Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 113, Down ~48.5lbs

Was rather tired this morning but didn’t do to badly getting up and in to the office.  I’m sure that Dominica will be spending her day making plans for Europe.  She loves vacation planning.

It is still hot in Texas.  We had a few days there where we dipped below one hundred degrees and even had that one day with a little rain but other than those few exceptions we have been living over one hundred for what seems like it must be a month and a half now or more.  Our air conditioning at the house is still unable to keep up and we are lucky when we are able to keep the house at or below eighty two degrees during the day and seventy eight at night – even with there being two fewer people in the house this week and the second air conditioner running to assist the main one.  Boy are we ever glad that we decided to go ahead and get that second air conditioning unit.  It keeps the playroom around eighty most of the day making it bearable for Dominica, Liesl and Luciana to be in there most of the day.  Since that is the only room used during the day to any great degree it works out pretty well.

I checked the weather forecast and we are expected to remain above 100 degrees into September.  That means that we will basically have been like this for a month and a half without any real break.

Today started off really slowly.  By eight this morning I was completely caught up with my email which, considering the volume of SpiceWorks emails that I receive daily, is pretty much a miracle.  At this point I have posted roughly 33,000 posts to the SpiceWorks community!  Hard to believe that it could be so much.  My rough estimate is that I write 10,000 – 20,000 words a day.  But based on how little it takes for me to hit 1,000 words on SGL I could easily be off significantly and there are likely days when I am closing in on 50,000 words published to one degree or another.  That means that I might possibly write the equivalent of the King James Bible every one to two months!

I went home for lunch and we watched some more of Rick Steve’s Europe on Hulu to help us make decisions about our upcoming trip.  Dominica baked me the shiritaki noodle bake that is my favourite meal on the Medifast plan that we have found thus far.  I ate and then back in to the office.

This afternoon was busier but not too bad.  I got official approval for the trip to Europe.  So now it is real, we are actually going!  We are pretty excited as well as being overwhelmed with all of the possible options.  There are just so many places that we want to go.  Making the best use of our time, seeing the stuff that we want to see and not killing ourselves trying to cart the kids around everywhere is going to be tough.

This evening we mostly relaxed and did more travel planning.  We are coming up with all kinds of ideas now.  Dominica even tried to convince me to go to Disneyland Paris.  She must be off of her rocker.

Made it off to bed at a semi-decent time tonight.  Liesl slept in her own room again and did not through a fit about it tonight.  We are getting her into a better routine again.  Slowly.

Medifast Status: Day 112, Down ~48.5lbs

I did pretty well getting up nice and early this morning and getting back to a normal schedule.  Work was slow today, for the most part, which I appreciated.  Today we started looking at what our options are going to be to leverage my upcoming furlough time – three weeks of it that we need to utilize.  We really want to take the opportunity to go to Europe on a real vacation but have been unsure how to do it.  We have two trips to New York to make next year spaced out that will make all travel pretty difficult.

It turns out that the weddings in New York are not happening when we had originally thought, next year, and are closer together than we were expecting.  So it looks like we might be able to pull off a single drive to New York, wedding, fly to Europe, spend a month in Europe, return to New York, visit with family, wedding and then do the return drive to Texas.  Quite a crazy trip but it will minimize our driving and allow us to holiday in Europe for an entire month!  We are very excited about that possibility.

I came home at lunch so that Dominica and I could talk about the European possibilities.  I am trying to eat as little as possible today as I feel like I have been getting too many calories the last several days and I need to make up for that a bit.  So I skipped food all morning and just had a Medifast bar at lunch.  We talked about potential plans and after an hour or two we think that we have the framework of a European vacation plan.

We will start by flying to Ireland and renting a cottage.   We will stay there for at least a week and do what we can to see the country without actually having to drive anywhere.  I’m not willing to drive on the left – too much risk for too short of a time period.  If we were staying in Ireland and/or the UK for a season perhaps.  But not for a week or two.  While in Ireland I will spend a few days in Belfast working from the office there.  I will actually be working the whole time that we are in Ireland.

