Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 150, Down ~60.5lbs

I got up early this morning and got into the office at a good time so that I could get caught up and be productive.  Dominica was up feeding Luciana when I left.  Luciana was awake enough to see me as I was getting ready to leave and wanted me to come see her.  At least I got to see her for a minute before going four days without seeing my family.

At ten this morning Dominica and the girls met up with her cousin Nicole at the Fort Worth Zoo.  What a hot day to see the zoo.  Originally it was supposed to be 95 today, then they raised that to 97 and now it is projected that it will be 99 degrees!  I’m glad that I am not going to the zoo today.

After the zoo, Dominica is heading down to Houston for a long, four day weekend with the Grices.  It really is the best possible weekend for her to do that since I just have tons and tons of homework that absolutely demands my attention this weekend and I will be able to get a start on it tonight and do little else all weekend.

I also have a birthday party to attend tomorrow night at Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar in Addison. Jen from the Young Executives Board is celebrating her birthday there tomorrow and a bunch of us from the club are going together.  So that worked out really well from a timing perspective.  Normally I would not be able to go.

For lunch today I just went home so that I could pick up our latest Diet Direct shipment that was supposed to arrive today and to take care of Oreo who is home alone all day.  Fortunately Dominica didn’t leave until mid-morning and I was home by one and then it is only a few hours until I get home after work.  So Oreo won’t be alone very much.  Since he spends his days sleeping on our bed now he probably doesn’t notice when we are or are not home anyway.  He doesn’t get out of bed on his own until afternoon these days.

I got home and Oreo just kept on sleeping.  I took some time and started with the cleaning.  There is a lot to be done.  I only really get a chance to clean when everyone is away.  I took care of house plants, vacuumed, picked up toys, cleanup up Liesl’s room, did some work in Luciana’s room, cleaned in the kitchen, watered the lawn, took Oreo out, did a few ticket-like tasks, did a little reading, ate a quick lunch and got the front entrance cleaned up.  Not bad for a lunch hour.

I plan on having this house in great shape by the time that Dominica gets back.

Work was slow this afternoon.  Dominica called me around four to let me know that she was at Buckee’s, about an hour north of Houston.  So they will all be at Francesca’s house pretty soon.  Tomorrow Dominica is planning on heading into the city to go to the Italian consulate.  Fortunately we know someone now who deals with the consulate from time to time and knows the people there and was able to tell us that we would get far better results by actually stopping in and dealing with them in person.  So fingers crossed.

I went home and spent the evening with Oreo.  He is really enjoying having the house be quiet and empty all day and having his daddy to himself in the evening.  He was so happy tonight that he jumped on me and got me to play “tug” with him for a while which he has not done in a year or more.  He played longer than I remember him playing too and then, when we were done, he took his gingerbread man binky and sucked on it like he did long ago.  It has been a very long time since I last saw this side of Oreo.  It makes me happy to see him feeling so well.  I’m sure that he is very happy that I have been cleaning and that the obstacles that normally are all over the house just waiting to trip him up are not there so he can move around the house far more safely now too.

I had a short call, maybe an hour, when I first got home and then had the evening to myself.  I felt the need to unwind so I quickly ran out to Chili’s and grabbed dinner and hit Target to pick up Keurig coffee cups and bones for Oreo as he is out and he will be very sad if he has to eat his dinner without getting “dessert.”

I got home with my take out and I finished watching From Russia with Love which is temporarily available on Netflix and that I had started watching the other day.  I haven’t seen most of the old James Bond movies since I was a kid and dad and I used to watch them together.  So I know the movies but they exist mostly as vague memories and I don’t know the plots very well.  In fact, I often have a hard time knowing which movie is which anyway.

Oreo laid down at my feet and was very contented so I was loathe to get up and do anything else so I decided that I would start Goldfinger and go to bed early and be as productive as possible tomorrow.  Oreo thought that that was a great idea.  I love these old movies, they really take me back.  What is amazing to me is that while this movie seemed old as a child, it was probably only twenty years old.  But it has been way more than twenty years since I last watched it.  It was, more or less, newish when I first saw it!  And this is one of the oldest Bond films.   Goldfinger is shot mostly in Switzerland too which is nice to see shot in 1964.  Very interesting.

