The latter portion of our long flight over the pond went decently smoothly.  After much cajoling both Liesl and Luciana managed to fall asleep.  Liesl slept on my lap while Luciana slept in the makeshift bassinette that British Airlines provides for smaller children.   That gave them a few hours of sleep each and even Dominica got a wink or two in.  No sleep for me, between having to brace my foot high on the bulkhead for hours to support Liesl in a comfortable position and being unable to turn over or recline there was no real way for me to sleep.

Eventually, once I got into a position where I could do it, I brought up the on board entertainment system and attempted to watch a movie.  Sadly, the movie turned itself off about every three minutes so I never managed to finish the film as it took several hours to watch an hour and a half long film.  It was the sequel to Johnny English.  I didn’t even know that Rowan Atkinson had made a sequel.  Sometime when I am back in Texas I will look for it as I want to see it now.

We landed in London early in the morning, around seven local time or one in the morning according to our internal clocks.  The flight had been good with plenty of food and wine.  Even the cheapest seats on British Airways get a bottle of wine.  BA knows what they are doing.

Going through border control for the UK was going to be a nightmare.  The line had easy one to two thousand people in it and snaked through the entire section of the airport.  It was easily going to take hours to work our way through it.  Thankfully, after just a few minutes in the cramped line, Luciana got an attack of “stranger danger” which we assume was triggered through a combination of people being packed in like sardines on every side (so close that people were constantly jostling), it being a bit warm, her exhaustion from the flight and her sensing that her parents were a little stressed dealing with the line, luggage and all of the people, she began to scream… scream like the Dickens (which is what a proper little girl scream like when in England.)

It took about thirty seconds of Luciana screams before UK border control agents pulled us out of the one to two hour long line and whisked us directly to a waiting “emergency” border control checkpoint and basically waived us through.  It was amazing.  So much time saved.  Luciana totally saved the day on this one.

We were able to get our luggage long before anyone else from our flight was evening thinking about walking down to baggage claim.  We  got there right as our bags came out of the “chute” so we were able to just grab them and go!

We opted to not take the expensive Heathrow Express train but took the very cheap tube instead which took a little over an hour to transport us from Heathrow to London’s St. Pancras rail station (which sits across the street from the recently made more famous King’s Cross Station of Harry Potter fame – we actually took the tube to King’s Cross (or KingsX as it is written in shorthand) and then walked over to St. Pancras.)  The tube journey, being that this was a Sunday morning, was very relaxed – nothing like taking the tube during rush hour.  We enjoyed having the time to sit and talk with Liesl and explain that we were in England.

The weather is perfect – a truly glorious day in London.  The sun was bright and warm.  This is London like we have never seen it.

We got to St. Pancras and miraculously there was a train just about to depart for Nottingham.  So we grabbed the ten o’clock train and without even having enough time to grab coffee… we were off to our final destination.  Luciana not only make border control more convenient but saved us from being stuck on a noon or, most likely, one o’clock train.  The aftereffects of her screaming saved us certainly two hours and very possibly three hours!

The train ride up to Nottingham was cramped and we were pretty exhausted.  Dominica gave Liesl the first of the secret My Little Ponies that she had stowed away to surprise Liesl with during the trip to keep her happy.  This one was Twilight Sparkly or something like that.  Liesl was very excited about that and it kept her happy on the train.

We ended up making some friends on the train and Liesl and I actually went and sat with them and discussed the weather and traveling in the East Midlands.  They said that the region has had the wettest April in recorded British history and so it was truly amazing that we were here for such amazing weather.

We got to Nottingham, got some British cash from the station’s ATM and set out walking through town looking for our apartment.  The walk was a hard one with a lot of hills and tough cobblestone and uneven sidewalks.  We have so much luggage to carry that it really hurt going as far as we did.  We were exhausted and soar when we finally made it to the apartment.  Then the challenge of figuring out how to get in – although that ended up going smoothly without any real issues,

The apartment is awesome.  Dominica did an amazing job finding this place.  We have a two bedroom, one and a half bath serviced apartment on the eleventh floor (that’s twelfth floor to Americans) with great views of Nottingham.  The place is spacious, has laundry inside the apartment, a full kitchen, a nice dining area, a comfortable living room and a nice balcony.  Liesl loved it when we opened up the balcony and she could just go out there on her own to play.

We got settled in and almost immediately Huw came over.  Dominica and the girls decided to stay in while Huw and I went out for a bit. So Huw set off to give me a quick overview of town – an overview of the punk rocker pub sites.  So I got a firsthand punk rock tour of one of England’s big punk rock cities from a punk rocker and I got introduced all over town.

We started at the Old Angel right by the apartment and went to about six pubs including The Royal Children, The Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem and Foreman’s.  One is famous for being frequented by, well, the children of royals hundreds of years ago, one for being the oldest pub in the whole of England with much of the pub carved out of solid rock in the castle wall and one for being the smallest pub in Nottingham.  We also hit another pub that competes with the Jerusalem for the title of oldest pub.

It was amazing to see the history of Nottingham through the pubs.  The Ye Olde Jerusalem pub might be one of the coolest places that I have ever been. This pub was used as a stopping off point for English troops en route to the third crusade.  The pub was built in 1189 – the year that the third crusade kicked off.  It was also amazing that not just one but several people knew Huw at each and every pub that we went to.

I also was very excited to kick off my time in England with a huge selection of cask ales.  I probably had six pints on my first day!

After we did our pub crawl we went looking for fish and chips to bring home to Dominica and the girls but because it was Sunday evening every British business was closed.  We found this same problem a few years ago when Dominica and I were last in the UK.  So instead we hunted down an awesome little Turkish restaurant and got Turkish veggie burgers to take back.  The burgers were amazing.

So Huw dropped me off (we walked all over town but took a cab back to the apartment to get home quickly) and his wife picked him up and took him home and I went up to deliver food to the girls.  We ate and were in bed pretty quickly after that.  Already Liesl is really enjoying the British television shows and the new variety here.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.  It is my one day in Nottingham so we are going to try to see a lot of things but we are going to be pretty tired as the jet lag is going to take a while to wear off.

икона за подаръкWe got up early this morning having gotten way too little sleep and we were out the door around eight.  This is it, we are really off to Europe.  I can’t believe it.  We don’t sleep until we are in our serviced apartment in Nottingham, England!  That is a bizarre thought.  Scary too considering how far away that is in terms of both time and distance.

Dominica, dad and I drove up to the Peppermint Too in Henrietta to meet Dominica’s parents for breakfast.  We ate there and then dad dropped us off at the Rochester airport.

We got into the airport and got our first real taste of just how much work it was going to be to lug so much luggage around (hence the term, I imagine) and it is not going to be fun at all.  Dominica does an amazing job of packing lightly but even so this is no picnic.  We have so much stuff.  Two massive rolling bags, a huge duffle bag, the kid carrier, the backpack that goes onto the kid carrier, Liesl’s bumblebee backpack and the stroller.  Painful is putting it lightly.  There are only the two of us to carry all of that plus carrying the children as well.

Just as we went into the security line I noticed Stacy working at American Airlines’ desk so we stopped over just for a minute to say hi to her.

Security at Rochester went smoothly and we got into the terminal with enough time, but not much extra, before our flight.  We are flying Jet Blue from Rochester to JFK where we will be catching our big flight to London.

The first flight went fine.  The girls were pretty restless but overall it wasn’t bad.  We had a three person row for the four of us so Dominica say by the window, Liesl sat in the middle and I sat on the aisle and Luciana would migrate around among us.

Liesl was an angel not complaining at all and being perfectly behaved.  Luciana did pretty well but when the plane descended into JFK the pressure seems to have been kind of painful and she cried a bit.  But the first flight was definitely as good as we could hope for.  Hopefully a good omen.

After arriving at JFK we had a six hour layover during which we had to figure out how we would keep ourselves going and entertain the children.   We have been dreading this part.

As we landed at JFK and taxied down the runway we happened to go past the NASA Space Shuttle that had just recently been flown in to New York.  It was sitting in a hanger still riding on the back of the 747 that carries it.

We ended up lucking out completely and getting a perfect little spot in an odd hallway at our gate where we had three seats looking out at the plane that we would be taking to London – an older British Airways Boeing 747.  We moved the chairs around and piled up our luggage to corral Luciana in so that she could not casually escape our bunker and we set about collecting food and whatnot to entertain ourselves.