Likely while still in Ireland I will leave the girls for two days and fly to Warsaw, Poland and work from the office there.  We have a large team there and this is my chance to sit with them for a little bit.  Then I will return to Ireland, get the girls and we will move on to Switzerland for our real holiday.  We want to hit a lot of different areas of Switzerland like Zurich, Luzerne and Bern.  We might do a day trip or something to Salzburg as well.  I’m sure that we will spend more than a week in Switzerland.

From Switzerland we are thinking that we will travel south down to Genoa and the Italian Riviera.  It will only give us a tiny taste of Italy but we will get to see two really major cities (Milan and Genoa) and a good cross section north to south of northern Italy.  Then west through the French Riveria to Nice and then to Barcelona.  From there up to the Alsace in France where we will stay until we return to Ireland for the flight back to New York.

Once back in New York we will have some time to visit with our families up there before going to my other cousin’s wedding and then we can drive back down to Dallas.  It is a massive trip but we are unlikely to get a chance like this again for a really long time and I have not had a vacation on par with this ever.  My longest time away from work was our honeymoon to Nova Scotia in 2004 and that was not nearly for as long.  This trip as the incredible benefit of all of the travel, first to New York and then to Europe, happening before the actual vacation by as much as two weeks.  So the vacation actually takes place once I am already there which is awesome.  It should be, if all goes to plan, three actual weeks of vacation in Europe.  That would be awesome.

We watched some of Rick Steve’s Europe tonight.  All stuff that we had seen before but we are going back over the stuff in the areas where we are hoping to get to be.

I did well on my diet today.  I had my lean and green and two Medifast meals and nothing else.  No snacks or anything.  Hopefully that will help to get me back on track.  My calorie average has been too high.

I tracked my water today.  I’m drinking almost exclusively from my 64oz (that is two quarts or a half gallon) Racetrac thermal mug which makes it really easy to track.  I had five and a half of those plus a 20oz of coffee today.  That turns out to be 2.9 gallons!  That is a sign of ketosis, so not too surprising.  I also appear to have developed urticaria, not unheard of as a side effect of prolonged ketosis as well (basically a skin rash – likely caused from the high level of acetone in my skin.)  That is pretty crappy.  I’m hoping that I can keep it under control.  It can get pretty bad for people on ketosis diets in some rare cases.

We stayed up late looking at possible options for traveling around Europe.  Liesl slept in her own bed tonight about which she was not happy at all.  She really likes getting to sleep in our room.  But even Luciana is very close to moving to her own room now.  Only another month or so.

Normal day tomorrow.  I will be rather tired as we stayed up until nearly one in the morning and I get up just after five.  That is not a lot of sleep.

Medifast Status: Day 111, Down ~48.5lbs

Both Oreo and Liesl slept in with me this morning.  It is impossible to get out of bed when you have both a Boston Terrier and a toddler trying to snuggle.  It just isn’t going to happen.

Joe was over this morning and he went and picked up donuts and kolaches for breakfast.  Liesl hasn’t had donut holes in quite a while because we don’t buy donuts now that we are on our diets.  So she was very happy to get those.

We relaxed again today.  I got to watch a few more hours of Dragon Age: Origins and pretty much just vegged out on the couch.  Joe was going to try to hang out at the Grices’ today but he got called in to work and had to go in for the day.  So Dominica did not get to see him at all, really.

We were going to try to head back home around three this afternoon but Liesl was asleep until six so we waited for her to wake up because she is so grumpy if she is woken up rather than waking up on her own.  I wanted to get home and work but it was better to let her sleep.  I got a lot of time with Luciana today, though.

It was nearly six thirty when we managed to leave to go back to Dallas.  The drive was uneventful.  We spent a good portion of the drive listening to the BBC World Service over XM Satellite to follow the siege of Tripoli that has been going on today.  This is major news and the whole thing came as a huge surprise.  Yesterday we were under the impression that the rebels were doing well and hoping to wait out the Colonel Gadhafi regime but suddenly today there was an uprising in the capital and rebel forces rushed to support them and in hours had effectively taken the city.  What had seemed like a war that was going to stretch on for months or years suddenly looks like it might be over in hours.  But we don’t know for sure.  There is fear that this is just a trap.

