Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 72, Down ~38.5lbs

We are spending less time in Rochester today.  I worked from dad’s house this morning.  Danielle came up around noon and we drove up to Greece during lunch.  We stopped, in case you hadn’t guessed, for Tim Horton’s.  Every time that we stop at Timmy Ho’s I am presented with all of those donuts and baked good that I am not allowed to have.  Pure evil. I really, really want some of them too.

Everyone was already there when we arrived which was nice since we were the early ones yesterday.  Today is not nearly as hot as yesterday so we stayed at Craig’s house all day.  It was still hot but not all that bad.

We did a late dinner together – Craig, Richard, Brian, Jeff, Danielle and I – with takeout from Wegmans for Danielle and I and pizza & wings for everyone else from a place down the street from Craig’s.  As soon as we ate we were on our way back down to home.  It was probably around nine when we got back.

Medifast Status: Day 71, Down ~38.5lbs

Danielle picked me up at seven this morning.  That is six Texas time.  Way too early for me.  I was struggling to be ready when she got there.  And, in fact, I was not.

We drove up to Greece, stopping at Tim Horton’s for coffee of course, and met up with Craig, Brian, Richard and Jeff.  This is the first time that Craig and I have seen each other since about four years ago in Newark at the Key Club.  Richard and I were probably more like six or seven years from before I moved to New Jersey at all.  Jeff has been at least a year and a half.  Brian only several months.  Still, a lot of people that I have not seen in a very long time.

We spent the morning at Craig’s house out in his garage patio area.  Boy was it hot.  There is a heat wave hitting New York and there is no air conditioning in there.  Sitting with my laptop on my lap all morning in the heat really made me warm.  I did better than most everyone else, though, being the Texan.

For lunch we went to Chili’s.  We thought about staying there all afternoon but they had no WiFi nor available electrical outlets so we abandoned that idea.  We went to Richard’s parents’ house instead where they had a nice, air conditioned basement.

After the work day was over and I was free to roam we went to Rochester’s downtown Dinosaur BBQ.  I’ve never actually eaten there – I don’t like their BBQ sauce and the place is not my style.  It was pretty packed and I learned from Ryan that Dinosaur is opening a location in Newark, New Jersey of all places.

I skipped eating even though there were some items on the menu that I could, in theory, get away with eating.  The food sounded good but once I had time to think about where I was I decided against it and was very happy later that I had not cheated on my diet for Dinosaur BBQ, of all things.

From Dinosaur we headed over to Alexander Street and had a round of drinks at the Old Toad – my old stomping ground in Rochester from the late 90s.  Long ago, around 1997, I was a music management intern at Pilato Entertainment when Pilato was stilling doing well enough to have an actual office – located in the Medical Arts Building, the same building as the Old Toad.  Some time later the office moved to downtown (when the rents fell with the collapse of Kodak) and now the office appears to be home-based, if Pilato Entertainment is still around.  The web site looks like it was made in my era and I can’t find anything today on the site later than 2001 so I suspect that the site lives on while the company itself may not.  The email listed is still AOL and the site is HTML 4.  Both signs of a long since dead enterprise.  A website that has not been updated for an entire decade is a little crazy.

Back in the late 90s when I lived and worked in Rochester – first in Rochester proper near Durand-Eastman and later in northeastern Greece at Greenleaf Meadows near Charlotte – the Old Toad was me and my friends’ place to hang out.  They had, and still do, the best beer around.  The Old Toad is the only place to get genuine real ale in the area.  It remains the only place in the states where I have ever found it.  Back in the late 90s Alexander Street was a hopping bar district.  Today that appears to no longer be the case.  Half of the bars are gone and across the street from the Toad is a tea room and bakery.

I treated myself to a bitter tonight.  It has been far too long since I was able to have one.  That was yummy.

After that Danielle and I headed back towards home.  We had barely made it a few blocks to a FastTrac when the car overheated and we had to stop.  It turned out that there was a blockage in the radiator but we were stuck for half an hour or more at the gas station waiting for the car to cool and for Richard to swing by and look at it to determine what might be the matter.

The original plan had been to go until midnight tonight which would have put us home closer to one in the morning.  Fortunately we broke early, especially considering the car issues, so it was closer to eleven when we got back down to dad’s house.

My girls were already asleep.  I didn’t get to see them at all today.

