Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 61, Down ~38.5lbs

For lunch today Emily and I walked to The Bistro, a new restaurant than opened in January on Main Street in Frankfort, and got take away for the family.  It is a small restaurant in what used to be a pizza parlor.  I spoke to the owners and they said that they are doing well there.  There is no question that it is a unique dining experience here in Frankfort.

I am working all weekend this weekend, which is unfortunate as it is a three day weekend, but as there was the funeral last weekend and the wedding next this was the only option.  So I spent the day on the laptop working mostly as if it was a normal work day.

I mostly brought home food for Dominica.  Due to a miscommunication between the people at the house and those of us at The Bistro, I ended up bringing home two sandwiches instead of one.  The upside was that we got to try more of their food.  Notably we tried the portobello mushroom panini which was excellent – and Liesl ended up eating at least half of it herself!  We also got to try the eggplant parm sub which was quite good too.  I am very sad that there is no real food from The Bistro for me to eat.  My diet just makes it way too hard to get anything at a normal restaurant and they have no fish options here.

For dinner this evening we all went out to Denny’s in Herkimer.  Other than that it was a rather quiet evening.

Medifast Status: Day 60, Down ~38.5lbs

Two months on Medifast.  Still a very long way to go, though.  The jump start program that I am on is slated for twenty-seven weeks.  Two months is a relatively small portion of twenty-seven weeks.

I worked from the house again today.  Nothing exciting until this evening when we all went in to Utica for Sam and Provi’s surprise 40th anniversary party.  We had originally thought that we were not going to be able to make it to the party because we were not coming up to New York until tonight – that is leaving Texas late this evening around eight and arriving sometime on Sunday morning – but since we were in Ohio for the funeral we were able to make it to the surprise party too.

The party was at the Radisson in downtown Utica.  I’m not sure that I have ever been to the Radisson before.  It is right downtown so I know it well, but I don’t believe that I have ever been into it.  We have stayed at the Hotel Utica right down the street in the past.

It was a really nice party and amazingly, even with a huge turnout, we managed to pull it off as a surprise.

Medifast Status: Day 59, Down ~38.5lbs

Today is our first full day in Frankfort for our annual summer trip.  Most of the day was spent at the house.  I am working from the laptop all day.

This evening we had to run to the tux shop to get me measured for the wedding.  We are just over one week from the wedding and today was the last possible day to get fitted.

From the tux shop in New Hartford we drove into Utica to meet the family at Nicky Doodles, the new ice cream shop there.  I couldn’t eat anything, though, and sat in the car with Luciana because of all of the mosquitoes gathering around the ice cream.  They had sugar free, fat free ice cream but even that was about two hundred calories which would cost me two of my Medifast meals in calories and that is a pretty big deal so I was not going to do that.

After we got back from ice cream, Emily and I headed out for a walk.  We walked from Frankfort to Ilion which, according to Google maps, is 2.5 miles in one direction making for an even five mile walk.  Definitely some good exercise.

Medifast Status: Day 58, Down ~38.5lbs

If you are following my Medifast status you will notice that, for the first time since leaving Texas, I was able to weigh in today.  For our final week in Texas I had barely been losing any weight at all which was causing some minor concern.  Then, while in Ohio, I was stuck eating less than ideal meals and had a lot of snack “breaches” mostly involving almonds and other nuts.  I was finally able to weigh myself at dad’s house this morning and much to my surprise I have dropped nine pounds since Friday!  I am now doing very, very well on my diet.

I am working every day so I had to set up at dad’s computer in the office and was glued there all day.  I was busy enough and needed at the office that I did not manage to even go out for lunch with the family.  They all went out to the Omega Grill in Geneseo without me.  Turns out, I didn’t want to be there today.  Dominica’s food got messed up and then Luciana had a major diaper operational failure that resulted in a truly unbelievable mess.  Dominica did not at all have a good time at lunch.

When they returned from Geneseo they brought me food to eat so at least I got an Omega meal while being home.

Danielle stopped by this afternoon to do some training with dad and to pick up the three workstations that Dominica and I had driven up from Texas.  We were glad to have those out of the car.  We didn’t need anything else taking up space and weighing us down.  I also unloaded the servers that we were transporting so that we can just deal with them in a week when we return.

We stayed at dad’s until seven thirty and then it was time to get on the road out to Frankfort.  We are just running from one place to another this week.

We stopped in Geneseo to grab coffee at Tim Horton’s before leaving the area.

It’s only three hours or less from dad’s house to Dominica’s parents’ house.  So we got in just after ten.

It was a nice night and I had been in the car a lot the last few days so Madeline, Emily and I went out for a short walk around town.  We went down Main Street and up Adams and back down Cemetery Hill.  I checked it on Google Maps and it was 1.8 miles.  Not a long walk but a nice evening stroll.

While we were out walking it started to rain lightly.  We didn’t get too wet but we did hurry along home just in case more rain came.

Neither Madeline or Emily had ever been in a cemetery before, not even this one where their great grandmother is buried.  So this was a first for both of them since we stopped in briefly just so that they could see it.

Medifast Status: Day 57, Down ~29.5lbs

Today is our day to just visit with the family in Ohio.  I was hoping to stay until Thursday but Dominica felt that we needed to get out to New York tonight so we are spending the day here and leaving late to head up north.  So that meant checking out of the hotel this morning and loading up the Acadia again.  At least we will save money not paying for extra hotel nights.  That adds up quickly.

We got out to East Canton and pretty much just spent the day hanging out with everyone.  Most everyone had the day off so we saw a good amount of my family even though it is a Tuesday.  I had to work all day and there is no Internet access at grandma’s house so we set up my iPhone as a hotspot, which is not at all cheap, and I worked tethered to that via WiFi all day.  That actually worked pretty well.

For dinner the family, including Monica’s boyfriend Ryan that we just met today, all went to Grinder’s in Louisvilla, obviously at our request.  They ran out of the veggie burger patties today – I’m sure that they were not used to the sudden quantity of them needed with two vegetarians eating there every day – and so we had fish instead.

Liesl had a great time playing at grandma’s house.  She loves going for walks in the garden and having so much open space outside in which to play.  She likes all of the flowers and places to explore.  My aunt Cheryl got Liesl some bubbles with which to play and she made everyone go out and play in the back yard until absolutely all of the bubbles were completely gone.

It was around seven thirty when we got Liesl and Luciana loaded up and we were on the road up to New York.  We kept Liesl from napping today so she was asleep in no time having worn herself out playing outside.

Dominica and I continued “reading” Bill Bryson’s “At Home” on the drive to New York.  That is a really interesting book.  It is amazing how much awesome history can come from such a seemingly boring topic.  My favourite part of long distance drives is that it gives me a chance to catch up on my reading.  Now that I have no air conditioning on my daily commute and have to keep my windows open to keep from cooking inside of the Mazda I am unable to listen to my Audible books on a daily basis like I was in the winter.

The drive itself went fine.  We had held out getting fueled up until we left as gas has just been dropping and dropping the last few days.  But, of course, because we waited gas jumped up by twenty four cents between leaving the hotel this morning and leaving grandma’s this afternoon.  Oops.  Well that didn’t work out very well.

It was around one in the morning when we pulled into dad’s house.  Liesl was excited to see papa again even though she had seen him the day before.  This morning when going to grandma’s house Liesl was asking if she would get to see papa and we had promised her that she would see him tonight so we had to make sure that she got some time with him before going to bed.

Dominica and Luciana have the guest bedroom.  Liesl, Oreo and I took the den.  I doubt that we will be up early tomorrow.