Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 171, Down ~63lbs

I slept in a little this morning but only a very little.  I got up and started working for the office before jumping in the shower to get ready for SpiceWorld.  When I got in the shower is when I looked down and realized that I had been “branded” at Coyote Ugly – I had a large heart on my chest with “Jordyn” written in it in permanent marker.  Now that was pretty surprising.  I did not remember that at all.

SpiceWorld was a blast this morning.  It is awesome now that I’ve been here for three years because there are tons of people that I get to go back and see.  The first year was very much “meeting” new people for the first time and I was there by myself so I had to meet everyone that I was going to hang out with.  The second year I knew a lot of people already and had a ton of people who went with me as well.  This year I really just seem to know almost everyone.

Bob right away came up and had to get a picture of the heart.  There wasn’t much left to see after the shower but he got a picture and posted it online in the community.  So I was pretty famous for that before the conference really even got going.

Everyone was really surprised to see how much weight I had lost.  I’m used to it and I really do not see myself as being much thinner than I was a year ago but just one person after another mentioned it to me and some people even didn’t recognize who I was who knew me from previous conferences.

I spent much of the day running between the conference and my hotel room, which was only feet away, to work from my laptop as it was easier than bringing it into the conference itself and trying to work from a presentation session.

Lunch was quite good.  The AT&T Executive Training Center really does an awesome spread.  I was quite impressed.  Overall I was exceptionally impressed with the venue this year.  I liked the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema the last two years but this is definitely a significant step up in quality compared to that.  The conference felt larger but not nearly so cramped.  There are places to go and sit, places to work, more rooms for more sessions, enough room to actually get to see the vendors and nice places outside to go enjoy a drink or snack.  The training rooms were really nicely done too.  I hope that they use this venue for a while.  And being walking distance to hotels is a huge factor.  The Alamo is so remote that it is extremely cumbersome to do anything there.

This evening’s activities were out at the Salt Lick which is a Texas BBQ place far outside of town.  Had I realized where and what it was, I would have just skipped.  The bus ride out to the Salt Lick was about forty five minutes and that long on a warm, rocking bus does nothing to make you feel good after a long day at a conference.  I was pretty worried about the drive back once we finally arrived.

The food was purely meat.  Not a single thing that I could eat.  There was corn on the cob but I’m not supposed to be eating corn on my diet and that was pretty much it.  From the Texans they all seemed to be really impressed with the meat.  From the New Yorkers the consensus seemed to be that it was alright but certainly not up to par with barbecue in New York or elsewhere.  It is hard to say if it is a difference in preference or if New York barbecue is just the superior.  What sets the groups apart is that New Yorkers tend to eat BBQ in both places and compare but very few Texans eat NY BBQ – and avoiding the unknown implies that you are convinced that it will be better and you just don’t want to find out.  The meat did not look very appetizing as meat goes, I can tell you that.  It would remind you of a firehouse fund raiser back home.

What was interesting at the Salt Lick were armadillo races where I got to pet my first armadillo in person – I’ve seen them in the wild living in Texas but have never touched one – got to see people riding the mechanical bull and they had live karaoke.  Good entertainment stuff although it was pretty chilly outside and being so far from the hotel and being basically an all outside venue meant that people didn’t have access to jackets and stuff from back at the hotel.

So when a friend with his own car was leaving Salt Lick early I hoped in and got a nice, quick ride back into town.  I got back and hit the bar in the hotel with one other SpiceHead who was also escaping early and had a nice, healthy salmon salad.  We talked for probably an hour or two.  We had a good time.  I’m glad that I skipped the main event.  You really miss out on the one on one time at a lot of those functions from the noise and commotion.

After there was no one left from SpiceWorld around I left the hotel and walked down to sixth and hit Touche’s for a couple of hours.  I just hung out down there on my own.  It is Thursday night so the place is packed – just wall to wall people.  I met and had drinks with several random people.  Austin is a very social town.  It was fun but a very quiet night.  At two I walked back to the hotel and called it a night.

Medifast Status: Day 170, Down ~63lbs

I had to go into the office this morning and get as much work done as I could.  I am into my insanely busy stretch that is going to last for a few weeks.  I am going to be exhausted when this is all said and done.

At noon Dominica drove Andy down to the office and he piled in to the Mazda with me and we hit the road to drive down to Austin.  It was a nice day for a drive and Andy got a chance to really see Texas out on the open road.  He had his camera at the ready taking pictures as we went.  He got a lot of roadside Texas.

The drive down was nice and we got a chance to really hang out.  This was the first that we had really gotten any time to hang out together.

We got to the AT&T Executive Training Center and I got into my room, no problems.  It is a nice room and it has a view of the courtyard where the SpiceWorld conference will be so that is very nice.  I like being able to easily keep tabs on what is going on in the conference like this.  So completely different from the last two years.