Overall, considering the length of the layover, it went pretty smoothly.  The location was perfect and we even ended up having our own set of power charging outlets so we managed to get the mobile phone charged and ready ahead of the trip.  I posted a lot to Facebook while we were sitting there as well keeping everyone apprised of our status.  I continue to be really disappointed with the way that the Android phones work and even this later model with new hardware and much newer software is still quite painful to use compared to my iPhone and I already know that this is bound to be a long trip simply because I know that I am stuck working from an Android device as my key connection to the outside world for so much of it.

Our plane boarded on time and we got the bulkhead seating for which we had been hoping.  The plane was much older than we would have guessed and we had far less comfortable seats that you would hope for on such a long flight.  The only exciting bit was that after all of these years of flying I have never had a chance to ride in a 747.  When I was really young it was the 727 nearly always that we flew and sometimes the 737.  I’ve ridden in many DC9s and once a DC10.  Even the 757 and 767 and I believe a 777 but for my entire lifetime of flying I have never had the opportunity to fly in the acclaimed ”Jumbo Jet” so I was pretty excited to get the change.  British Airways is the world’s largest operator of the massive 747-400 which is fast and huge.

Our flight left Rochester without incident and we set off for our seven and a half hour trans-Atlantic flight.  The early part of the flight, the part that falls into today’s entry, was a rough one for both girls.  Liesl did her best to be well behaved but she was struggling to rest and was constantly having to put up with her very fussy baby sister.  And the video system on the flight was broken so Liesl was effectively unable to watch anything which would have done wonders for passing the time.

Luciana had a terrible time on the flight.  Under the best conditions she does not fall asleep easily and any change in her schedule or location throws everything off.  This was really bad.  She screamed and whined and was just awake and incredibly unhappy for hours.  British Airways did manage to get us a special bulkhead sleeper unit for her but she was pretty unhappy with that.

There is no doubt that this is going to be a very, very long flight and tomorrow is going to be a very difficult day for us because there is no way that any of the four of us are going to be getting any significant amount of rest while on this flight and we have all of the stress and effort of arriving in a new country to deal with and then we have many hours of going from London to Nottingham that we have to deal with as well even after we get into England.

No time to sleep in this morning.  I was up around eight.  Okay, that is sleeping in a little, but not very much.  That is only around seven hours of sleep at best and that is after getting absolutely zero sleep last night since I drove through the night.  So I am going to be pretty tired all day.

Pretty much first thing this morning Danielle came up and picked me up so that we could run down to Perry to do some banking.  We got down there, did the banking and then grabbed some coffee from the “new” coffee shop that is open on Main Street now.  We then headed out to Warsaw to get Tim Horton’s coffee and donuts and from there drove back to dad’s via Wyoming.

We stopped in Wyoming so that I could see what had happened to the town.  This is my first time being back to Wyoming in years and while I was aware that all of the businesses had packed up and left I really did not have a good feel for how bad it was.  There is truly almost nothing left.  The grocery store is still there as is one little office on a side street and a tiny little bank branch that has extremely limited hours – basically just an ATM.  Everything else is gone.  The pub is gone, the Christmas shop, the ice cream place, the antique store, the knick knack place, the cafe down the street, the bed and breakfast, the inn and many more businesses… all gone.  It is nearly a ghost town.  So sad.

Then we were back to dad’s house where I worked as much as I could until it was time for the wedding.  Danielle stopped back up briefly with Michael so that we could see him as neither Min nor I have seen him in a few years now – not since picking him up when he returned from Africa.

The wedding is in Geneva which is about two hours from dad’s house (allowing the necessary time for everything) and is being held at Belhurst Castle Winery on Seneca Lake and is at three in the afternoon so dad and I had to leave the house very early.

We had a really nice time at the wedding.  The weather was absolutely perfect.  They could not have asked for a better day.  Bright sun, light breeze, perfect day on the lake.  My guitar teacher played the music for their wedding as well so I got a chance to hang out with him.  Ralph gave me my first guitar lesson twenty-nine years ago this year.  That is hard to believe.

I danced a bit tonight – hoping to burn off some of the pasta from dinner.  My aunt Ruth was in attendance today so I got to spend some time with her.

On the way home to dad’s house we stopped off at Tom Wahl’s to get some additional protein.  Tomorrow is going to be a long, exhausting day and I will definitely be needing my energy.

We got back to the house and the Toccos were still there so we visited for twenty minutes at most and they headed off to Rochester to go to the Country Inn and Suites where they are staying.  We got right off to bed.  We have to be up around seven tomorrow and on the road by around eight so that we can get up to Rochester, meet Dominica’s parents for breakfast, eat and get to the airport in time.  So much to do.

This is our last night with Oreo for six weeks.  That makes us very sad.  His health is not good and we hate to leave him behind.  He is almost never sleeping in bed with us now and has been like this for weeks.  He slept on the floor at the foot of our bed tonight.

I was still driving when the day flipped over from Wednesday to Thursday.  We hit traffic in Texas as we attempted to leave the DFW yesterday afternoon but after we were out of the DFW things flowed smoothly all night.  We took the northern route through Oklahoma which I much prefer when we are leaving during heavy evening traffic in the DFW area as it gets us out of the traffic zone much more quickly than heading all of the way through the DFW in order to head east out to Arkansas.

Dominica took over driving for a few hours early this morning.  We listened to a bunch of classic country music on her iPod and sang along for much of the night.

In the morning we stopped at a McDonald’s with a play area in southern Illinois so that the girls could get out and stretch a bit.  Both of the girls have been doing an amazing job of riding in the car.  Liesl has been a perfect angel without the slightest bit of complaining which we were not expecting at all.  I can’t get over how well she has done on this really long trip.

While we were at McDonald’s I talked to Dominica about how well we were doing as far as making good time on the drive and mentioned that if possible that I would really like to run out to East Canton, Ohio so that I could see my family as we pass by.  My family is only about thirty minutes out of the way on the drive from Texas to New York so it really is a good chance to see them.  I texted my cousin and my aunt and let them know that we were going to be coming through in the middle of the afternoon.

We made it to my grandmother’s house at a quarter after three.  Most of my family was able to meet up with us there including my cousin Monica.  So we hung out for just a little bit before all going into Louisville to have a very early dinner at Grinders.  It was really nice that we were able to stop by as I was able to take my grandmother out for Mother’s Day and she got to see the girls for a few hours.  Getting her more time with Luciana is very important at Luciana has a little bit of stranger danger and having grandma meet her today before spending more time with her in two months will help with that.

It was just a few minutes past midnight when we pulled into dad’s driveway.  We were in bed in pretty much no time.  We were really exhausted.  Dominica really helped a lot with the driving on this trip and might have driven as much as a third of the way.  Altogether the drive, including our stops, took thirty hours.

Tomorrow I am working from dad’s house in the morning, running errands with Danielle and then heading off to Jeremy and Rachael’s wedding in Geneva.  Dominica and the girls will be staying home and her parents are coming out to hang out with the girls in the evening.

Wow, the day is really here.  Today is the day that we leave Texas for… two months!  I can’t believe that we are finally leaving for New York and on to Europe.  It has been in the planning stages for so long that it seems impossible that the day is finally here.

I tried to sleep in this morning but I woke up at a quarter till seven and could not fall back asleep.  So I got up, showered and put in a little time wrapping stuff up around the house before heading into the office this morning.  Even going to bed last night and getting up this morning it doesn’t seem like we are really leaving for the first stage of our vacation today.  Totally surreal.

I know that for normal people, going on a vacation is a normal, annual thing.  But this is both my first “real” vacation, other than our honeymoon, since my parents’ trip to Prince Edward Island with me in 1992 but also my first vacation, ever, of this length, our first time seeing much of Europe and the first vacation with my girls.  This is big.

I came home at lunch and helped Dominica to get things ready.  I watered the lawn while I was home, it was looking pretty dry.  I helped her to get things ready to pack although the car was pretty much completely packed by that point already.

I went back to work but didn’t stay for long.  Things were really slow this afternoon so I just took care of any paperwork that needed my attention.  Things were so slow that I left at a quarter till four to get home and get on the road.

I am posting this as I leave the office.  We will be driving all night and hope, if all goes well, to be arriving before dark at dad’s house in New York tomorrow.  I sure hope that I can stay up driving all night.  This is going to be a long one.

Adios!

This is it.  Today is our last full day in Texas for a long time.  We will be on the road to New York in the middle of tomorrow afternoon.  It seems surreal.

I got up at seven this morning and got right to work.  So much to do.  We are not really ready at all.  There is so much to do and so much to think of when you are going to be traveling for this length of time.

My day was crazy busy just trying to get as much work done as possible so that I would be ready to go.  I am working from home today so that we have more opportunity to do things.  Not that it makes all that much difference at this point.  We are down to the wire.

