Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 51, Down ~29lbs

After work today I ran over to Fry’s and picked up a Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 2 and two 3TB hard drives to use as our new video and audio server in our house.  The ReadyNAS uses far less power and generates almost no noise compared to the server that we used to use and Fry’s had it so inexpensively that we decided that we just needed to have it.  Dominica has been waiting for a lot of our stuff to be available after having it be offline for nearly two years now after all of our moving from place to place and never managing to get things set up properly.  The whole thing was pretty cheap and has a built in DLNA server which should make it super easy to share audi oand video with the rest of the house.

I walked in to the house to the news that my grandfather had just had a heart attack while working in the barn this afternoon and passed away.  My cousin Monica had been trying to reach me on my drive home but I didn’t hear the phone in the car.  She had managed to reach dad and he called Dominica so Dominica told me when I walked in the door.

I managed to reach dad, Monica and Aunt Gayle by phone this evening.  Everyone was still at the hospital and there was no real news.  We did determine that we did not have to leave tonight to go to Ohio.  I got a hold of everyone at the office and prepped them that I might need to travel at a moment’s notice but our plan, until we hear more, are that we will likely leave Texas on Friday night after work and get to Ohio on Saturday evening.  We don’t know what the funeral arrangements are going to be but it seems unlikely that anything could be organized faster than that.

Just in case, Dominica started packing up the Acadia so that we would be as ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

Medifast Status: Day 50, Down ~29lbs

The menu at La Cima looked really good today and we are getting into the habit of me checking it first thing in the morning and, if it looks good, forwarding it on to Dominica right away so that she has all morning to decide if she wants to go out for lunch and then get the girls ready and pick me up from work.  She was in the La Cima mood today so she came and picked me up from work and we went out for lunch.

Lunch was very nice and it is great getting to spend a good bit of time with the family in the middle of the day when everyone is awake and vibrant.  It is really better than being home in the evenings because that is when everyone is tired and always there is someone sleeping or watching a show or something.  Our lunch times at La Cima are some of our best family time together.

The weather today was as it has been for days.  Still and incredibly hot.  The weather reports all say nothing about storms.  But tonight, just like last night, a huge thunderstorm pounced on us unexpectedly.  No warning.  Straight from hot and still to seventy-five mile per hour gusts, massive lightning and driving rain.

After work I went to my golf lesson but no one was there.  I guess I missed that the lesson was cancelled for tonight.

We hung out at home this evening watching “Glee” which Dominica recently discovered and really enjoys.  I just jumped in in the second season and just poke my head in now and then to watch so I am not following it too closely.

Another surprise storm snuck up on us tonight.  Out of nowhere on a completely warm and still night another crazy storm crept up on us. Major thunder and lighting and heavy rain.  We lost power several times.  Liesl actually got a little scared from this storm.

Medifast Status: Day 49, Down ~28.5lbs

I did not feel like pulling myself out of bed this morning.  Luciana is getting me up earlier now and I don’t want to get up so early.  It does make it easier to get to work, at least.

I came home for lunch today.  This evening we just relaxed, more or less.  The days have been hot and still but tonight, out of nowhere, a storm snuck up on us.  Suddenly there was lightning flashing and thunder.  It didn’t last real long and it barely rained but there was some violent weather going on.  It really caught us by surprise.  We even lost power for a little bit tonight.

Medifast Status: Day 48, Down ~28.5lbs

Today is my first day with two little girls on Father’s Day.  I got up with Luciana at seven this morning and she and I went out to the play room to hang out together while Dominica and Liesl slept for nearly three more hours.  Luciana was fussy but just wanted to be held so she was pretty happy to have me hanging out with her for a while.  I just held her and played Fable III.

I was feeling like I was ready to be done with the game but Dominica felt that we should wrap up all of the non-evil side quests, no matter how trivial, just because.  I’m not sure of the reasoning but there is only maybe five to six hours total of additional game play to get out of the way and most of that is non-story “treasure hunt” style game play that I can do without Dominica there to help.  So that is what we did.  Luciana thought that that was pretty cool and just slept in my arms as I played.  It was a nice way to kick off our first Father’s Day together.  I did a bit of this yesterday too but today took it over the edge and I am done with Fable III for a while now.

Dominica got up around ten as did Liesl.  I had a little more Fable to play after she got up but very little.  Nearly everything was done and there was no more storyline to be had.  I put in a little more time doing a few Demon Doors and Gold Key quests and picking up a few straggling gnomes but overall, the game is done.  We are both pretty bored with it now that the main quests and the follow-on quests are done.  I’ll likely move on to the Mass Effect series now and come back to Fable III to look for the last few keys or gnomes when I’m in the mood for some treasure hunting.  In Fable II we took the time to get every last Silver Key and Gargoyle and that was a lot of fun but the game play of Fable III is different and doesn’t make this type of searching as exciting as it was in the older title.  I have nearly everything so it might be worth the effort, but it might not.

