Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 195, Down ~70lbs

Today is the final day of my class so I spent it doing the last minute wrap up stuff for my term paper.  I am going to be so happy when this is finally completely done and I don’t have to think about it anymore.  This has been unnecessary stress that I just don’t need and a lot of time of not getting to spend time with my family for no good reason.

Medifast Status: Day 194, Down ~70lbs

Sadly my weekend is spent doing homework rather than relaxing.  This is the final weekend of my class at RIT and the final term paper is due tomorrow.  This is the term paper that has been such a nightmare for the class – even though the paper itself was trivial to produce.  This is what I hate about college, you put in all the effort of making something good and useful and instead create something awful and pointless.  It trains you to be bad at things and to expend way too much effort in doing so.  At least eighty percent of the effort and stress in this class is caused by class issues and cheating students.  There was no material to learn and the content of the class was nonexistent.  There was no reason whatsoever for the class to be challenging in any way.  And yet it was overly stressful.  I am so not happy.

So the bulk of this weekend was spent working on the term paper.  I had to do quite a bit of work on my section, help out the other team member and then completely, totally do every single word of the project for the other team member.  I have now, at the last assignment of the semester, written every group project word that she has turned in for the semester.  Every single thing.  This is why I hate group projects in university.  It is a game of academic chicken – the person with the most to lose will lose every time.

I spent a bit of time on the phone with my professor complaining that she set up the class to hide cheating and to be as distant from reflecting real world work as possible.  I am living with how RIT has allowed this class to exist and this is not the first class like this that I have had there.  RIT is so completely amateur compared even to community college.  It’s the most pathetic educational experience I have ever encountered.  It quite literally is like having to go through high school again but with worse teachers, worse students and far more cheating.

Medifast Status: Day 193, Down ~70lbs

Today was my major weight loss day.  I weighed in throughout the day and kept losing every time that I would weigh again.  It was awesome.  Not only was today my big drop day but it was also my check in with MediFast so I got official credit for my lowest weigh in as well.

I went to my MediFast appointment in the early afternoon and weight in a full, even seventy pounds down from my starting weight at MediFast (then there are the extra six pounds that I lost before starting – so seventy six is my total number.)  I feel much better about my diet now.

I spoke with Brookhaven from the office and set up an appointment to go over there and get an official tour, more information and discuss membership.  So I left work as soon as I was able, ran home and picked up the family and ran to Brookhaven.  Liesl was worn out and already asleep when we got there so she napped on a sofa in the main Brookhaven building for a while.

After looking at the plans and facilities we decided to give Brookhaven a try.  Dominica is pretty happy to be keeping our country club membership.  We use it extensively and we are hoping that by being here rather than father away at La Cima that we will be able to get much more out of our membership than we were previously.

It was late and we were tired once we signed all of the paperwork so we decided to just have dinner at Brookhaven.  Our third day in a raw and for those of us who only eat one meal a day that is quite a feat.  Tonight is the first dinner on the new menu so we were among the very first to get to try it out.

Dinner was excellent.  I had their Classic Cobb salad to which I have a feeling that I am going to become quickly addicted.  Dominica decided to get it as well.  It comes with chicken but we just substitute grilled salmon and have the bacon removed.  It is delicious.

At the end of the day we feel pretty good about our decision to join Brookhaven.  We are “One” members so we get some pretty extensive benefits – much nicer than the “Plus” benefits that we were getting at La Cima.

Medifast Status: Day 192, Down ~67.5lbs

Normal work day for me.  This evening, after being impressed with the overall feel from Brookhaven, Dominica and I decided that we would go over there on our La Cima membership and have dinner so that Dominica could get a feel for what the place is like when they are not doing a special event.  So we just went over for dinner. Normal, Thursday night dinner in The Grille at Brookhaven.  We figured that this would give us a good idea of what membership would actually be like.

It turned out that tonight is the very last night of the old menu at Brookhaven.  This is the menu that I’ve seen since I first started coming to Brookhaven.  So Dominica only just barely got a chance to see it and the new menu rolls out tomorrow at lunch.

We enjoyed our dinner and got a small tour of a bit of the complex.  Dominica got to see the pools, The Grille, the outdoor seating and firepits and that sort of thing.  We are pretty confident that we want to join at Brookhaven.  Our membership at La Cima expires in one week so we need to decide fairly quickly to keep our ClubCorp membership from lapsing.

Medifast Status: Day 191, Down ~67.5lbs

Normal work day today.  After work I ran home and picked up the family.  Jen and Tamara had asked us to go to the Taste of DFW with them so we decided to go.  We do love food events and a major one that is free is the best kind.

We were late, but not too late, getting to the event at Brookhaven.  The Taste of DFW is a country club culinary competition where country club members from around the DFW gather to taste and vote on the best food in the country club circuit.  There were maybe a dozen country clubs represented.

The food was awesome and we had a really nice time.  We ran into a friend who used to work at La Cima but is now married to the general manager of one of the other clubs.  We spent some time with her talking about the issues that we have been having at La Cima and she made some introductions on our behalf at Brookhaven which was both our host and our nearest to home country club.  Brookhaven is in Farmer’s Branch just under ten minutes from our house.

We are pretty sure, after talking to the club and getting pricing information, that we are going to make the decision to ultimately stay with ClubCorp but move out of the business clubs and into the country clubs.  Brookhaven looks like it is going to be much, much more our style than La Cima.  Brookhaven really is kid friendly and has a lot more facilities for us.  We are not sure if we want to join the gym there or not but that they have one is really awesome.  We will be seriously looking into that.

We have not made any decisions yet but we are going to think long and hard about Brookhaven.  The raw cost is more but the benefits are much better than La Cima and the biggest thing is that it is so close to home and family friendly.  The effort of going to Brookhaven is a fraction that of going to La Cima.  And instead of having garage parking that is a five minute walk from the venue or really expensive valet parking that leaves your car outside we can just pull up to the front door, drop off Dominica and the kids and I can just park in a normal parking lot.  No effort at all to park.  That alone is a major feature.

The whole competition was really nice.  Unfortunately there was a very limited supply of food items for Dominica and I and far, far more limited for her as much of the seafood was stuff that she does not like to eat because of the texture.  So she was pretty much limited to a couple different soups.  But they were some amazing soups.

Our favourite meal of the evening was Oakmont’s butternut squash and chunked apple soup.  It was amazing.  We all had several helpings and pretty much our entire table, which consisted of the La Cima representation as well as two Brookhaven members, voted for it.

The concept of the competition is a neat one.  It gives the country club set an opportunity to have some exposure to other clubs and see what they have to offer and get an introduction.  We are much more likely to take a trip to eat at other clubs after an event like this.  Although our food discounts at our own club are so dramatic that it is hard to justify going to any other country club without the discount except on the days when our own club would be closed.  That is the one thing that I wish that they would change – more encouragement to use the other country clubs, at least once in a while.  There is way too much focus on your one local club when these have an opportunity to work together as a local group.