Out of nowhere this evening, even though we were forecast to have clear skies, there was a violent thunderstorm that lasted a few hours.  Even while it was going on The Weather Channel, Accuweather and MSN were all continuing to report that the skies were clear and that there was no rain.  I seem to be finding this over and over again living here in North Texas – even once it is obvious that there is rain the weather services keep sticking to their horrible predictions.  And you can tell just by stepping outside eight hours earlier that rain is coming – it isn’t much of a surprise.  So how they are so bad at it I just can’t figure out.  But thank goodness for rain.  We just can’t get enough of it here.  It is going to take a lot of storms before our aquifers begin to fill up again.  I am really glad that I watered the lawn a little bit earlier today – this will help the ground soak this up a little bit.

Medifast Status: Day 149, Down ~60.5lbs

We are heading towards a high of ninety-nine again tomorrow.  After that the weather is supposed to break and it is supposed to be nice from here on out.  This is pretty hot for “nearly October” though.  Dominica and Nicole are taking the kids to the Fort Worth Zoo tomorrow.  Once again Dominica manages to pick this hottest possible day for that.  We only seem to go when it is really hot.  At least this time, in theory, there will be no one else there.  From the zoo she and the girls are hitting the road directly to drive down to Houston.  So I will be a bachelour as of tomorrow morning.  Just Oreo and I for the weekend which is probably good since I have just loads and loads of stuff to do for RIT.

Work was very slow this morning so John and I hit the cafe on the corner and had some coffee and worked from BlackBerry for a little bit before returning to the office.  Totally silent morning, just nothing happening at all.  Just the way that I like it.

Oreo has a doctor’s appointment today so I worked through lunch and then ran home just in time for Dominica to take him to the vet at two and I watched the girls for a little bit and then ran back to the office once his appointment was over.  His mange is getting really bad and his eye really is not improving.  But other than the somewhat superficial issues, he is in very good health.  The vet felt that he was reacting poorly to the level of medication that he has been receiving so we are taking him off of that for a little bit.

After work I had my second week of the Cocktails and Connections at La Cima.  We had another pretty good turn out this week.  We have a good group that is beginning to form.  We had a really nice time hanging out for about two hours and then several of us headed in to the dining room to have dinner together.

Dominica, Liesl and Luciana joined us in time for dinner and everyone seemed to really enjoy getting to meet the girls who really were on exceptionally good behaviour all evening.

We were at the club quite late tonight.  It was well after ten when we got back home.  Liesl asked for one episode of Dora before going to bed.  Luciana was asleep on the drive home and ended up spending the night sleeping in her car seat.  That is probably not good since she is going to be in that all day tomorrow too.

We all went to bed as soon as we could manage it.

Medifast Status: Day 148, Down ~60.5lbs

Very little to mention today.  It was a quiet day.  Warm but not too bad.  I went jogging again this evening.  I’m sticking to the plan and feeling pretty good.  Hopefully I will start seeing the weight loss pick up again sooner than later.

I was able to get home early today.  That was great.  I had a call at six that lasted for two hours.  Not stressful at all, though.  Mostly we watched demos on SugarCRM.

Medifast Status: Day 147, Down ~60.5lbs

Temperatures were back up into the nineties today.  Nothing like we had during the summer but warmer than it normally should be at this time of year.

I got into work this morning and things were very slow.  I got caught up and then John and I went over to La Cima to get coffee and he breakfast.  No breakfast foods for me for a very long time yet.  I sure hope that this part of my diet is long over by the time that we go to Europe in the spring or I am going to be horribly disappointed.

Dominica and the girls ended up meeting me for lunch too so it was a double day at La Cima.  Lunch was good and we were able to eat pretty leisurely.  It was a nice, relaxing morning.

The afternoon was a bit busier at work, but things wrapped up promptly and I was able to go home at a good time.  The evening was very hectic, as it often does.  Between attempting to eat, trying to watch something, take care of Oreo, entertain the children, etc. it gets really crazy really quickly.  It’s amazing how little we are able to just sit and relax.  Every few minutes one or both of us is forced to get up and do something.  Watching a single show can end up taking several hours.  It can be quite frustrating because the time to relax is so stressful rather than relaxing.  There is no end to “accidents” that need to be cleaned up as well.

I decided, after much cajoling from Dominica, that I would take tonight off from running to let my body catch up.  The program is supposed to be one day on, one day off for three cycles then an extra day off per week.  So I’m doing a much more strenuous program.

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.