Around twelve thirty Dominica ran off for her final hair cut before we go.  She wants her hair a lot shorter so that it is easier to deal with while we are traveling.  I need to remember to shave my head tomorrow morning as well.  Want as little to deal with once we leave Texas as possible.

I will be going to work tomorrow and leaving the moment that they don’t need me anymore.  Likely around 4:05 since most of my real work typically wraps up before 4:00.

Liesl is really excited to be going on vacation and going to New York to see her grandparents.  She can barely contain herself.  Little does she realize (or remember) just how long the car trip is and then how long the flight is going to be and then the train ride once we arrive.  Between tomorrow afternoon and Sunday morning there will be twenty-four hours of driving, nearly ten hours of flights and about three or four hours of trains.  Not to mention a six hour layover at JFK with nothing to do.

We tried to get to bed early tonight but it was probably midnight anyway before we actually turned in.  Tomorrow is going to be a very long day.  So much to do before we leave and then… the drive.

We leave Texas in forty-eight hours and we leave for Europe itself from New York in five days.  Vacationitis is now in effect one hundred percent.

I got up at a quarter after six this morning so that I could get some work done.  Liesl was up just minutes after me.  She popped into my office at half past six and asked me to set her up with a My Little Pony show and chocolate milk (Pediasure.)  Her morning routine, but not normally this early.  It was still dark out.  Every morning she finds us, has us set up whatever show she was watching just before going to bed, bring out her Dora pillow and her pink polka dot blanket and set up on the couch in the playroom with her chocolate milk.  This is how she starts her day.

Over the last several weeks her thing has been making tents from blankets.  She loves to have a tent over her bed, tent over the couch, etc.  Yesterday she decided that she wanted a “cave” instead (basically a tent with her head poking out.)  So I have to set her up with that so that she can watch her shows as well.

I went in to Medifast this morning at my usual nine o’clock and did my final check in before leaving for Europe.  As of today I am also out of transition and into my “stay fit” cycle where, in theory, I am back to eating real food and being “normal” from here on out.  The goal is to maintain my current weight, hopefully, forever.  They are excited about my trip and will be following along on Kidding Around Europe.  Dominica has been working on some new posts for there too.  The big one will be about all of the luggage and how she is managing to squeeze everything in there.

I’ve gotten a Europe 2012 Flickr Set set up now where all of the raw pictures from our trip will be being uploaded as we go.  Pretty much empty right now, but in theory that will be jam packed with content very soon.

Dominica spent a bit of time this weekend getting iPads and iPods ready for the trip. Books and music loaded, movies to watch.  We are ready.  There is going to be a lot of time spent on planes and trains.  Keeping the girls, and ourselves, occupied is going to be tough.

Today was slow at the office.  I was thankful for that.  My head is swimming with all of the things that we need to do before we leave.  It is starting to feel like a panic.  I am starting to have a hard time concentrating or focusing simply due to the massive volume of things demanding our attention.

I had to run to the post office this afternoon to send out the Droid X that has to be returned to Verizon.  Quite honestly, we are glad to be rid of it.  We never liked the phone and we don’t want it cluttering up the house like our old Palm 700p and BlackBerry Tour do.  Even Dominica’s old BlackBerry Pearl won’t go away and Liesl still plays with it from time to time and Luciana is starting to play with it.  Very soon, I suspect, they will be playing with an HTC Droid Incredible 2.

The whole afternoon was really slow at work.  I remembered to submit my timesheets – always a concern with me.  Very critical since we will be out of the country and very dependent on the regular flow of income while we are away.  I did some bill paying too.  Want to get that all taken care of before we are traveling.

It is Monday so the country club is closed. So our routine has been for me to pick up food on the way home to save time.  We are pretty much out of food at the house and we do not want to buy any more since we will be leaving and anything that is in the house will spoil while we are gone.  So we have already gone through and pretty much eaten everything and now have to eat out for all of our meals.

So I called into Rockfish and ordered dinner before leaving the office.  I brought home dinner and Dominica had some Rick Steves lined up and ready to go when I arrived.  We watched his European travel tips to make sure that we had thought of everything possible.

My new laptop case arrived today.  It is pretty cool.  I will try to post some pictures tomorrow – both of it and of the new laptop too.

Tonight was busy between prep work and just general work needing my attention.  So much to do, so little time.  I expect to be home tomorrow and in the office on Wednesday.  So pretty much everything has to be done tomorrow.  Wednesday is purely a “pack the car” day.

Three days.  AAARRRRGGGHHHH!!!!

I got up early this morning and got right to work trying to get things done as quickly as possible.  I am completely overwhelmed with work and projects that must be done before we leave.  There is not nearly enough time in the day.  I have no idea how I am going to pull all of this off.

I locked myself in the office for much of the day.  The girls really wanted to hang out with me but I just don’t have the time for interruptions.  I sat down with Liesl and explained that I had to work really hard today and that I would go to work for three days but then, after that, we were going to go on vacation.  She got super excited and seems to understand.  We are trying to show her videos of where she will be going and doing and trying to make her understand as much as possible.  She seems to get it and can’t wait to leave on Wednesday to go see her grandparents in New York and then fly on to England.  I tried to teach her to say “jolly good show” as well.

Dominica went out to do some shopping today.  She has been buying My Little Ponies for Liesl to surprise her with on the trip.  Liesl is so into them now and has been asking for them all the time.  She got nearly all of them today and gave Liesl one of them, Apple Jack, early as Liesl was really anxious to get that one.  The rest will be a surprise to dole out while we are in Europe on the trains.

The day was exhausting.  By the evening I was really burned out.  I spent some time watching some shows with Dominica and the girls.  We caught up on the latest episode of Hot in Cleveland and Happily Divorced which are the only normal shows that we watch.  Then we watched some more of Travel with Kids.

Once Liesl went to bed I went to bed myself.  I’ll get up early-ish tomorrow and get more work done then.

Our last weekend before the trip.  Holy cow time has flown by.  We are suffering from vacationitis – we don’t want to do anything and mentally have already switched into vacation mode.  It is really hard to focus on anything but the trip.  So much to do before we go!

I am the on call for the office this weekend.  I got up this morning and tried to get as much work done as possible.  I worked really hard all day.  It was a very busy day.

I spent much of the day working on several servers, including a SunFire V100 that I am supposed to be delivering to Danielle when we drive up to New York.  We are delivering three laptops and the V100 on this trip.  That will reduce the “stuff” in our house but only by the tiniest bit.  I really wish that there was more for us to send.  I am so tired of the house being full of stuff.

I ran out to Redneck Heaven this afternoon and picked up shrimp salads for us for dinner.  That was my only real free time today.  We just have to push through until the trip.  There will be plenty of time to relax once we are gone.

I had to be up early this morning so that I could get into the office for the non-farm payroll announcement from the fed.  So that meant getting up at six.  But it meant that it would be easier to work from home this afternoon too.  I worked in the office until noon then came home, did some phone work for a while then worked from home for the rest of the day.

We are starting to get a little nervous.  Five days to go.  Five days!  Are we ready for this?  I am definitely not ready.  So much to do.  I have no idea how I will get everything done that needs to be done.  This is nuts.

I had to do some fancy maneuvering of weekend support schedules in the office to make it that I can be free while we are in Europe.  Somehow I got scheduled to work the weekend support during my holiday so we had to juggle several people to find a solution that would allow me to cover some other time so that someone could cover for me then.  We finally got it figured out and I am actually the on call this weekend – which is really awesome both because it gets it out of the way and also because there is a freeze in effect this weekend so the likelihood that much will happen is not very high.  Likely it will be a quiet weekend.

The new global phone arrived today.  That is good.  We have it in hand and Dominica spent the day getting it ready.  So far she likes it a bit more than her old phone too, which is good.  It is faster and smaller – perfect for traveling.  And since we don’t really care about this phone as it is being replaced as soon as we return from Europe we don’t have to worry about it getting beat up either.  The new phone is an HTC Droid Incredible 2 replacing her older Droid X.

Dominica took Oreo the vet this afternoon.  She is very pleased with his progress which is good as she was really concerned about him a week ago.  The extra food and baths seems to be helping a lot.  He appears to be happier too although he now seems to be really restless at night.  I wonder if he is more restless because I am not wearing my CPAP?  I got the CPAP a few months before we got Oreo so this is the very first week that he is trying to sleep with me that I am without my CPAP and I wonder if that change is bothering him.

