Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 146, Down ~60.5lbs

The weather was decent enough this morning that Dominica and I decided to get up and sit outside for the entire morning.  We just made coffee and camped out on the patio.  Liesl watched cartoons and would periodically stop out to see what we were doing and would then return to the house.

We spent much of the morning talking plans for our trip to Europe as we like to do while sitting out on the patio.  The patio has become the de facto “discuss our vacation” place.  One cup of coffee after another and one European tour book after another.

After much discussion we are currently leaning away from touring southern Italy while we are over there.  The distance to cover with the children being so young is too much and we are pretty sure that we will be living in Italy in the not too distant future and that will make weekend excursions into southern Italy trivial so doing it now would be a waste of our resources.  So our plan is to go no farther south than lower Tuscany – unless we end up flying from Rome then we will see Lazio and probably Abruzzo as well.

The more that we look the more that it would appear that our long term plan is to look for a home in Piedmont – the northwestern province of Italy bordering France and Switzerland.  The area to the south east of Turin looks to be especially inviting with rolling hills that are reminiscent of Tuscany but far easier access into Europe.  Just two hours from Switzerland and an hour and a half from the Riviera and three hours from Tuscany it is quite the spot.  It looks like it will be the perfect blend for us and the prices look pretty decent for the areas in which we are the most interested.  So our current plan is to make sure that we spend several days in that area.

It is really, really hard trying to plan a trip of this magnitude with so much to see and do and so many potential variables.

I spent the afternoon and evening working on homework.  The work isn’t so hard but there is just a lot of it to be done.

While I was in my office tonight, Liesl ran in to get me and told me that Luciana was having trouble and needed me to come right away.  So I ran with Liesl from the office to my bedroom where Dominica was rocking Luciana in the dark.  I was all like “What is wrong?” and Dominica is like… “I told Liesl that Luciana was having trouble falling asleep.”  Liesl replied “Oh no, Luciana is having trouble! I will go get daddy!”  And that is how that happened.

After my homework was all turned in I went out for my run.  This is my third night in a row that I have managed to go out jogging.  I felt pretty decent tonight.  I’m getting stronger and catching up with Dominica really quickly.

Medifast Status: Day 145, Down ~60.5lbs

This is our weekend at home.  Next weekend Dominica and the girls are going to go to Houston while I stay home to work on homework and other things that need my attention.  I don’t have a lot of free time while working on my Masters so I need some quiet time to get things done.

Today was mostly relaxing.  We did some work, some cleaning, some relaxing.  No one really went anywhere.  I did some class work today too.  This International Project Management class that I am doing keeps me a bit busier than most classes that I have taken.

I did have to work for the office today but very little.  I’d say less than an hour total.  No big deal.

This evening I went out jogging again.  I am doing Week 3 Day 2 of the program tonight.  I’m going through them much faster than Dominica and Francesca are.  I’m hoping that doing then at a fast, but reasonable, pace will let me catch up pretty quickly.

I have been going out jogging late at night after everyone goes to sleep.  That seems to work out pretty well although it is really hard jogging when you cannot see where your feet are going.  That is a little dangerous.  And I am hoping that I don’t end up stepping on any lizards.  I see them scurry away pretty frequently on the rare occasion of there being some amount of light.

I really need some way to hold my iPhone.  I have to jog with it in my hand and that really does not work.  It is hurt my arms and throwing off my stride because I can’t swing one of my arms like the other.  Very awkward.  And it makes me warmer than necessary since one of my hands cannot ventilate properly.

We will be home tomorrow.  Nothing planned except for homework.

Medifast Status: Day 144, Down ~60lbs

Ah the sixty pound mark.  That feels great to say.  Sixty is a big number.  Anyone can lose fifty pounds but sixty feels like an accomplishment.  I was pretty excited when I weighed in this morning. I need these milestones to keep me going.  I am very glad that I had this drop today since today is my check in appointment with Medifast.

Nothing to report from the office.  I went home for lunch but didn’t eat because having lunch just before checking in with Medifast does not work out very well.  So I am saving my food for dinner tonight instead.  We had just enough time while I was home for me to get to watch one episode of Voyager.

Having the computer in the playroom is nice.  I’m able to actually get stuff done while I am at home instead of just sitting in a chair and feeling panicky because I am disconnected and can’t see if someone needs me.

I got to Medifast early and did my weight in.  Exactly sixty pounds, as predicted.  Their scale appears to exactly match my scale at home.  They are very pleased with my progress.  I suspect that they don’t actually get very many people who lose these kinds of numbers.  If you look at the ads that they run of people in the metroplex who have lost weight, few actually have lost this much.  The person on their business cards was only around fifty.  And I am still losing so we are all pretty confident that I will be quite a bit thinner as at this point this has really become a lifestyle and falling off of the wagon is not very likely to happen to any serious extent.  Eating healthily and in good quantities is already pretty much second nature and I have nearly a year left to go on the plan.  Much like being a vegetarian, after you have done it for a long time you stop really having any issue of relapsing.  It just doesn’t happen.  I’m hoping that the same holds true here.

