Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 117, Down ~50.5lbs

It was a very big relief when I weighed in this morning and discovered that I had passed the fifty pound mark on my Medifast diet!  Fifty pounds!  That sure sounds good to say.  I still have a very long way to go.  But this is a very big milestone.  This will re-energize me, I’m sure.

We did a bit of cleaning today and the house is looking pretty decent.  It was really nice to have a basically empty weekend in which to stay home and just deal with normal things.   I need some downtime and some time just hanging out with my girls.

I was logged in to work all day.  We are watching to see what is going to happen because New York might really get slammed by the hurricane.  We might have a lot of work to do over the weekend depending on how the storm goes.

The heat is just continuing and continuing.  It is about 104 today and we are projected for 107 for the next two days!  There is some hope of some rain in about  a week which will make a huge difference.  We can’t wait for there to be rain again.

Overall today was decently relaxing.  Dominica hung out in the office with me some today and did more research into our trip to Europe.  We are thrashing on our planning, I think.  Just going from one idea to another.

The current plan now is completely different than anything that we had talked about previously.  We are now looking at skipping Ireland entirely and flying directly from New York (or possibly New Jersey) to Warsaw, Poland and skipping our time spent far out west because that makes the whole trip that much harder trying to add in Ireland.  That would be like going to both NYC and LA in the same trip trying to hit Belfast and Warsaw.  So cutting off Belfast makes everything so much easier.

Once we decided to do that we were very relived as the trip is now far, far simpler.  This will save tons of money and time.  It will be far less stressful.  NYC to Warsaw is eight hours on a plane.  Our original plan was NYC to Ireland, Ireland to Krakow and Krakow to Warsaw for a total of twelve to sixteen hours not including layovers.

We are now planning to eliminate Croatia and most of Italy.  Instead, since we have the girls who are not going to be happy traveling all over the place, we are going to attempt to focus on Austria, Switzerland and the Alsace-Lorraine and minimize how much traveling we have to do.  The upside is it saves tons of times, effort and travel costs.  The downside is that we see far less of Europe and the places where we primarily spend our time are the most expensive ones.  So hundreds of dollars a night for a hotel instead of forty.  That is going to be rough.  We are attempting to find apartments in Austria and Switzerland that we can rent to lower the cost.  We might spend a night in Budapest to make that one night cheaper too.

I got a lot of time with my daughters today.  They are growing up so fast.  Liesl is doing great on her potty training.   That is going to save a lot of money in diapers.  And it means that she will be ready for the trip to Europe too!

We managed to relax this evening.  We watched some of Star Trek: The Next Generation which Dominica and I had started watching back in Geneseo and never got around to continuing with.  We are still partway through season two.

It is funny watching the old TNG episodes.  In my memory they were so incredibly modern and the acting and people still feel that way.  But when you actually watch it, especially as it was filmed on tape rather than film, much of it actually feels like watching the original Battlestar Galactica.  The models, the landscapes, the film quality – it really reminds you of how close in time those two shows actually were to each other.  To me, being a child at the time, the distance between them was significant.  One was from my early, murky memories and the other was a show that I looked forward to as I already knew the original Star Trek well and looked forward to a new series.  But now, looking back, TNG was much longer ago than I feel that it must have been and definitely looks like a product of its time period.  It is very enjoyable to watch still, though.

Medifast Status: Day 116, Down ~49.5lbs

Finally down another pound.  Little victories.

A few days ago while standing in the kitchen Dominica and I heard something very loud that sounded like it was in the kitchen with us but we were unable to identify what had caused the noise.  I felt that the sound was the tiled floor breaking but I was unable to find a break in the floor.  Well today I found it.  Several of our tiles in front of the fridge have cracked.  Same thing that we found in our bathroom.  The house is just shifting so much that the tiles cannot take it.  This drought is destroying the house.  We just don’t know what to do at this point.  At some point we want to replace much of the tile in the house with hardwood which will look better and hold up to the shifting better.  We also want to extend the “kitchen” flooring to go behind the bar as well since having carpeting in the working bar area is just silly.  Why anyone would have decided to put carpet there eludes me.  It is a working kitchen space, not a living area.  So we hope to rectify that.

Work was pretty busy today because we are preparing for the pending hurricane, Irene, which is expected to blast through the northeast this weekend.  Right now Peekskill lies directly in the projected path of the storm which is not good since we have so many concerns around the state of our house up there.  So this could be potentially pretty bad.

I had my Medifast appointment after work today.  Just one pound lost this week.  Not very encouraging but at least there is still forward momentum, slow as it is.  Every pound counts.  And with me being so close we are pretty much assured that I will lose the last one half pound and pass the fifty pounds lost mark this week.  That will be really nice to be able to say.

