Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 155, Down ~60.5lbs

It is hard to believe but as of today, Dominica and I have been married for eight years.  We’ve known each other for ten (and a few months.)  Money is tight these days, as is time, so we aren’t doing anything special for our anniversary.  Just going to have dinner at home and we will go out for dinner at La Cima tomorrow night.

I actually didn’t even remember that it was our anniversary (nor did I know what today’s date was, in my defense) until I was already in the office and Dominica said happy anniversary over instant messenger.

I went home at lunch and we just hung out for a little while.  Then back to the office but I left on the early side so that I could spend the evening at home with Dominica.  I ran over to Rockfish and picked up dinner, which took way too long, and then went home where we watched Star Trek: Voyager and relaxed.

Tomorrow night we are going out to dinner at La Cima for our anniversary dinner.

Medifast Status: Day 154, Down ~60.5lbs

The family is home and I am back in the office today.  I went into the office early but had to come back home just after ten so that Dominica could leave to go to a doctor’s appointment.  I took care of the girls for a few hours while she was out.  We had been hoping to go to La Cima for lunch today as only today and Thursday have lunch menus that appeal to us but we couldn’t make it today.

I went back to the office after a while.  This is my first chance to really get to see my girls after they were gone all weekend.

We did little this evening.  Mostly just watched Star Trek: Voyager.  We are really enjoying that series.  We needed some calm family time tonight.

Medifast Status: Day 153, Down ~60.5lbs

Day two dedicated to doing homework.  I’m getting really tired of these projects.  Today went well, though, and I was able to wrap up my homework by late afternoon – a bit before Dominica and the girls managed to return from Houston.  I really have nothing to tell about today.  The weather was nice and I have the windows open.  The house is looking great with all of the cleaning that I have been doing.

I am relieved to have this week’s homework all done and submitted.  Tons more to do over the coming weeks, though.  So this is hardly the end.  I can’t wait to be done with school.  I’m hoping that I can accelerate the process a little this year and wrap it all up in 2012 but that seems like it is likely more ambitious that I can really do.  I really hope to not have to take any classes while we are in Europe but that might prove to be impossible.

The girls got home around seven and we spent the evening hanging out together and just relaxing.  It is good to have them home.  I don’t handle four days away from my children very well.

Medifast Status: Day 152, Down ~60.5lbs

After getting in so late last night I decided to sleep in considerably today.  It was late morning when I finally got up.  Oreo appreciated the extra snuggle time.

Today begins my focus on doing homework all weekend.  There is a ton to do this weekend.  I have this whole weekend set aside for nothing else.

In addition to my homework I was able to get just tons and tons of housekeeping taken care of today.  There have been some spots on the floor that really needed to be worked on but I really cannot work on them when everyone is home because once they get wet they attract dirt like crazy until they are cleaned and with all of the traffic from the girls there is just no way to keep them clean so they just get dirty again and the effort is wasted.  I put in many hours cleaning the floors.

I got the whole house cleaned up quite significantly.  I started on Thursday evening and did some yesterday too, but today is my day completely at home and I was able to focus just on this and what a difference it makes – especially since I already got the big objects out of the way.  I got the entrance table completely cleaned, the bar against the living room and the wet bar too.  It has been months since these were clear.  The playroom was cleaned up and a lot of the kitchen.  I got Liesl’s room all picked up and did work in Luciana’s room.  We now have a lot more space in Luciana’s room between taking the desk out of there last week and me getting the file drawers out today.

The homework was a ton of effort but I made quite good progress today.  I’m not liking this class as much as it seems that we put in tons of time doing busy work and very little learning or doing anything useful like having in-depth class discussions.  We are not producing professionally written papers that I would be proud to share with anyone.  Mostly we produce silly stuff like bizarre high-school-like PowerPoint presentations.  I have no idea what the value of this is supposed to be.  I’m spending all of my time learning how to format presentations rather than learning the topic.  In the real world neither is the formatting of a PowerPoint so critical (academia is so lost on the minutia of formatting that it misses the whole reason of education) nor is it even relevant as typically your company would have a standard already set up for you.  In business the goal is to save time, in academia it is to waste time.

I worked all day.  I was very productive.  It was exhausting though.  Having work like this hanging over my head just makes me want to work on other things.  I struggle to stay focused when there is a bunch of work and a tight deadline looming.

Medifast Status: Day 151, Down ~60.5lbs

Oreo slept the entire night right by my side with his head on the corner of my pillow.

I got up this morning and got the trash all taken out and without Dominica home to remind me.  She would be very proud of me.  I had to hop on and do a tiny bit of work online before leaving the house too.  Oreo was still fast asleep when I left.  One handy thing of him getting older is that he sleeps from around ten in the evening until one in the afternoon – no need to take him out at all in between those times.  So I can get up, get ready for work, go into the office and come home at lunch and he is still sleeping away.  I can even clean for a while before getting him up and he is surprised to find me there.

I had my Medifast meeting today.  I lost hardly anything this week but I had them do my body mass test while I was there.  A few weeks ago there was a concern that I was consuming muscle mass instead of just fast to lose weight.  It was only two pounds over a period of many months so hardly cause for serious concern but we needed to keep an eye on it.  So today we did the test again after I have been exercising more and we were very happy to discover that I have put on twelve pounds of muscle in the past three weeks!  That is ten pounds positive muscle increase since I first started on Medifast.  That means that effectively I have lost ten more pounds than my scales show since I converted ten pounds of fat into muscle.  A major win.

After work I came home.  It was a late evening.  Tonight is Jenn’s birthday party so I was going to come up, change and then head out after just a little bit to meet up with everyone out in Addison.  It was pretty late because there was so much work to do and then when I got home I showered and changed and was just heading back out of the door when the phone rang and they needed me to get back to work for the office.

So I was stuck on the phone for over an hour.  It was a pointless call too with no one on the call willing or able to even explain why I was needed or what was going on.  How annoying.  It is not like I try to go out very often.  Eventually I was able to get someone who was actually working at the time to take over for me and I ran out the door to meet up with everyone.  I was about an hour late by the time that it was all said and done.

I met up with everyone.  They had gone out for fondue prior to going to Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar.  Jenn, Chris, Mike and Tamara were there when I arrived.  We had a really good time.  Pete’s is a lot of fun and it was a very nice change of pace.

After Pete’s Jenn, Chris and I went to IHOP for a late dinner, or more likely an early breakfast.  It was after five in the morning when I finally got home!  It is a good thing that I had gone and taken care of Oreo before I went out for the evening.