Slow afternoon at the office.  Very slow evening but even though it was very slow it stretched out late and I was unable to head home until six thirty.  At least it felt like I was going home on the early side.

We spent most of the evening relaxing in the newly reconfigured play room.  It is nice, if not decorative, having an office desk in here and a real place to sit down and work.  It is far easier to get things done this way.  I don’t have to choose between being in touch and spending time with the family.

This evening, after everyone had gone to bed, I went out and started working on my C25K (Couch to 5K) training which is what Dominica and Francesca have been doing for the past month.  I need to get moving if I am going to catch up with them.  I jogged a tiny bit last week and saw that I was the equivalent of a few weeks into the training program so I decided to jump ahead.

The program is supposed to be three days of jogging per week every other day with a two day break between weeks.  A very light schedule.  Tonight I decided to start my training on the final day, day three, of week two.  I did the training and found myself quite some distance from the house and feeling pretty good.  So I went straight into week three, day one and did that as well.  By the end of my session I had traveled more than six kilometers.  Even farther on my first day than the final goal of the program!  And I felt good by the end too.

While jogging I listened to several episodes of A Prairie Home Companion’s News from Lake Wobegon.  I’m using my exercise time as an opportunity to catch up with the past year of episodes.

 

Medifast Status: Day 143, Down ~58.5lbs

Nothing eventful this morning.  I needed that. It’s been a very long week.  I went into the office and did, pretty much, nothing.  After I was around for a little while I drove over to Tuscan Villas and picked up Nicki and we went to the French cafe on the corner for some coffee before returning to the office.  The weather has been awesome so I have been trying to take advantage of the opportunity to be outside for what little bit that that actually works out.  It has been such a hot summer that we have really missed out on chances to be outside.

In retrospect, however, this was the perfect summer for us to have not been able to have gotten our lawn or atrium completed as it was so hot that we could not have possibly used either one of them anyway.  Had we invested that money this year we would have been very unhappy.

I came home for lunch and Dominica made a lasagna dish.  We ate and watched an episode of Voyager.  While I had some time watching the show I worked on getting a Windows Server 2008 R2 machine built as my goal for this evening is to get SharePoint 2010 Foundation up and running.

Back at work, quiet afternoon.  Managed to leave at a good time.

This evening we decided that we needed to realize that we are using the den / play room extremely impractically and that no matter how much we wish that we could live in an ideal world, we do not, and there is just no way that we can reasonably function without having a desk in there at which a computer can be used.  My laptop, the only one left as Dominica’s has been destroyed, is getting ruined rapidly from being used in that room and taking all kinds of abuse and there is just no easy place to sit and use it anyway.  So we had to figure something out.

We took down the sheets that have been protecting that room from the heat, we took the stand alone air conditioning unit out, we vacuumed, we scrubbed the floors and we moved in the computer desk that has been in Luciana’s room since before there was a Luciana.  The desk actually works pretty well in that room.  It also fixes a major problem that we were having with space in Luciana’s room, not that she is using it yet, and it fixes a space issue in my office because Dominica’s office chair moved out to the play room as well.  Dominica plans to use the space for “school” too.  So this is looking like it is going to work out well.

It took pretty much the entire evening but I got the SharePoint 2010 server up and running just minutes before it was time to head off to bed.  It took way too much time but at least I got something accomplished this evening.  I ordered some new SharePoint books today as well which are supposed to arrive on Saturday.  Dominica is going to be doing work on SharePoint so we wanted to get the books and get the test system up and running for her so that she could work with something sooner rather than later.

Medifast Status: Day 142, Down ~58.5lbs

Things are a bit quieter today.  Not quiet, but better.  Things have been calming down.  I worked from home this morning since things have been so crazy this week so that I could see the girls a little more.  Then the family went to La Cima for an early lunch.  It was a tight schedule so we had to go early and kind of rush but at least we managed to eat together.  We had thought that there was going to be a different menu today than there was.  We had read the email menu incorrectly but it was still pretty good.

I had to go to the office after lunch.  Today was the FOMC call which I need to be around to cover, hence why we had to hurry to eat our lunches.  The call was at a quarter after one and goes for roughly half an hour.  So I worked from the office until the end of the day when I had to return over to La Cima to work with the Young Executive’s Board to host our new Cocktails and Connections event that we will be doing every Wednesday during Happy Hour at the club.

Cocktails and Connections went quite well.  We had a good turn out and people had a good time.  It starts at five and officially goes until seven and then many of the people involved liked to do dinner together since it is the $1.99 Pasta Night as well but I was not able to stay for that.  I stayed until just after seven thirty then went home.

I barely got to see Luciana tonight.  She was in bed within thirty minutes of my arrival at home.  She goes to bed way too early in the evenings.