Tonight we more or less relaxed.  Not totally but some.  This weekend is going to be really hectic and there is really no break until we leave on Wednesday evening so tonight is our chance to rest up before everything goes crazy.

Six days until we leave.  Now we are in the crunch.  Everything has to be ready.  This is a trip of epic proportions and considering how little traveling Dominica and I have ever done, this is really going to be a leap for us.  Since we started dating a decade ago, we have only taken our honeymoon and two long trips to Walt Disney World together that constitute anything resembling real vacations and those are nothing like this.  We’ve done trips to Europe, but they were nothing at all like this.  This is a new level of packing, preparation and “no turning back.”  Once we hit Wednesday morning next week, we are on autopilot.  Everything is planned to the minute at that point and everything has to go exactly to plan.

I am in the office today, one of my few full office days this week (or for the next two months, for that matter.)  I don’t think that I will have a full four days in the office until the first week in July!  How crazy is that?  I really cannot believe it.

I had to run out to UPS today to overnight checks up to dad so that he could cash them and get the money into the bank and available for us before we leave for Europe.  This is going to be one tight financial adventure.  While I was out I ran across the street and got some frozen yogurt.  It was quite warm out today in my car that has no air conditioning.

The temperature in New York and Europe is going to be a shock for our systems.

I have been putting in a bit of work attempting to build a storage server for Danielle.  I am trying to convert a SunFire V100, which is supposed to cap out at 137GB of drive capacity, into a half terabyte storage machine.  Because Solaris 11 does not support this old platform I have to try some alternative ideas.  I have been working to get FreeBSD 9.0 working but am running into some incredible hurtles.  I’ve considered Ubuntu, OpenBSD and NetBSD as well.  We will see what ends up being the best option in the end.

I am loving my new laptop.  I have barely had any time to get it set up yet so I am hoping that I will have time to get it all tweaked and tested out before it is too late.  I really like how portable it is and how it makes me easily able to use it while we are all sitting around in the play room.  My old laptop was too large and fragile for that.

After work I came home.  I was a little later than usual.  Dominica hadn’t decided what she wanted for dinner so I didn’t bring dinner home.  She decided that she was in the mood for Mexican (this never, ever happens) so we tried out Los Lupes which we have been seeing for a year and have not yet tried.

Dinner was quite good, we both did the tilapia fish tacos.  The restaurant was completely packed and they had a live piano player slash singer who was quite good.  It was a nice place but very small and very busy – hard for the girls as they could not get up and move around at all.  We really splurged on our diets tonight and tried the tres leches which we have never had before but have really been wanting to try.  It was awesome.  Liesl really liked it too.

The new mobile phone is supposed to arrive tomorrow morning.

Today was my work from home all day day.  So much to do.  We are trying to deal with all the last minute errands that can’t be handled any other way today.  We don’t know if I will be getting another day at home during the week until we leave for New York and on to Europe.  This is when you know that it is the home stretch, now we hit the “last” of everything before we go.  We leave Texas one week from today.  One week.  I can’t believe it.

I worked on getting the bills paid today.  Our tax return money has come in.  That was one of the big items that we were really concerned about.  Having that resolved before the trip is a huge weight off of our minds (and our banks’ minds.)  So today we paid one of our big credit cards to zero.  Whoo hoo!  And we paid pretty much all of the other outstanding bills too.  Boy does that feel good.  Our finances have been really worrying us for this trip and they are still going to be really rough but this is the difference between rough and “what are we going to do?”

Dominica ran out to do trip shopping this morning.  She went to IKEA to get some new luggage after having tested our old luggage the last few days and determining that it was not going to do.  One of the pieces of good luggage that she had hoped to have used was partially eaten by the rat so that made using what we already had a little harder than expected.  We can fix that luggage by replacing the wheels but we can’t do that anytime soon.

Verizon decided to take a stab at solving the European mobile phone problem again today (after I posted on Twitter about how we had to find another provider after twenty years with Verizon over something so trivial) and, after an entire day of trying, they did finally come through with a solution and Dominica has a replacement HTC Droid Incredible 2 World Phone shipping out already.  We are supposed to have the replacement Android phone on Friday morning and she will still be eligible to move to an iPhone in late June as originally planned.  That was the last big hurtle solved.

For lunch today I was at Brookhaven with John.  I haven’t seen him since he left the office so we hung out for a while.  The weather was perfect for hanging out outside at Brookhaven.  We sat right on the golf course and it was warm but overcast.

After work the family went to YogurtLand and got dessert.  Then Dominica decided that since we were out and since the phone issue was resolved (it got finally resolved while we were at the yogurt place and I was stuck standing outside getting the details figured out) that we should run back up to IKEA so that she could get a second piece of luggage like the one that she got this morning because it is so perfect for our trip.  It is a convertible rolling bag and backpack so that we will have some flexibility in how we use it.  So we ran up to Frisco and she made a quick dash into the store and back with the luggage.  She was incredibly fast, maybe little more than ten minutes with Liesl, Luciana and I waiting in the Acadia for her.

One week until we leave and the big items are figured out.  Not too much to worry about at this point.  Just have to get all of the work items wrapped up and my school work all done so that we are clear to go.

Here we are in May.  The month that we have been looking forward to since last August when we decided to take our long vacation.  The time has really flown.  This seemed so far away and now we are scrambling to be ready.  We leave Texas a week from tomorrow!

I ordered a new laptop today.  I have been working off of the same laptop for a few years now and while it is perfectly fine it is a bit large for backpacking through Europe and the battery doesn’t have nearly the life that I would hope that it would anymore.  It was from a different era.  Not old enough to justify replacing normally but old enough that something new would sure be nice.  Well the right set of circumstances came up and I have a new HP Folio 13 on order.  The Folio 13 is widely regarded as one of the, if not the, best ultrabook (very small notebook but more full featured than a netbook) on the market.  Aluminum casing, solid state drive, low power, long battery life, backlit keyboard – all of the things that a hard core traveler needs.

I came home at lunch and ended up working from home all afternoon because I needed to deal with getting the new Folio.  I got the order finalized around three and picked it up at the warehouse at four.  I got it home and Dominica was very relieved to see how much smaller this new laptop is than the old one and how much lighter and more rigid.  She has been working like crazy on all of the packing to get us ready for the trip and every ounce matters and every inch as well.  Things are tight and we have nothing to spare.  It is going to be really hard carrying all of this stuff as we don’t have a car in Europe.

My first impression of the new Folio is that it is awesome.  A full size keyboard but no wasted space.  Light and easy to carry.  This is going to be so much better.  We have to live off of this thing for two months as our only computing device.  Having it be as usable as possible is critical.

My next task this afternoon was to figure out what we are going to do about a phone while in Europe.  We have been planning all along to just get a loaner phone from Verizon, which we had been told that we could do when we first got our current iPhone 4 and Droid X which are not international phones.  We had hoped that Dominica’s phone might be up for renewal soon enough so that we could just get a new iPhone 4S instead of getting a loaner phone.

Well, nothing goes to plan.  I called Verizon and Dominica is not eligible for renewal until June 19th – the very end of our trip abroad.  So that does not work at all.  Argh.  So we had to resort to getting a loaner phone.  Ah, but there is a catch.  We called for the loaner phone and it turns out that that is not available unless your trip is only roughly three weeks, or less, in length.  That’s not going to work.  Uh oh.  What to do now.

Now we are in a panic.  The only options from Verizon are ones we can’t accept – better to drop our plans than to do what they suggest (agree to two more years on an Android that isn’t reliable.)  We talked to Sprint and it sounds like they might be an option.  Buying a phone in Europe when we step off of the plane might be an option as well.  Hard to say.  We are brainstorming.  This isn’t good. We thought that we were doing well for the trip but suddenly we have reintroduced panic back in.

For dinner we went to Brookhaven and sat outside for kids night.  We stayed until the girls were exhausted and they both were pretty much asleep by the time that we got back home.

I can’t believe that we are already up to the end of April.  We have been talking about this vacation in May for so long that it seemed like some far off dream – something that we would never actually do.  And here we are, days away.  The month is here already!  What is amazing to me is that many people take vacations every year.  If they do they must spend their entire year planning their vacations.  How do people find the time to do this?

Today marks one entire week that I have been caffeine free.  I dropped the caffeine cold turkey a week ago today and haven’t had any problems at all.  I wanted to get off of the caffeine for three reasons.  One for my heart – even though my check-ins each week are good I would like them to be better, second for the money since we spend so much on coffee and soda and third because caffeine is a problem for international travels dealing with jet lag.  One of the best ways to fight it is to not have any caffeine.