Medifast Status: Day 70, Down ~38.5lbs

Today is my one day at home without anything significantly on the docket.  Dominica and Bennie left from Frankfort early this morning to drive to Rochester so that Dominica could drop him off at the airport.  He is flying back to Houston today so that he can return to work.

It was around lunchtime when Dominica got down to the house.  We were all going to try to go out to lunch but I ended up being really busy with work so dad and Dominica went on their own and I stayed home working.  They brought back some food for me.

It was a very busy day for me working.  I was pretty much stuck in the office all day just trying to keep up with the work demands.

We had noticed yesterday that my SafeWord which is part of my two factor authentication system for accessing the office remotely was burned out (likely a security feature from multiple bad PIN attempts) so I am working today from a temporary key that I was able to get this morning from the helpdesk.  I can tell already that this is going to be a really rough week.

Danielle was over several times today and Art came with her one time too.

Medifast Status: Day 69, Down ~38.5lbs

Originally the plan had been for Dominica, Bennie, Liesl, Luciana, Oreo and I to drive from Frankfort out to Peoria today.  Bennie was to come with us as he is flying out of Rochester’s airport tomorrow morning to return to Houston.  But we don’t have enough room in the car, Dominica would like to stay another day and other reasons compounding into it making sense for me to attempt to find alternative transport to go out to Rochester today.  We pondered for a while before suddenly it occurred to me that I could ride the train!  Sadly we had not been prompt in our thinking or I would have ridden with dad as he drove this exact stretch of highway first thing this morning – in his “new” Volvo convertible that he has had for only a couple of weeks.  But I do adore train travel and would be loathe to complain about an opportunity to travel such.

First thing this morning, and by first thing I mean way too early considering how late the party was last night, all of us – the cousins – sans Joe and Brittany who were too tired to go anywhere, went to Denny’s in Herkimer for one last hour of visiting before everyone started heading back in their separate directions.  My dad joined the “sisters” breakfast at a local diner with Dominica’s parents and her mother’s siblings.  From breakfast dad headed back home.

After breakfast we returned to the house and I booked my train trip on Amtrak.  I am really glad that we thought of that.  We were struggling in our attempt to figure out how to get me and some of my stuff out to dad’s and without having spare cars it was looking like I was going to have to fly.  Of course, Utica to Rochester is one of the best places to be taking a train.  The route is straight and relatively free of delays and the train ride takes little to no time longer than does the drive itself.

I booked my afternoon train ticket – only $39.  Talk about cheap.  That is less than the cost of gas plus wear and tear to traverse that same distance (about 136 miles) and doing that by car and that doesn’t take into account the cost of the tolls that you will encounter on that drive too which must be several dollars on the New York Thruway.

Dominica drove me to the train station around five so that I could catch my train.  She stayed for a few minutes to make sure that the train was on time, which it was, then she returned to her parents’ house.  I boarded my train right on time and rode the Empire Service from Utica’s Union Station to Rochester.

The ride went very smoothly.  I ate dinner on the train – a simple salad and some really excellent cous cous.  I listened to the remainder of “The Scratch of a Pen” which I have been reading on Audible covering the ramifications of the 1763 Treaty of Paris which had ended the Seven Years War, known widely as the French and Indian War to Americans.  The book was quite fascinating and really did a great job at giving me a picture of live in the colonies during the period between the two great wars of the later American colonial period.  I never learned in school just how important the Seven Years War was on the world during that time and how much it lead to the formation of the current countries of the United States and Canada and how it impacted people all over the world.  Fascinating.

Dad picked me up at the train station.  The train was right on time.  This was my first chance to ride in his new Volvo C70 convertible.  It is a pretty nice car, to be sure.  Smooth ride and quite comfortable.  He has been getting more than thirty miles to the gallon from it which is really amazing considering that he always drives with the top down.

Dad and I got to hang out for a while this evening.  Dominica will be coming out late tomorrow morning.

Medifast Status: Day 68, Down ~38.5lbs

This morning, first thing, all of the girls were off to the hair dresser to get their hair done for the wedding.  So I was in charge of watching Luciana and Liesl while they were gone.  So my morning was pretty busy.  It was basically impossible for me to get ready at all since I was watching the kids.

The girls made it back from the hairdresser in record time.  I was amazed how quickly that went.  Very impressive.  I thought that it was going to take several hours.  I know how hair is.