Likely this weekend will be busy with work as we attempt to prepare and support the northeast with the hurricane hitting.

Medifast Status: Day 115, Down ~48.5lbs

Somehow I lost a day this week.  Today is Thursday.  I thought for sure that today was Wednesday.  I have absolutely no idea where the week has gone.

I seem to have stalled on my diet.  I’m trying hard to stick with it but I just do not appear to be having any progress.  I’ve been hovering at the same weight for more than a week.  Tomorrow will be my appointment with my trainer and if I am not careful I will have lost nothing or maybe even gained!  That isn’t good.  I’m not sure what could be wrong.  I am tracking it very carefully.

I came home for lunch again.  Dominica made salads.  We are splitting up our meals today.  Half at lunch, half at dinner.

Tonight Dominica decided that maybe she wants to do something dramatically different while in Europe and actually go to see the Dalmatian coast in Croatia.  It is supposed to be just fantastic and we will be there during the off season when it is cheap.  So, if we go that route, we will get to see some amazing artifacts of the Roman Empire and a bunch of the Adriatic which would be really nice.

From Croatia we are thinking that we would take the ferry across the Adriatic to southern Italy and get to see Naples, Rome, Livorno, the Mediterranean Coast and up to Genoa.  From there we would go on to Switzerland and be back on to our original plan.  There is a lot to think about.  This is going to be one major trip.

I got home and had my two hour call that I have every Thursday.  It doesn’t seem to long anymore.  I guess that I am used to it now.  I had two more calls after that one.  Then finally I had some time to spend with the girls.

I got to bed at a decent hour.  Only one day to go then the weekend.  Should be a relaxing weekend this time.  We have nothing in particular planned.

Medifast Status: Day 114, Down ~48.5lbs

Eight Scenes That Prove That Hollywood Doesn’t Get Technology (or… Eight Scenes That Prove That Screenwriters Don’t Have the Education of a Second Grader.)

Not a lot to report for today.  I got into work early.  The heat wave is continuing.  We had a heat index advisory today warning us to beware of the extreme heat.  Andy got the same thing in Austin.  We were both wondering why we get it now when it is 104 with a heat index of 106 when we did not get it when we were 111 with a heat index of 112?  Makes no sense to me.  We also go issued the “turn off your appliances and air conditioning in the middle of the afternoon” alerts as Texas doesn’t have enough power to deal with the cooling needs in this extreme heat.

I went home for lunch but we didn’t eat, we just watched some travel shows.  Mostly Rick Steve’s Europe.  We continue to be overwhelmed with what all we could attempt to do while across the pond in the spring.  We really just have too many options from which to pick that it is making it impossible to choose.  We really want to do everything but balancing cost, time, travel, kids and everything else is tough.

We have ruled out going to the Baltics or the Scandinavian countries.  They are just too far away from the other places that we will be.  We have effectively rules out The Netherlands for mostly the same reasons and because I have been there although I really want Dominica to get to see it as I think that she might really like it.

We are now leaning towards Dominica and the girls coming to Poland with me so that they can get to see both Krakow and Warsaw.  Krakow fits into the itinerary now because flying there and then taking a train to Warsaw costs the same as flying to Warsaw directly and Krakow is the cooler city to see.

We are definitely planning on spending some time in Vienna (Wien) and from there likely going to see Budapest and Bratislava too as they are just too close and easy to pass up while we are already so far out to the east.  It is not likely that we will be that far east again for a very long time so it will be nice to hit some of the highlights of eastern Europe too.  Technically Warsaw would be the farthest eastern point of our entire trip.  It sits in longitudinal line with western Greece but, obviously, far, far to the north.

We are thinking that we are going to give up the bulk of our time in Ireland in exchange for spending time in Northern Italy – primarily on the western coast.  We want to get to see the Mediterranean and that will be our only real chance.  Likely we would not venture south of Livorno but Rome is not out of the question.  It would be neat to see Rome, to be sure.

Most of our time will certainly be spent in Switzerland.  That is the one really solid bit of our planning.  From Switzerland we have an incredible ability to see southern bits of Germany, eastern bits of France and potentially the Milan and Lake Como areas of Italy.  It is all so close.

After I got home I spent the evening working on some Linux security issues.  That probably ate three hours.  And I had one hour long call.  I spent some time with the girls and watched a little bit of Rick Steve’s Europe but very little.

For dinner tonight, Dominica made a vegetarian Buffalo style chicken over salad thing that was very good.  We are adding that to our Medifast food rotation.

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.