  Every night she and Dominica open the calendar, read the night’s story then Liesl goes and hangs the little booklet for the day on to the Christmas tree.  She loves the Christmas tree and the ornaments.  She will sit in the living room, far away from us in the play room, and talk to the ornaments, organized them into like groups and just have the best time.  She organizes the ornaments into “families.”  It is really funny.

Luciana is getting up on her hands and knees now and is skooching backwards pretty well.  She is nearly ready to crawl and might be doing so any day.  She is so active and happy.  She is the happiest baby ever.  Just happy all the time.  She gets so excited when I get home that she just shakes.  It is adorable.  She is sitting up pretty well now and is finally tough enough to be able to handle playing with Liesl from time to time without us being terrified that Liesl is going to break her in some way – likely her arm as Liesl loves to grab Luciana’s hand and yank her around by it.

Hopefully tomorrow will be more relaxed.   I have my alarm set to get me up early so that I can actually make it in to the office at a reasonable time.

Medifast Status: Day 216, Down ~70lbs

I managed to sleep in a little today as well.  This weekend has been really nice.  No page outs from work, no big project needing my attention.  At least nothing that can’t wait for tomorrow.

The weather has been just amazing the last few days.  Texas rarely gets the cold, dreary weather that I love so much but since Friday we have been completely overcast, chill and non-stop drizzle with short interruptions of real rain.  It is wonderful.  We have to wear fleeces and wrap up in blankets – especially in the play room which is uninsulated and has half of its walls exposed to the outside and is all windows.  Being a slab floor also means that our feet are tremendously cold at all times.

The whole family spent the day in the play room.  We just stayed in and did nothing.  It was glorious.  I got a ton of time with my girls and we played Dragon Age II all day.  By the end of the day I was forty-one hours in to the game and nearly done with it.  I tried to stay up late to complete it but that ended up not being reasonable and I had to go to bed.  I hope to be able to finish it tomorrow.

Medifast Status: Day 215, Down ~70lbs

I have decided that this weekend is going to be my blow-off, video game intense, Dragon Age II weekend.  I slept in a bit today and then got up and went straight for the PlayStation.  I have nothing really pressing that requires my attention this weekend so I am going to just take it easy.  I am going to pay for this come Monday but it has been a really long time since I had a “video game weekend” and I am taking the opportunity while it is presenting itself.

I got in a ton of Dragon Age today.  I went from something like eighteen hours to thirty hours in the game.  Instead of being near the beginning of the game I am now heading solidly towards the end.

I watched the girls this evening for a while while Dominica went out shopping.  I got to do some cleaning too.  The house is looking much better.  The living room is all clean and vacuumed.

Medifast Status: Day 214, Down ~70lbs

Today was a slow day at work.  I had to go in early because of Non-Farm Payroll announcements so I was in the office at seven.  The NFP was good and America has a lot more people working this month that we had previously believed. That is a good economic indicator.

After the numbers were done the morning was nice and slow.  We are only a week away from the winter financial freeze so certain aspects of work are slowing down even as other people are panicked to get the final changes in before we “take a month off.”

I went home for a late lunch and decided to just call it a day and spend the rest of Friday at home with the family.  I still had to work but at least I was at home with them.  Since I went in early this morning and I have the deployments tonight it really is not an issue.

This afternoon was pretty slow at work but my deployments lasted a really long time, until around eight or so.  That was annoying.  So even while it was slow it was actually a thirteen hour day for me which is a bit tiring.

Being home I got to spend some time with Luciana who sleep through so much of my time at home.  Our schedules really do not mesh very well.  She wakes up just in time for me to get ready to go to work, she is often asleep if I come home for lunch and she goes to bed about an hour after I get home in the evening.  So it is really nice to be home during the day and get to see her a little.

This evening, once work was finally done, I got to start really playing Dragon Age II.  I was a few hours into it already and tonight got me to around the eighteen hour point.  I am really into the meat of the game now and Dominica is really enjoying getting to watch me play.  I have a feeling that she is going to skip playing it herself just because she has seen so much of it with me playing.

Liesl is really enjoying DA2 as well.  She loves to sit with me on the couch and watch or do her own thing.  We are getting a lot more time together now because of the game.  She calls it the “dinosaur game” and calls all of the bad creatures dinosaurs but she recognizes spiders, dragons and other nasties in the game and points them out.  It made for a nice evening.