We listened to several back episodes of The News from Lake Wobegon that I keep on my iPhone.  That passed the time on the drive pretty quickly.  Liesl was awake for the entire drive and just did puzzles on the iPad.  She is amazing.  She can do so many puzzles so easily.  We really can’t believe it.

We got home to our 90+ degree house at eleven thirty.  The air conditioning is going to be lucky to have the house down to 88 before we go to bed.  The plants have visibly grown since we left, though.  I can’t believe what a difference two days in the “hot house” conditions do for them.  They love it.  Now that we keep the house so much warmer in general they are all really thriving.

Liesl wanted to snuggle so we let her sleep in our bed tonight.  She has to adjust to everyone being gone now.  She is so adorable when we say that she has to go to bed in her own room and she says “But I want to snuggle you!”

Medifast Status: Day 110, Down ~48.5lbs

Oreo was very snugly this morning and we slept in late.  This is our weekend off.  I don’t have too horrible of a backlog of work to do so I am planning on relaxing this weekend as much as possible.  It is not exactly the easiest to work while down in Houston so if I can avoid it entirely I am going to make an attempt.

We spent much of the weekend watching Francesca play Dragon Age: Origins which she is replaying at her house and has just gotten back to where she was while playing at our house.  Only now she is playing a different character because she didn’t remember which one she had played while at our house so accidentally picked a different one and got a very different storyline.  It is far more interesting to watch Dragon Age than it is to watch most television shows and much easier to talk to other people while the game is being played.

I was only online via my iPhone today.  That was nice.  I’m excited that Amtrak has a new iPhone App out now as does Aer Lingus.  Those are two that I have been looking for for a while now.

This evening we went over to Joe’s house to celebrate his birthday.  Dominica and Francesca spent a few hours making pizzas while I chaperoned the kids in the swimming pool.  It was pretty hot.  I managed to read a little on my Kindle but not very much.

Liesl was in the pool for hours.  She mostly just hung out on the top step but she did get down on her elbows and put her feet out into the water and kick quite a bit.  She is getting closer to wanting to actually swim.  She is still pretty young, though, and gets very limited pool exposure.

At one point Madeline and Emily tried taking Liesl out into the deeper water to see if she would like that and she did for a few seconds but she started to panic pretty quickly and would not leave the top step again after that.  Earlier on she had had some fun floating around in a blowup octopus too but she would drift away from everyone and get stuck not being able to see anyone or get anyone’s attention and she didn’t enjoy that after not too long.

Our pizza for dinner was really good.  Dominica is making diet pizza our of a ground and baked cauliflower crust.  It helps to fill the need for pizza.

Joe and Britt got home pretty late, around eight thirty.  We only got to see them for a very little bit.  We ate the pizza then had some cake.  Dominica, Francesca and I had MediFast cake while Joe got a less than new, rejected carrot cake.  Then it was back to the Grices since Joe and Britt have a long day of work followed by driving to New York tomorrow.

Medifast Status: Day 109, Down ~48.5lbs

Early to bed, early to rise.  I actually worked from home today.  Dominica had to take Oreo to the vet at noon and it was going to be a bit rough for me to make it home in time to watch the kids while she took him so I just stayed home.  My boss didn’t need me in the office this afternoon so I just stayed at home all day which is great because we are heading on down to Houston as soon as work is done this evening.

While home I managed to get some cleaning done.  Today is the last day of the Grice girls being with us this summer.  We are pretty sure that they think that we are pretty boring so are likely ready to get back home and back to their normal lives.  They are getting a bit old for staying with us for extended periods of time since they have their own things that they like to do and being at our house for two weeks is very disruptive – especially when considering that they spend four weeks or more in New York each summer as well.  Nearly their entire summer vacation is spent away from home and their friends.

I was done with the evening deployments around six thirty but it was closer to seven thirty when we were finally able to get out on to the road to Houston.  It was a long drive and we arrived around half past midnight.