Sheep Guarding Llama

Medifast Status: Day 12, Down ~13 lbs

Very little sleep for me last night.  I got up at six this morning and was out the door by seven.  Today is the disaster recovery test at the office and the entire office has to be in for the full day.  I was at the office before seven thirty.

The thing about disaster recovery testing is that when I’m needed, I’m really needed, but for nearly the entire day there is nothing for me to do at all.  So it is an extremely slow, boring day where I am chained to my desk but don’t really have much to do.  At least it allowed me to do some serious catchup on SGL.

There was a ton of food at the office today.  Sadly, none of it was anything that I could eat.  Boy did it look good, though.  Bagels, pizza, Indian sweets, cookies, etc.  It just kept coming and coming.  I definitely picked the wrong time to start my diet.  I’m missing several La Cima events and tons of other things.  I guess that there really is never a right time, but this seems to be pretty bad.

I worked through lunch today but was able to jet out of the office around three thirty.  Not too bad.  I was still on call all evening, which was a lot of calls, but at least I got to go home and see dad and the family for a bit.

We went out to Remington’s Fish Grill (or something like that) in Addison right as they opened at five.  Dinner was great, we really like that restaurant and it was not too expensive either.  With Dominica about to start Medifast (or a modified version close to it) and me being on it now we will definitely be looking for restaurants able to accommodate us and eating at the same few places over and over again will rapidly get old.

We were able to have a nice, relaxing evening at home since I had gotten home so early and we had managed to get out and to get dinner so quickly.

We went out for a walk to the Carrollton Greenway.  It wasn’t a very long walk but it was nice to get out and get a little exercise.  We took the girls out in their new double stroller which was cool.  They both seemed to really enjoy it.  We got to walk through the neighbourhood and give dad an idea of what the houses around us are like, too.

Medifast Status: Day 11, Down ~12 lbs

It’s Friday but tomorrow is the big disaster recovery / continuity of business test for this season at the office so I have to be in the office all day.  It will be a short weekend for me.

Before lunch I went over to my Medifast office and picked up some additional food items so that I would have more variety and more drink options to get my through.  I need more selection to make it easier and I am rapidly finding that I prefer to use drinks rather than food items for many of my meals.  Once you lose the desire to eat you really just want it to be as quick and easy as possible.

For lunch today the family came down and met me at Rockfish.  Dad hasn’t been to Rockfish yet but he loves seafood so this should be a great restaurant for him.

I was very excited to learn today that Rockfish now has arctic char, one of my favourite fish.  I have never found arctic char outside of that one restaurant in Walt Disney World that Dominica and I discovered a few years ago.

I managed to get out of work at a pretty decent time tonight and I rushed home as I am getting very little family time over the weekend.

Medifast Status: Day 10, Down ~10 lbs

Good progress on the diet, even with going out to eat at the club again last night.  Averaging one pound per day for ten days is not bad at all. I sure wish that I could keep this up for the long term.  This diet would go by in no time at all.

Today is dad’s first full day in Texas.  Yesterday was six months, to the day, from the last time that he traveled down to Texas.

It was a busy day at the office today.  I went home for lunch and we just ate at the house.  Then it was back to work.  Dad has been very busy playing with Liesl all morning.  Liesl is very, very excited to have her papa back and demands every available second of his time (and a little more.)

Just a relaxing evening at home tonight.

Medifast Status: Day 9, Down ~9.5 lbs

Today dad is traveling down from New York to Texas to come see Luciana and Liesl.  He left first thing this morning and should be arriving at DFW just after lunch.

I went in to the office this morning and worked through lunch so that I would be able to go get dad from the airport.  It wasn’t a really busy day so it will be good for coordinating the trips to and from DFW.

I checked the online flight status and dad was actually scheduled to arrive half an hour early so I left the office around a quarter to two and headed out to the airport.  During the drive from Irving to DFW it went from a light sprinkle to a heavy downpour.  No fun.  Driving was not good at all, very low visibility and a lot of hydroplaning.  It took forever to get to the airport.

I sat outside for a while looking for dad.  Eventually I decided to go in and see what was going on as I was getting no information on my iPhone.  I parked and ran in through the pouring rain.

The boards at DFW listed dad’s flight as still being on time even though it was already very late.  I called Dominica and she tried to look up online what was happening but there was no information.  I found someone who worked for Delta and they informed me that the flight had just been rerouted to Austin (without explanation as to why all published information about the flight was incorrect) and that he was not expected to arrive back in the DFW until around eight thirty tonight!

So I went back to the office and eventually dad was able to call me from Austin to fill me in on the current flight status.  They really have no idea when they might get to Dallas.

I worked at the office following Delta’s online status update hoping that the information was somewhat correct this time.  The flight seemed to be coming into Dallas near the end of the day so I stayed late to see what would happen.  It seemed a bit more efficient than heading home just to turn around and head back out again.

It was around six thirty, I believe, when dad was finally on the ground.  I was able to zip right in, pick him up and head back to the house to get the girls.  We decided to go out and do pasta night at La Cima tonight since we were all starving and this is the best night to go up to enjoy the club.  Watson was already up there before we even left the airport.

Tonight was lobster cream and the second week of the new pasta night special feature entry which is really nice.  Everyone thought that the lobster cream was excellent.  It was a beautiful night too.  After the rain there were some amazing rainbows out over the city of Dallas.

I couldn’t enjoy pasta night, of course, which sucked.  I love my Wednesday night pasta.  Instead I had grilled salmon on a salad which was really excellent.  Chris really knows how to do fish the way that I like it.

We hung out for a while and just enjoyed being at the club.  It was, as Wednesdays often are, very slow.  We had the lounge to ourselves and both girls were perfectly behaved.  It was really easy bringing them out for the evening.

After dinner we were off home for the evening.  We all pretty much went straight to bed.  Dad had a really long day.

Medifast Status: Day 8, Down ~9.5 lbs

I had my first Medifast check in today.  That took about an hour.  My ketone test said that I was losing too quickly and am risk of starving so I need to add a little bit back in to my diet to make sure that I remain burning fat rather than conserving calories.  My official weigh in there, which is a few pounds lighter than my weigh in at home and on a much better scale and with all of my clothes on, put my first week of weight loss at ten and a half pounds or one and a half pounds per day!  Pretty good results.  Now to keep it up.

Today I am starting golf lessons through La Cima.  Believe it or not, it has been twenty one years since I last took golf lessons.  When I was fourteen (I think that that is the right age) my parents got me golf lessons that summer (this would likely have been the summer of 1990) at the country club in Batavia.  That is when I learned to play golf and I used that learning experience for the rest of my golfing career.

When Dominica and I found out that I could get lessons through La Cima we decided that it was probably time for me to take lessons again.  I haven’t had a chance to play golf in nearly six years (maybe more, I can’t really remember) and I would really like to start leveraging our La Cima membership more and take advantage of the golf that we are already paying for.

I was in the office during the day and came home for lunch.  After work at five thirty I was off to the Grapevine Municipal Golf Course for my golf lesson from six until seven in the evening.  It was my first time heading up there so it took some work for me to find the course but I got there only a few minutes late despite some awful traffic.

The first class went really well.  It was fun and I learned a ton.  I improved significantly just in that one lesson.  I couldn’t believe how much better I was after just the smallest amount of instruction.  This is going to be very good for me.  I can’t wait to come back next week.

On the way home I hit Waffle House and picked up dinner for the girls.  Nothing that I can eat there.  Very sad.