So, in theory, I am ready for Europe now.  Just over one more week to go without caffeine and I will be standing on the tarmac in jolly ol’ England.  I’m going to have enough to deal with when we get there without dealing with jet lag too.

I’m busy reading “Under the Tuscan Sun” having finished the first two sequels.  I decided that going back would be good.  The books is nothing, whatsoever like the movie other than both are set in the same general region of Italy in the same century.  Very weird.  They must have just really like the name of the book and winged it from there.

On my way home from work I went to Rockfish and picked up dinner for the family.  We haven’t done Rockfish in a while.  After grabbing the fish I ran across the street to Yogurt Zone and picked up froyo for Dominica, Liesl and I as well.

While driving home I finished “Under the Tuscan Sun” and moved on to reading “Everyday in Tuscany” which is Frances Mayes’ twenty year anniversary retrospective on her life in Tuscany.  The original book was started in 1990 and this one in 2010.

We watched some more of Travels with Kids tonight.  We’ve now seen all of their mainland European shows which are almost entirely places that we are not going with Venice being the only exception.  At least we got some good ideas about Venice.  We will be there for one day now with our finalized plans.

Yesterday I spent nearly the entire day working on projects.  I worked until my brain wasn’t really functioning any more.  I was quite productive, though, so I am happy about that.  I had a lot of things that I needed to get done and I wrapped them up, or mostly.  We are feeling like we are in the home stretch now before going to Europe.  Less than two weeks to go and so much to do that it is hard to think about anything else.  Not because we are so excited but because there is just so much to be done and so little time in which to get it all done.  Heading to another continent for so long with the kids is a bit nerve-wracking.

Today is my homework day.  I have tons to do so I pretty much barricaded myself into the office and just chugged away on that all day long.  Not fun but it had to be done.  I am so behind and I am really concerned that I am not going to have nearly enough done before we have to leave for Europe and doing it from Europe is going to be painful, to say the least.

By the end of the day I did finally get my homework caught up.  I am no longer officially behind.  Certainly not ahead, but no longer behind.  That, in and of itself, is a pretty major accomplishment.

I got us take out from Brookhaven this afternoon.  I made it in time to get food from the buffet but it was a breakfast buffet today all breads and meats so there really wasn’t anything for us to eat from that.

I did give Oreo a bath today.  Or a shower really.  A nice, long relaxing shower.  He likes that.  We have new shampoo and conditioner for him from his vet appointment yesterday that he seems to like.  It is very soothing.  He was very soft after his shower.  His mange is still awful and it makes us so sad.

We discovered that there are “Travels with Kids” episodes to watch on Hulu Plus.  We found this show long ago when it was only one or two seasons and didn’t travel anyplace in which we were interested so we never really got into it.  They’ve done a bit more now so we tried watching it again.  We are always looking for travel shows.

Sleeping without my CPAP makes me a much lighter sleeper than I have probably ever been.  I am so used to the noise of the compressor running right beside my head that now anything that I hear causes me to wake up immediately.  It is a bit of a problem.  Last night it was legitimate.  I heard Liesl wake up and start crying so I was in her room in minutes, before she was really even awake.  She had had an accident and her diaper didn’t hold up so her bed was wet.  So I cleaned her and changed her and brought her in to sleep with us.  That was three thirty in the morning.  Only about three and a half hours of sleep for me.

I ended up being unable to get back to sleep.  I lay awake in bed until nearly five hoping that I would fall back asleep but it never happened.  So finally I got up and just went into my office so that I could at least get some work done since I was already awake.

Today was a crazy busy work day for me.  So much to do.  I was incredibly productive though.  So that worked out, in a way.

I worked the entire day and really got no time to hang out at all.  A bit exhausting.

This afternoon I stayed home with the girls and Dominica took Oreo to his vet appointment.  His vet is more worried about him that she has been previously.  His mange is back really bad, not that it ever went away to any degree.  She has him on new, gentler medicine, more anti-biotics and has us feeding him as much as he will eat without getting sick.  We had felt that he was getting too thin and were slowly upping his food intact as it was.  But now we are giving him much, much more.

It’s Friday.  I have my calendar blocked off because I have so much work going on that I am unable to get my head above water and no way to catch up at all.

I got up early this morning, around seven, so that I could get back to work.  That was just four hours of sleep.  Not horrible but not as much as I would like.  Dominica said that I snored just a little bit as I was falling asleep but did not snore during the night.  So that is good, I just need to keep up the weight loss and hopefully I will never have need of the CPAP again.  We will be monitoring that closely for the next two weeks leading up to our trip.

I worked for about two hours before going into the office.  I am already over halfway through reading “In Tuscany” and will likely be done with it tonight.

I came home at lunch and worked on projects like crazy.  I got a ton of work done and feel good about my lunch time progress.

This afternoon at the office was busy, as to be expected as it is Friday.  I ended up having to work until around six thirty.  Except for Nicki, I was the last one in the office.  She is traveling to New York this weekend and isn’t coming back from there until three days after Dominica and I head up there. So I will not likely be seeing her again now until July.

On the way home I ran over to Brookhaven and picked up Friday night dinner.  That is becoming our accepted ritual.  Friday night take out from the club.  This evening it was soy glazed tilapia.  Dominica is always happy whenever they have tilapia.

After Luciana went to bed I made a run to Centennial to pick up some Tres Leche for tonight and then ran over to the yogurt shop and got Dominica, Liesl and I some frozen yogurt.  I came home and we all watched the movie Morning Glory which Dominica has been trying to get me to watch with her for months.  I had some time since the two big jobs that I needed to do were still running and were not ready for me.  One is a database load that has been running all day and the other is a file transfer that has also been running all day.  I check on them periodically but after a full day of running they aren’t likely to be wrapping up “any minute.”

We were in bed around eleven thirty.  When I put Liesl to bed tonight we tried something new.  I read her one of Hans Christian Andersen’s faery tales, a short story like she normally gets, but then instead of ready a few short stories I started reading to her from the book “Rabbit Hill” which I read in my childhood.  We didn’t make it very far before I noticed that she was asleep in my lap.

I did end up finishing “In Tuscany” tonight and since I finished both sequels I went back and started reading the actual book “Under the Tuscan Sun”.   I had skipped it as I have seen the movie but now that I am reading it I realize that the movie is really not even loosely based on the book.

My latest article on Datamation was published this morning: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love BYOD.  My article is the main headliner this morning and my article from January is still on the front page of Datamation as well.  This is my first time with two articles running at one time.

Dominica is starting to panic a bit about how much luggage space we are going to need to be able to carry everything while in Europe.  Things are taking up more space than she had planned.  She is working on a “packing light” article for our new travel blog Kidding Around Europe today.  She also ordered new stickers that have our Kidding Around Europe logo on them (the one that my cousin Sara made for us) for Liesl to hand out while we are overseas.

So last night we were talking about the packing and luggage situation and trying to figure out what could be done.  That’s when it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I had lost enough weight that I no longer need the CPAP in order to sleep.  I’ve been wearing the CPAP for over seven years now and have logged more than 17,000 hours on my CPAPs.  It is like a part of me.  I almost hate to see it not be used, it is a part of who I am.  I’ve had it for most of the time that I have been writing SGL.  For almost all of our marriage.  My kids have never known me to not need it.  Even Oreo never knew me without it.  I moved to New Jersey with it.  Back to New York and on to Texas.  It is a part of who I am now.  I’m not even sure how to fall asleep without the ritual of putting it on or having the white noise that it produces being right beside my head all night.  But carrying a CPAP through Europe would be awful.  We get to bring so little and it is both large and fragile.

So last night I went to bed sans CPAP for the first time intentionally in forever.  Dominica monitored me as best as she could to make sure that I was not snoring.  It was a restless night, mostly because I am not used to sleeping without the CPAP so the lack of the noise and the lack of the head gear was odd.  And Oreo seemed to be extra restless (we fed him a larger than usual dinner) and that probably contributed.

So I got up this morning feeling fine and the assessment from Dominica is that she did not hear me snore once the entire night.  So far, so good.  That is only one night but that is extremely encouraging.  It would be so awesome to be away from the CPAP for many reasons.  For one major reason, it is just annoying to have to deal with it all of the time and to keep it on the bedside table and to carry it in the car at all times “just in case”.  But also because by needing a CPAP I am automatically disqualified from getting personal health insurance in the United States.  It is a black and white issue, according to the insurance companies that I have spoken to, having sleep apnea simply means no insurance, period, end of story.