It was a bit of a rush to actually get dressed and out the door.  The wedding was early in the afternoon and with the kids and everything that meant that there was barely enough time to get there.  I have no idea how people would do a wedding actually in the morning!

We got picked up by the limo which delivered us to the church and then took the girls over to Brittany’s parents’ house to pick up the bride and maid of honour from there and would be delivering them to the church when they were ready.  We were really impressed with the limo and our limo driver.  This was the best limo experience that we ever had.  He really worked hard to take care of us all throughout the day.

Joe and Bennie disappeared into the front of the church while the groomsmen took up positions in the front and doubled as ushers until ushers were found and assigned once they discovered that there was no accommodation for the groomsman to be the ushers.  There was a bit of confusion going on up there, but we pulled it all together.

It was a very traditional Catholic wedding service.  My dad was one of the very first guests to arrive and the first one ushered in for the service.  This was, believe it or not, actually his first ever Catholic wedding but not his first mass.

Liesl was the cutest little flower girl and Garrett did great as the little ring bearer.  Both of them kept it together and performed admirably.  Last night during the rehearsal Liesl had come down the aisle and had stopped halfway to take a bow for her adoring audience.  Today she declined to do so and walked normally all of the way down the aisle.  Garrett followed suit and everyone was impressed by what a good job they both did.

It was a little difficult coordinating the wedding with so many of us being in it.  With Brittany’s sister, both of Joe’s siblings and their spouses, Madeline and Emily as junior bridesmaids and both toddlers all in the wedding we had nearly the entire family engaged in direct wedding activities.  Only Clara and Luciana were too young to take part and extended family had to watch over them as there was no one in the immediate family available.

We had a brief period of in-church pictures, but that did not take long at all.

After the pictures in the church it was back into the limo and off to the Hotel Utica for the wedding pictures.  I love the Hotel Utica.  I wish that we got to stay there more often.  It has been years since Dominica and I have been able to stay there.  One of these days we plan to check out their restaurant as well.  We like the look of their menu.

From the pictures the limo took the wedding party on to Ilion to Francesca’s banquet and catering fall where the reception is being held.  I passed by Francesca’s some years ago while on a late night walk from Frankfort to Herkimer and always wondered what events there would be like.  Now I get to find out.  Francesca’s really stands out in Ilion.  Not the type of facility that one expects to see in a town like Ilion.

We had a really good time at the reception.  Joe and Brittany’s favourite band, Hair of the Dog, an Irish folk rock band from the Albany area played for a few hours and MC’d the evening as well.  Liesl thought that that was great fun and spent the entirety of their performance standing front row, dead center on the dance floor dancing like only Liesl can dance.  She did more to get people out on the dancefloor than anyone else in attendance.  She is dedicated to her dancing.  She was quite adorable in her frilly white puff of a flower girl dress.  Everyone adored her.

We all had a good time at the reception and very much wore ourselves out.  We partied until everyone was packing up and heading home.

Dominica and Francesca took the kids back to their grandparents’ house so that they could go to bed.  I drove everyone over to Brittany’s parents’ house so that those of us looking for the late, late reception party could keep on going until the wee hours of the morning (the “wee” hours being defined as those hours after you have “broken the seal.”)  Before heading over to the Gages’ house we stop off at the Toccos’ to change quickly.  At this point we discovered that I had no sneakers to wear.  Everyone, of course, blamed me for losing them but I was sure that I had not.  I had used them this morning just before heading to the wedding and they could not have gone anywhere.  I did nothing but dress for the wedding and go.

We didn’t hang out that late at the Gages’.  Maybe two to three hours at most.  Bennie regaled us with his stories of adventure and misadventure and he torched marshmallow upon the roaring fire pit filled with loose wood and pieces of hardwood flooring.  Bennie demonstrated, over and over again, the “proper” way to roast a marshmallow, that is to thrust it deeply into the first, set it alight, put out the fire leaving the marshmallow covered in ash and devour it immediately leaving no time for the searing mallow-lava to cool.  I declined to try this Texan delicacy myself but Joe did try it as did Brianna who failed to eat it nearly as quickly as Bennie prescribed although she was still unhappy with the burned tongue and cheeks that she received as it was.

After the late party was exhausted I drove the newly-wed Toccos to their hotel in Utica and dropped them off then drove Bennie back to the Toccos’.  All were asleep by the time that we arrived.