Then I drove Andy down to the Omni downtown where he is staying.  We got him checked in and then he returned to the AT&T with me to hang out until it was time for the beginning events.  We had a bit of time to kill because the entire strategy today was to get to Austin early during “lunch” set up and work from the hotel for the afternoon and then catch up with the SpiceWorld kick off events later on.

At four thirty Andy walked downtown to meet up with the SpiceLeader dinner at Frank or something like that.  I was not clear as to whether or not I was invited to this event and not having gotten a formal invitation I felt like I would be crashing to actually just show up so since I still had work to do I stayed at the hotel and worked until just after seven.  Then I walked downtown to the warehouse district myself and joined the real kickoff party at Six.

After brief hellos when I first arrived I actually ended up going up to the third floor and hanging out with a smaller party going on up there for much of the evening.  That ended up being a really good time and I managed to hang out with some really cool people that under normal SpiceWorld circumstances I probably would not have gotten a chance to hang out with.  It was fun and relaxing.

After the party on the top floor wound down I came down and hung out for maybe an hour or a little less in the main party area with Grey, Andy and some of the other long timers.  John arrived quite late and was just ready to go out when everyone else was calling it a night.  So John and I went out for dinner and drinks with the girls from Unitrends – no need to make an early night of it at SpiceWorld!

We found a good place for food.  Austin is one of the few places where you can actually eat late without much of a problem.  It is actually incredibly wise for the vendors to hang out late and actually do the party activities with the attendees because the most connected and influential attendees are spending time with each other during the off-hours of the conference.  SpiceWorld is dramatically more social than normal IT conferences.

After dinner the four of us went to Touche’s.  It was at Touche’s on the first night of SpiceWorld 2009, two years ago tonight, that I first managed to get a Flaming Dr. Pepper.  We ordered a round of them since the girls had never been to Austin before and this was there chance for the real experience.  The girls did their Flaming Dr. Peppers and headed back to their hotel so that they could crash for the night.

All this time I have been watching Katie’s flight status.  She was supposed to be getting in around eleven and had a shuttle to take her to the hotel.  She was hoping to be able to join us at the first bar before the party ended.  No such luck.  Due to heavy rain delays in New York she has been on the tarmac at JFK for hours.  So since she was not going to be in any time soon John and I stayed at Touche’s for a while.

Katie’s flight was just getting later and later and she was not expected to get into Austin until nearly two in the morning.  So from Touche’s John and I went on briefly to Coyote Ugly.

After Coyote Ugly John went back to his hotel and I started back to mine.  I had a hard time getting there, though, as I was unsure of exactly where on sixth that I was and I first went south instead of north and then when I finally went north I did not realize how far east we had been in downtown and I went the wrong way to get back to my hotel.  All in all I’m guessing that I walked nearly four miles.  At least I managed to get some exercise.

By about halfway back Katie was at the hotel and emailing me to see where I was.  At least I was on email so we knew what was going on and I knew that she had managed to get in and she knew that I was walking around Austin getting some exercise.  It was not cool out either.  It is much warmer in Austin than in Dallas.

By the time that I finally called it a night it was roughly five thirty.  Welcome to SpiceWorld!

Medifast Status: Day 169, Down ~63lbs

I was in the office this morning.  Dominica and Andy tried to come up with “touristy” things to do in Dallas during the day as this is really Andy’s only chance to see Dallas and North Texas but they were not able to come up with anything that they wanted to do so they just hung out at the house all morning.  Pretty boring.  This is Andy’s first day in America and he spends it at the house.

For lunch Dominica, Andy and the girls came down to the office and picked me up and we went over to La Cima for lunch.  Lunch was fine.  It took a while for us to eat today.  We were in the dining room but did the buffet.

After lunch I looked at the club calendar and realized that the SpiceCorps event for tonight was not on the schedule.  I’ve had the space booked for weeks and as I was holding the SpiceCorps group at La Cima on behalf of La Cima’s Young Executives group who had asked us to find ways to bring in professionals who might be interested in club membership I figured that they would be going out of their way to ensure that everything went off smoothly and that people were on hand to provide membership information or whatever was needed.

It turns out that my event for tonight was “overlooked.”  The private event coordinator said that she had known about it but… there was no explanation as to why it was cancelled.  The party that had the main room appears to have decided that they wanted that room and so we were bumped.  Not good.  And not only that, but after I helped to arrange an event for La Cima, they have the gall to tell me that I had arranged the event through the wrong person!  I arranged it through the person who asked me to arrange it.  It is not my problem if they are not able to cover their tracks well when double booking a venue.  Totally unprofessional.  I spent over an hour at the club after lunch was done just trying to get this sorted out.

I got back to the office and Dominica and Andy went for a drive through Dallas so that Andy could at least get a chance to see the city while he was here.  It is America’s fourth largest metro area, after all, so it has to be somewhat interesting.  So he did some picture taking from the car.