But in regards to our upcoming European adventure the CPAP was going to be even more of a burden.  CPAPs in the airports are time consuming as they have to go through special scanners and take extra time and management since you have to remove them from the case, wait for them to be swabbed, pack them back up, etc.  It is more effort than a laptop, for example, because the CPAP does air filtering and processing it tends to pick up a lot of things that trigger sensors.

Not having the CPAP simply means one fewer bag to carry and as we will be completely on foot carrying everything all of the time that is a really big deal.  On its own the CPAP is not large but when it is a part of the overall luggage scheme it is burdensome to the extreme – mostly because of the form factor.

The CPAP was also a concern on the night trains, of which we will be taking several, as there is unreliable power there and we were unsure that a CPAP would function.  Setting up and packing up a CPAP in the hotel room every night was going to be awful too.  I hate traveling with the CPAP, it requires tons of effort – especially if in a hotel that does not consider the needs of a CPAP and does not have power outlets near the head of the bed within reach of a bedside table.  It can be quite problematic.

This means that I will be able to nap on planes and trains too!  Something that I have not been able to do in as long as I can remember (well, seven years.)  I think that it is hard to actually account for all of the ways that not having a CPAP could improve our lives for the next few months.  This is really huge.

I had a lunch meeting today out at Canyon Creek Country Club.  I had to meet Jenn out there at half past twelve.  Dominica and I have driven past Canyon Creek before but we have never stopped in so this was my first chance to try out one of the other country clubs.  I always enjoy doing that.

We had a nice lunch.  The weather was awesome today so we sat outside.  Surprisingly the grill was busy but outside was just one table of ladies who had been out playing tennis and Jenn and I at another table.  Such a nice day and no one taking advantage of it.

I finished reading “Bella Tuscany” this morning and today started reading, and made good progress through, “In Tuscany”, the second sequel memoir to “Under the Tuscan Sun.”  I’ve not read the first book in the series, even though I own it, because I have seen the movie and wanted to be sure that I would have time to read the second two before we travel over to Europe.  I assume that I will have a bit of time to read while we are over there as well but I wanted some stuff to be read before we go.

This evening was a very heavy work evening for me.  I worked pretty much from the time that I got home until three in the morning.  That was exhausting.  I played with Liesl and Luciana a little and they both came into my office to hang out with me from time to time but I didn’t watch any television, play any games or get to hang out with the family really tonight.  No relaxing for me.  I got tons of work done, though, at least.

Dominica stayed up with me, longer than me, actually, while I worked.  She did some work and some travel planning.  We have all of our flights and all of our major trains booked now.  Major progress.  Our credit cards are also suffering as all of our travel expenses are on there already.  Boy is that hurting.

I am home from work today.  The weather is awesome and we still have all of the windows open.  I love all of the fresh air that we are able to get in Texas.  We learn to withstand the house being incredibly warm in exchange for warm air.  It was eighty seven degrees in the house today and we were mostly pretty comfortable.  I only switched to shorts today when I needed to work in the garage and my home office doesn’t even have any windows.

Dominica had to run out to do some shopping (mostly returns, actually) today so I was home alone with the girls for a while.  We loaded up the Acadia today with tons of stuff that is heading off to Goodwill as soon as we can get there.  We had to clean in the garage today because the exterminators are coming today.  They normally come quarterly but we had to move up our quarterly inspection because we are going to be out of town when it normally happens.  But as we have seen rat(s) in the garage we need something done right away.

So in the early afternoon we did some cleaning in the garage.  Not a lot but enough so that the exterminator could get around.  Our garage is a total disaster.  Mostly painting stuff and kids toys.

The exterminator came around three.  He looked around and there is definitely evidence of a rat but he feels like it might just be a single rat and not a pack of them.  He and I went up into the attic and found scarce evidence there with the only really obvious thing being Dominica’s Vera Bradley luggage’s castors being completely destroyed from the rat chewing on them to keep its teeth from growing too long.  There was a large pile of caster rubber bits under the luggage.  Very weird to find.

It looks like the rat(s) mostly just hang out in the garage.  So the exterminator put down blocks and hopefully that will be that.  We really like our exterminators, they do a great job and are very inexpensive and friendly.  Anyone needing an exterminator in the DFW, let us know.

I had my class at RIT this evening.  So I was in the office for a while watching that.  Then, later on this evening, Chris, who is going to be house sitting for us while we are away, stopped by to hang out.  He lives around the corner, well within our walking area and we have walked by his house on a few occasions and we see him jogging in our area from time to time, but has not been to our house before.

Luciana went to bed shortly after Chris went to work (he teaches dancing in the evenings.)  Luciana is talking more and more.   She still has very few words but she is making the sounds of sentences so it sounds like she is reacting to things around her in a foreign language.  It is such a cute age.

Dominica sent me out to pick up some dinner.  So I ran to Redneck Heaven and picked up salads and shrimp for dinner and brought them back home.  We ate dinner and watched the latest episodes of  “Hot in Cleveland” and “Happily Divorced.”  Liesl was in a snuggle mood and sat with me on the arm chair as she likes to do, under a blanket.  She is the snuggliest toddler ever.

We finally got our schedule today and we now know exactly when we are leaving for New York.  Instead of leaving the weekend before we need to be up there we are actually leaving at the last possible second, the Wednesday evening before the Friday wedding, and driving like crazy and, if all goes well, arriving at dad’s house 24 hours before the wedding itself.  We will get there, probably stay up for about two hours as we will be unable to sleep at that point, crash and sleep a really long time, then get up and head to the wedding.  It is going to be one packed weekend.

From the wedding we will go back to dad’s, sleep, get up and head immediately to the airport to catch our flight from Rochester to JFK and then catch our flight from JFK to Heathrow.  Then immediately hop a train from London to Nottingham.  What a week that is going to be.  We are going to be seriously exhausted by the time that we get to Nottingham.  We will have nothing left at that point.

Weather was great today.  I was up early this morning and got some work done at home before going into the office.  I had to come home a bit longer than usual today so that I could watch the kids while Dominica was out running some errands.

After work I drove down to Grand Prairie to pick up Stacey Rodgers who was able to get away to join us for dinner at Brookhaven tonight.  She has not had a chance to meet Dominica and the girls yet.  Traffic was horrendous.  It took me an hour and a half to make the normally fifteen minute journey down to Grand Prairie to pick her up at the Hampton Inn.  It worked out “well” because she had missed her first shuttle and the second one was stuck in traffic.  She had just enough time to run in, change and run back out as I pulled in.  So the timing ended up not being too bad.

Traffic was fine going the other direction up to Brookhaven.  We were there in fifteen minutes, I would guess.  Dominica and the girls had been there waiting for a bit but just sat in the car waiting for us to arrive.

The weather was so gorgeous tonight, and Stacey is about to have to head back to cold Rochester and the snow, so we sat outside at Brookhaven.  It was great and it is really nice for the kids to be outside because they can make more noise, walk around and whatever without it really being a problem at all.  Dominica and I had the kitchen make us fish tacos tonight – we were just in the mood.

After dinner we sat around one of the fire pits for a while.  Liesl went and played in the bounce house for a bit and made a new friend.  She was horribly upset (see yesterday’s post) when her new friend had to leave because she thought that she would never get to see her, ever again.  We are pretty sure that they will see each other again as kids’ night at the country club is all about running into the same people over and over again.  Liesl was so happy, though, to come and tell us about how she made a new friend.  It was darling.  She is growing up so fast.

Luciana spent much of the evening tricking us by acting like she wanted to walk and then suddenly dropping and crawling away.

We hung out until it was quite dark.  Then Dominica took the kids home and I took Stacey back down to Grand Prairie.  It is funny that in three weeks we will be closer to Stacey in New York than we are to her here.  Stacey and I hung out until twenty till eleven which I knew was the very last moment so that I could still make it to the YogurtZone on MacArthur in Las Colinas to pick up frozen yogurt for Dominica and I.  So we said goodbye and I ran up to Las Colinas.

I came home at a quarter after eleven with frozen yogurt.  Both girls were already asleep.  Liesl had actually fallen asleep in the car on the way home.  Dominica and I ate our yogurt and watched some more House Hunters International.

The weather continues to be awesome down here in Texas.  I am not at all missing the snow in New York.

We are beginning to panic a little bit about our upcoming trip to Europe.  It is getting really close.  We don’t have our final travel schedule yet and we might need to be on the road driving to New York as early as twelve days from now.  Eek.  We are scrambling to get our house in Texas looked after, our travel plans finalized, our finances figured out – and not to mention the packing.  So much to do.  Oh, and of course, my homework and stuff for my class at RIT!  This is insane.

