October 15, 2011: Big Cleaning Day

Medifast Status: Day 166, Down ~63lbs

Mostly a cleaning day.  Dominica and I really put in the time getting the house in order.  The work over the last few days was pretty trivial compared to today.  This was the real house reorganization day.

By the end of they day the house was looking pretty good.  We did a lot of the “spring cleaning” type things that we have been ignoring for so long.  And the weather is nice so we are able to get the windows open.

October 13, 2011: The Beginning of the Cleaning

Medifast Status: Day 164, Down ~63lbs

Extremely quiet day for us.  Nothing on the calendar.  Work, homework.  Time with the family.  Now that we have a little bit of free time – a very little bit – the cleaning has begun.  We only have until Monday afternoon when Andy arrives to get the house cleaned and that includes turning Luciana’s bedroom from a storage facility into a guest bedroom which is no small amount of work.  We have so much stored in there.

We have been rearranging stuff in the office as much as possible to get ready.  We are hoping that the Ralstons will be able to take the five foot desk that has been in my office back to New York and use it there.  That will clear out some space for us.  And the nice printer stand that Andy West and I bought back when living in Ithaca for our first HP LaserJet 1200N printer (wow that has been a long time now) is now where that desk used to be and is holding our all-in-one printer and scanner unit.  That works well.  It fits attractively into the corner and makes the room look great and work really easily.

There is so much cleaning and house repair stuff to do over the next four days – we are going to be exhausted just from that.

October 12, 2011: Last Cocktails

Medifast Status: Day 163, Down ~63lbs

Oreo had a vet appointment this afternoon.  Overall he is doing pretty well although his skin condition appears to still be getting a little worse.  We were really hoping that he would have been able to have pulled out of that spiral by this point.  So I was home in the afternoon watching the girls.

After work I had Cocktails & Connections at La Cima which, like it was last week, ended up being just two people.  Just Jen and I sitting with the La Cima managers.  Not one other person showed up.  Considering that we have something like eight or ten people who are supposed to be hosting this event with the hopes of another eight to ten showing up and all we get are two hosts it is not going well.  The inconsistency certainly is going to kill it as after tonight we don’t do it again for a month and there is some dispute over when exactly that will be.  As the only person who has made every single C&C event since we set it up and I normally am just there with one other person I feel that I’ve put in more than enough effort and don’t plan to try to help out with it after tonight.  There is just no commitment from the Young Executives or from the club itself.  This is a waste of my time.

It is especially annoying that I keep putting in the time to attend Cocktails & Connections and I’m the one person whose diet does not let him eat the food or have the cocktails.  I can’t drink on Medifast and the food that they make for this is always meat and always breaded.  So there is no hope for me at all.  I’m quite literally stuck just drinking water and eating cheese for two hours each week.  A little bit boring as there is hardly anyone to even talk to and at the rate that we are going I’m sure that in the future that there will be no one at all to whom to speak while drinking my water.

After the C&C we had dinner since it is pasta night.  Dinner was good.  We used our meals for the month since we knew that this month is going to be crazy for trying to get into the club.  Next week is SpiceCorps and SpiceWorks.  We are already down to just five days until Andy comes in from London to visit and from the moment that he arrives and for three weeks we are completely booked at every moment.  This is going to be one exhausting month.

October 11, 2011: Major Changes at the Club

Medifast Status: Day 162, Down ~63lbs

After work today I had the Young Executives meeting at La Cima.  This was a rather surprising meeting for me as we were run by different people than normally run the ground and it turns out that several people who have been key to the running of the club are no longer with the company so that club is in rather a bit of turmoil with very little focus and direction, it would seem.

So that is a bit of a shock.  The meeting tonight was very small.  Already the Young Executives group is dwindling from a lack of attendance.  Getting people out regularly is very hard and almost no one has been attending our Cocktails & Connections event that we have been putting on for the last few weeks.  Already after just two weeks we are moving the C&C event to monthly instead of weekly – giving no one time to get used to the whole thing before it changes.  This is exactly what happened with the Young Executives group when I first joined.  Everything is disjointed and unplanned and just when you start to get into a pattern it gets cancelled or changed so no one can every remember that something is going on.

So after the meeting I headed home.  We are going for dinner tomorrow night rather than tonight.