I was only at the office for a little bit when the manager from La Cima called and we spent about an hour and a half on the phone arguing.  So much time was spent trying to explain why I was disappointed with La Cima’s changes, behaviour, professionalism, venue and abhorrent treatment of existing members in favour of theoretical new members that I did not even have enough time to make it up to the house, pick up Andy and get back down to La Cima for the SpiceCorps event.

I ran up, grabbed Andy as quickly as I could and rushed down to La Cima.  We were only about fifteen minutes late but the SpiceCorps was already in full swing.  Of course, causing me to be late on the day that they had screwed up the venue and had decided that they would rather have me leave than treat me equally to other members (long story.)  Basically their picking and choosing of pricing and favours is more important to them than loyalty.  I was completely disgusted and told the manager that I would leave the decision to him – if he wanted me to stay then all he had to do was do the right thing and treat existing members as equals to new or potential members.  He refused and said he’d rather have us leave than do that.

So I was livid while at SpiceCorps.  At an event where La Cima was supposed to be putting their best foot forward they ended up looking like incompetent idiots with absolutely zero concept of customer service (never screw your existing customers in the hopes of attracting more customers.)  La Cima seems to operate under cheating spouse concept forgetting that no one wants to date someone who is cheating because once they leave their spouse for you they will start cheating on your too.  That’s hose Club Corp treats their members under their current Young Executive pricing scheme.  The members they don’t have mean more to them than the members that they do have.  I guess they truly believe that the grass is greener elsewhere.

The SpiceCorps group itself went really well.  We had thirty people show up which is great for the DFW group but did not manage to break any general records.  We had a large number of “celebrity” appearances from the SpiceWorks community – more than any other group ever.  We had a good time and several of us will be seeing each other tomorrow at SpiceWorld down in Austin.

We had a huge group for about two and a half hours.  Then our numbers dwindled down and we had maybe eight people who hung out until quite late.  The lounge at La Cima would be perfect for this type of thing if it were not for the horrible echo that you get in there so we were struggling to talk to each other at all.  That is why we had needed the private room.  Once we were down to a small group and able to move into the corner it was not so bad.

Medifast Status: Day 168, Down ~63lbs

Today is the big day, Andy comes to America.  I ended up working from home today which was good because it made it far easier to deal with getting to and from the airport and Dominica was far less stressed because I was around to help out with the cleaning and the kids.  Although I was pretty busy today and the house was effectively as clean as it was likely to get.  By the time that I called it a day and headed for DFW airport the house was looking pretty good, I think.

We had wanted to have a chance to paint the house before Andy came to visit and Dominica even went so far as to get paint.  It just didn’t happen.  So that is disappointing.  We still have big patches on the walls from the construction months ago (that still is not finished.)  Painting is coming up soon as the next big project.  Getting the kitchen finished being painted and getting the main hallway painted would do a lot.  We want to paint the bar but we expect to be doing so much construction there in the near future that it is unrealistic to do the painting now just before we ruin everything.

So late in the afternoon I took the Mazda and drove over to DFW to get Andy.  We did not exactly do an awesome job at coordinating and it turned out that neither of us had the other one’s phone number.  So it took us a while to find each other.  It was extra tough since traffic at the airport was horrible and it took him a really long time to get through customs.

Once Andy and I made contact we drove back up to the house so that he could unload from his flight and freshen up.  He had been traveling all day.  He did have a direct flight from London, at least, so just over ten hours to get to Dallas.  This is his first time traveling to the United States and his first time traveling outside of the United Kingdom since he was a kid.  So quite an adventure for him.

After having a little bit of time at the house and getting to meet Dominica and the girls we drove down to Irving to go to Rockfish for dinner.  Brian Watson (aka Texkonc) met us at Rockfish as well.  This is the first that we have seen Watson in several weeks and he has really lost weight – especially in his face.  He really looks different.  He is down around thirty five pounds at this point.

By the end of dinner Andy’s adrenaline was beginning to wear off and he was suddenly extremely tired.  It was well after midnight for his internal clock when we left the restaurant.  Something like the equivalent of being two or three in the morning back in London.

The busy stretch has begun.  Tomorrow is SpiceCorps and then Wednesday is SpiceWorld down in Austin.  I have a lot of traveling and crazy scheduling to do coming up.  And my big homework project has to be in before I leave for SpiceWorld.  It is going to be a crazy couple of weeks.

Medifast Status: Day 167, Down ~63lbs

Sunday.  Today is the final push of housecleaning.  There is an unlimited amount of cleaning that we wish that we were able to do but realistically we are in pretty good shape.

I had to do a bit of homework today as well.  I’ve been doing some over the last few days.  That is partly why I have been so behind.  Just lots of cleaning and homework needing my attention.

I have some homework that should could not be completed today so that is pushed off until Wednesday.  I arranged with my professor that we would turn it in early afternoon on Wednesday.  That way I can work until the very last minute before heading to Austin for SpiceWorld.

Andy comes in from London tomorrow afternoon.