At this point we have a lot of our itinerary figured out but there is still tons to do.  We have most of our hotels picked out and booked but there are still gaps in the schedule and places where we don’t know what we will be doing.  We’ve only just added Viena and Venice to our schedule in the last few days so things are still changing on a regular basis.  As we nail down the hotels there is less and less of that.

I was in the office today and home for lunch.  Liesl has really developed a concern about us leaving.  She has always required that we get a hug and a kiss from her before leaving the house and if she didn’t get them she would be very upset and possibly cry for half an hour or more.  So we are very careful about that.  But now she becomes incredibly meloncholy whenever I go to go to work or when Dominica is going to go to the store and she starts to cry before we leave and she stands at the front windows waving and waving and blowing kisses.  If we don’t wave and blow kisses back the entire way to the car she will get very upset.  I have to make sure that I keep waving to her as long as she can see me and then I drive the car back past the front windows so that she can wave to me as I drive by as well.

It is really sweet that Liesl misses us so much and doesn’t want us to ever be away but it is heartbreaking as I have to leave the house every day.  It makes me want to get up early and get in to work before she gets up so that she doesn’t have to go through that.  She seems to be fine if I am gone before she wakes up.  It used to be like this but it was nearly two years ago and she has been fine since then.  Now Luciana is starting to mimic her and needs her hug and a kiss before anyone leaves and will go stand in the front windows waving to you as well as you drive away.

This evening Dominica and I decided to splurge and to have some Indian for dinner.  So she ordered from Ruchi Palace up on Trinity Mills and I went there after work to pick up dinner thinking that it would be a super easy dinner idea.  And this highlights why online ordering is not as popular as just picking up the phone and calling – the restaurant was out of business.  Argh.

So I sat in the parking lot for a bit while Dominica looked up options online.  Eventually she settled on Flavors down in Addison, called in and order and sent me down there since I was already out and driving around.

Flavors had the food ready for me the moment that I arrived so I just stepped in, paid and left.  I hope that we like this place.  It is going to be very disappointing if we went through a year of dieting and not being able to eat at Ruchi Palace just to have our local Indian place go out of business a week after we were able to eat there again!

I got home and we ate dinner while watching House Hunters International.   The food from Flavors was excellent.  We are really happy with it and the price was good too.  It is not as close as we would like but it isn’t bad and if I hit it on the drive home it is better still.

We did pretty little tonight.  More looking into hotels and a few more nights have been covered.  We went to bed on the early side.  We were all pretty tired.

Woke up at about ten thirty this morning.  Another beautiful Texas spring day.  Nearly eighty degrees today and sunny all while they are getting threats of snow back home.

I got up this morning and spent the morning doing as much work as I could.  Dominica managed to get on the road at a good time and called at around ten thirty to tell me that she and the girls were already on the north side of Houston and on the open highway without significant fear of traffic issues.  So that gave me about three hours to get work done and be ready for them to get home.

I continued my streak of productivity and stayed busy as long as I could.  Dominica got home before two and I spent some time with the girls while Dominica got ready to head off to Zachary’s birthday party at Chuck E Cheese’s in Lewisville at three thirty.

On the way to the party we stopped at Target to pick up birthday presents.  Dominica has gotten really good at being super fast when doing this while I stay in the car with the girls.

Liesl had a great time at Chuck E Cheese.  She loves going there.  She knew exactly what to do with her tokens too.  She immediately rode ride after ride all by herself.  She was able to get on, put her money in and ride over and over again.  She played a lot of the “ticket” games too and won herself some little tiny plastic frogs that she really likes in blue, green and purple.  Last time that we were at Chuck E Cheese she won some little plastic fish that she still plays with.

We stayed at the party as long as we could.   I have class tonight online that I need to get to.  I’ve missed a bit of class and really can’t miss anything additional.  I am way behind and need to be pretty much done with the class before we go to Europe or it is going to be a real problem.  I have no idea how I am going to effectively work on my class work while I am over there.  So my goal is to, somehow, have it all done before we go.  That is going to be awful.

We took off at a quarter till six and made it back to the house just in time for me to start my class.  That lasted for about an hour and a half, not as long as I had anticipated.

After my class was over Dominica ran out to CVS for a bit.  Liesl made me sit on the floor in front of the front windows and she sat on my lap the entire time just talking and talking.  She gets so upset these days whenever one of us leaves te house.  She really is only happy when her whole family is together.

Liesl stayed up until midnight tonight hanging out with me.  She was determined to snuggle on the couch all evening.  She had me make her a tent out of blankets right beside me  and she played on her LeapPad while Dominica and I watched House Hunters International.

I uploaded a few pics and videos today.

Today is my day all set aside for working from home.  Lots to be done and this is my chance in which to do it.  I slept in a bit this morning, snuggling with Oreo who seems very content to just be home with daddy today.  He’s been a little upset that he has been home alone much of the last few days but at least it gives him time to catch up on his sleep a bit.

I did a little more house cleaning today and was settling in to start working when I saw the Facebook post that Gavin’s beloved blankey had been left at Flip’s in Grapevine and that he was very upset.  I talked to Ashley on Facebook and at first she was just going to let the blanket go, it was so far away before they realized it and she was able to placate Gavin by telling him that the blanket was on Thomas the Tank Engine (where they had been) and that seemed to work.  But then he woke up from his nap and was really upset.

So I ran over to Grapevine which isn’t too far from me and picked up the blanket and some fish tacos to reward myself for the journey.  I brought the blanket back home as I had spoken to one of Ashley’s friends, also via Facebook, and found out that she was going to be going from Lewisville to Arlington already today and could easily deliver the blanket this afternoon.  So we arranged to transfer the blanket later on today and she would get it directly to Gavin.

So today was a huge success for Facebook.  Learned of a problem and coordinated a resolution easily between parties who don’t normally talk to each other.  I know Ashley’s friend in passing as we have met at parties but I would never have guessed that she was traveling where needed or know how to contact her.  This is where Facebook shines, bringing together communications in an ad hoc manner based on topic or need rather than on pre-existing communication channels or relationships.  Because I had posted on the Facebook thread that I was getting the blanket and because Ashley had posted where it was her friend could see that she was the missing link in transporting it and we were able to coordinate directly.  First time that I’ve had Facebook work in that way and it really demonstrates a flexibility missing in legacy communications.

So much of my afternoon was spent running errands.  It was kind of nice and that was a low stress way to spend the afternoon.  I had on my iPod the whole time and managed to listen to more than half of “Bella Tuscany” just while driving around today.

Once I was home from the blanket exchange it was time to really get down to solid work.  The dishes were done, the house was picked up – there just wasn’t any real excuse for not getting to work at this point so it has to be done.

I worked solidly from about five thirty to four in the morning.  It was a very long and intense day.  Lots of different projects.  Security, server migrations, database work, networking and more.  I was super productive and I think that it all went really well.  Lots more work to do, though, so I have to get some sleep and get up tomorrow and get right back to it.

Dominica and the girls are heading home tomorrow morning and I expect to see them early in the afternoon.  We are scheduled to be at Chuck E. Cheese’s for a birthday party at three thirty.  Liesl will be very excited to go back there, she loves it.  She talks about it regularly and she has only been there once before.

I overslept this morning so was rushing to get into the office.  My car’s (well, Dominica’s car’s) tires were soft so I had to take some time to fill them up before getting on the road too.  It is chilly this morning and there was just the tiniest drizzle going on while I was filling up the tires at the house.

I got into the office.  It is dark today.  Definitely rain coming.  There was some lightning to the north as I drove home last night so a good storm is not out of the question.

I had a lunch meeting today that got moved to Red Neck Heaven in Lewisville.  So I drove up there in the rain.  This was my first time going there.  With a name like that, not the kind of place that I would be very likely to go to without some particular reason.  The place was absolutely packed.  We had to wait about twenty minutes to get a table and there were only two of us.  The food was good, I had a grilled shrimp salad that was quite tasty.

The afternoon was really slow in the office, it was great.  I didn’t get to leave early but the afternoon was pretty relaxing.  I worked in the office until around a quarter after six.  I was supposed to hang out with Stacey tonight but I called her just before leaving the office and she decided that she was going to take a nap.  Going out late last night was too much for her.  So she might want to go out later but I won’t find out until after she is done with her nap.

So I went home and did some cleaning and reading.  I finished reading Simon Winchester’s “Atlantic” and started reading the sequel to “Under the Tuscan Sun”, “Bella Tuscany.”  I figure that I need to catch up on my Italian travel reading before we go so that I am that much more prepared for the trip.  I got much of the house cleaned up and did some of the dishes.