We started trying out Hulu Plus today.  There is a one week free trial of it and it is only eight dollars a month past that.  We hooked it up on the PS3 and immediately noted that the content that we had wanted to watch on the trial – HGTV and some home improvement shows – are absent from Hulu Plus on certain operating systems.  They claim that they have a license issue.  How they have a licensing issue based on the operating system of the playback device makes no sense to me.  They claim that it is that “mobile devices” are not licensed but it works fine on my laptop and not on my stationary PS3 so that claim is clearly false.  Our first impression is… not impressed.  We had more functionality with regular Hulu and PlayOn for far less money ($35 once, not $8 per month.)  So we are spending more and getting less.  Seems like a poor marketing strategy.  And it isn’t like Hulu Plus takes the commercials away, it just gives you a nicer interface and higher quality video stream.

So, lacking the shows that we wanted to watch, we watched the second season (which is very short) of Hot in Cleveland which we really like.  That didn’t last us very long so we went on to 30 Rock even though I really, really hate that Tracy Morgan is on that show.  We are very hopeful that NBC will come to their senses and fire him.  He has always been a drag on what is otherwise a brilliant show but in the light of his recent homophobic rants there is a good chance that he may never work again.  One can only hope.

For father’s day I decided that I wanted to watch a Cary Grant movie and snuggle with Liesl (since Luciana got the morning snuggles with just the two of us) and that I was going off of my diet and having popcorn.  Dominica thought that that was a good plan.

We watched Walk, Don’t Run which was Cary Grant’s last movie.  From 1964 it takes place, and was actually filmed, in Tokyo during the Olympic Games there.  It was very interesting to see how trivial the games were considered to be back then (not as trivial as I considered them but in light of today’s sports obsessions it is odd to see how little they were regarded then.)  I can’t believe that Cary Grant decided to duck out of movies in 1964.  He was still very much in his prime and could have been a massive box office draw for another ten or twenty years effortlessly.

The movie was decent but far from a classic.  Liesl climbed into my lap and watched 101 Dalmations on the iPad and snuggled with me for most of the movie.  I love when she does that.  She is so sweet.  She is loving some of the classic Disney movies now too – the same ones that her father loves.  She lives the middle-era animal ones just like I always have.  I’m not so much a fan since they went to the musical-based late-era movies (that started with The Little Mermaid in 1988) or the dark, brooding less than child friendly faery tale movies of the early era (think Snow White.)  I like the ones from Disney’s prime when they put in a few really classic songs, told a great story, didn’t scare the kids and made the whole family happy.  The greatest era of Disney films, in my opinion, opened with Lady and the Tramp and ended with Oliver and Company. It was an era that lasted thirty-three years but had some of the lightest activity from the studio as they took years to produce each movie.  But each is an outstanding classic that is not just a Disney classic but is a staple of the cinema.  Peter Pan could be argued as a transitional film as it definitely includes telling elements of both the former and later eras but my own opinion is to plant it firmly in with the former based on its content and mood.

It was quite late when we finally got Liesl off to bed.  Nearly one in the morning.

It was a very nice Father’s Day for me.  A lot of time spent with my girls.  At some point I will be getting new golf clubs as my father’s day present as well.  Not sure when we are planning on actually getting those.

Medifast Status: Day 47, Down ~28.5lbs

I got up this morning and continued working on Fable III.  I was tired of it last night but Dominica felt that we needed to complete all of the “non-evil” storylines and quests, even those that seemed pretty trivial.  So I got to work on those this morning just for “completeness.”  It does help us to get the most value possible out of a single game but it does tend to wear it out as well.

By late morning I had everything done except for some of the “treasure hunt” parts of the game like tracking down the last of the gnomes or picking up the last of the silver and gold keys.  I have most of both but have not taken the time to do them as their own quests.  They take forever and are only mildly entertaining.  I might come back at some point and do them when I am bored and need to zone out for a bit but I am thinking that that is not very likely.  I did the silver keys on Fable II and the last key ended up being a glitch and the quest couldn’t be completed.  I did the gargoyles but Fable II lasted much longer and it made more sense.  Fable III ended so quickly that it made the treasure hunt bits not really fit well with the rest of the game.

Overall Fable III remains an awesome game but I would not say that it is as good as Fable II.  Fable III suffers from a bizarre change of gameplay that occurs partway through the storyline and suddenly turns the game from a Fable II-like action adventure game into a somewhat bizarre strategy game that has so little precedence that you are mostly lost and confused and it is over so quickly that you don’t make good decisions simply because the game doesn’t do a good job of leading you.  Then, once the game is “over” you are dropped back into the original game sans storyline and you aren’t sure what you are supposed to do.  Awkward.

This afternoon Watson called and felt like going to eat at Chili’s so he came over and we went out to eat.  At Chili’s I’m able to get a bunless avocado burger which is really tasty.   That was a nice change of pace.  I’m not sure how often I should eat that though.  It seems a little bit higher in calories than I am likely to be supposed to be eating.