I figured that getting deep into work would be unproductive as I had already mentally set this evening aside for taking Stacey out to see Dallas so I ran over to Redneck Heaven around the corner and had a beer and grabbed a light dinner (another salad, their grilled shrimp salad is excellent and a nice change of pace.)  I hung out there for a while and Stacey eventually woke up and decided that she was just going to watch television tonight.  So Andrew came out and hung out for a little bit.

I was home on the early side and just used the opportunity to get to bed and do some catch up on sleep.  Oreo thought that that was a great idea.  He is always extra snugly when it is just he and I home.  I read a little more in “Bella Tuscany”, but not much, before going to sleep.

I didn’t feel well this morning so slept in a bit on the late side.  Oreo was snugly and glad to have me there.  Work was pretty slow today.  Nothing of note.

I got a hold of Stacey Rodgers today who is in town and found out that she was free for dinner.  Stacey and I went to high school together and have not seen each other for roughly nineteen years!  She is in town for training for her new job for two weeks.  Thank goodness for Facebook or I would never know when people were going to be local.  What a huge impact Facebook has made on our lives in little ways like this that you often do not think of.

After work I ran home to take care of Oreo and to change since I was dressed more for work than for going out.  Traffic was horrible.

I had to drive down to Grand Prairie to pick up Stacey.  She is down there without a car.  Not a good combination, Grand Prairie is hardly the pride of the DFW and there is nothing that she can get to on foot out there and Texas is a big, sprawling place in general so she is in the middle of this huge, awesome city and can’t even see the city itself because she is stuck way out there.

So it was around six thirty when I picked Stacey up.  We went up to La Cima and had dinner there.  We ate in the lounge as we got a nice window seat and she was able to see the expanse of the DFW Metroplex from up there.  We were lucky that we got up there while it was still daylight so she was able to see the metroplex in daylight and then watch the sun go down on it as the city lights came up.  That is the best way to get introduced to the city.

We had a really nice time catching up.  We used to hang out a bit in high school, it is really sad that we lost touch.  We, over the last few years, have been in contact on Facebook a bit but that’s not the same.  But at least we have a fair idea of what each other have been up to and we see the pictures of the family and stuff.  Her oldest daughter is in college now (wow, now that makes me feel old.)  Stacey was a year younger than me in high school (in fact, she still is.)

We closed down La Cima and then were talking about going out as she has not seen Dallas at all yet but she has to be up early in the morning (five, ugh) to get to her class so we just went out to MacArthur and got frozen yogurt.  We ended up sitting around talking long after the yogurt place closed.  Then I drove her back to her hotel and went home and took care of Oreo and got off to bed.

I went in to the office this morning and came home at lunch.  While I was at home Dominica was working on some planning for this weekend.

Dominica realized today that she needs to be in Houston on Friday to help prepare for Luciana’s birthday party which is going to be on Saturday.  That doesn’t work well as I have already stayed home from work this week and I have tons of work that needs my attention.  I have a number of work conflicts too, so going to Houston early really is not a good option for me.  The best case scenario would be that we would have to get up and leave super early on Friday morning and that is not a good option for anyone.

So we decided, very last minute, that Dominica and the girls might as well head on down to Houston today rather than waiting another day or two as our schedule is so busy that I will barely see the kids between now and when they would need to be leaving anyway – so better for them to get time with the cousins down in Houston than to be at home while I am at work.

So I returned to work and Dominica got the girls packed up and they were on the road between three and four this evening.

Today, strangely, is tax day in the US.  Normally it is April 15th but that was a Sunday and yesterday was some obscure government holiday that no one has ever heard of before but the IRS was closed so we got an extension until today.  I actually got all of my tax stuff in to the accountant last week but they are swamped and hoping to get to it without needing to file an extension.  Fingers crossed.

There were a lot of tax questions to be answered today so luckily I was home all day and was able to scan and send documentation as it was needed throughout the day.  We got everything in, paperwork done and we signed and submitted electronically.  No extensions needed for the Miller family this year.  It is amazing, I cannot remember the last time that we had our taxes in on time.  We still have no received our money from our 2010 filing (which was only a few weeks ago.)  Because this one is filed electronically and has direct deposit there is actually a chance that we will receive the 2011 refund ahead of the 2010 refund!

I was pretty busy all day just trying to keep up with work and get caught up on bills and stuff.  With the upcoming vacation we are feeling pretty overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done both physically, work related and financially.

This evening we did dinner at Brookhaven.  It is kids’ night.  Dinner was excellent tonight, Jalapeno BBQ salmon, corn on the cob (which I am now allowed to eat again) and salads.  Very tasty and quite a departure from the norm.

After dinner Liesl played in the inflatable bouncy gym a little before we went back home.  The country club as that set up for the summer.  They got it for Easter and decided to keep it.  Helps a lot with keeping the kids under control.

We came back to the house so that I could attend my class tonight but at the last minute it was cancelled because the professor was attempting to buy a house.  Dominica had just remarked that she was upset that I had class tonight because she wanted to take the family out for a walk because the weather was perfect.  I told her that class was cancelled so that we should go straight away, and we did.

We went for a long walk tonight, just over five miles.  We explored some new areas and walked to a yogurt place that apparently just went out of business so walked a little further and went to a Marble Slab Creamery which also had sugar free, fat free frozen yogurt.  I got mine with blueberries and vanilla yogurt.  Dominica did the same but with birthday cake yogurt.  And Liesl, being Liesl, got cotton candy ice cream.

Dominica got a lot of exercise today because earlier in the day she had gone out for a job and did about two miles.  So altogether today she has done seven or eight miles!  She was exhausted by the time that we got home.  I carried Ciana on my back the entire way and pushed Liesl in the stroller almost the entire way.

I had to get up at three in the morning to check my email.  I was able to reschedule the meeting to a later time so that I was able to sleep in until six.  I ended up being awake for nearly an hour but it was better than it was going to be and I didn’t actually have to get out of bed that whole time.

I got up and six, showered, and did my morning call.  Then got ready to head to my Medifast appointment.  Today is the moment of truth.  I fasted yesterday trying to get ready for today.  All evening yesterday and all morning this morning I was weighing in pretty much on the hour trying to get a feel for my progress.  Last night I was at my lowest ever with only one pound to go.  This morning I am inching my way closer.

My final weigh in, before leaving the house to go to my appointment, put me at one pound under my goal weight.  That, I hope, gives me enough breathing room to weigh in well at the clinic.  Historically my weigh ins at home are exactly the same as my weigh ins in the clinic.  That means that my scale at home is off by roughly three pounds because at home I weigh in naked (I know, too much information) and at the clinic I am normally in jeans and a light shirt.

I got to the Medifast office and weighed in straight away.  To my amazement I weight in a full three pounds under my goal weight!  That’s it, I’m officially done with the weight loss portion of the program.  I can’t believe it.  After a year of struggling to get down to this weight I am finally there.  Not only did I break my own, initial, weight loss goal but I have set a new record for the clinic as well breaking their previous weight loss record by ten pounds.  I’ve lost ~90 pounds now.

So I am having a good day today!

This evening we ate at home.  Dominica has decided that she is going to go strictly back on to Medifast.  Her experiment in going off of it did not go well and she found herself unable to regulate her food intake and in just forty-eight hours saw that she needed the regimen of the program.  So a lean dinner tonight of veggie burgers with low fat cheese, veggie bacon strips and green beans.  And later on, of course, some sugar free, fat free frozen yogurt with berries.

We tried watching That 80s Show tonight hoping that it would be kind of like That 70s Show.  But it is not.  It was done so poorly that it actually feels much older – kind of like a show made in the 80s would – and the writing and acting is really bad.  It feels painful, like people are just popping in, reading lines and popping out again.  It feels labored and awkward.  No wonder they only managed to make thirteen episodes.  It is a neat idea – those of us from the 80s have many fond memories of the time period and That 70s Show was a huge success.  But mostly it was good because the characters were believable and endearing.  You cared about their story.  It wasn’t just a collection of period references.

I slept in until eight this morning.  That was three hours of sleep.  Not a whole heck of a lot.

Today is my fasting day.  Tomorrow is my weekly weigh in at Medifast.  I weighed in first thing this morning and I was at my record low.  Not a new record, just equal to my record.  But that is an entire day ahead of my weigh in and this is my chance to really get the weight down and get a good weigh in.  So no food today.  My last meal was early yesterday afternoon so it will be a full day and a half without food.  I will have no water once I got to bed tonight.  Hopefully that gives me time to process what I have drunk before the Medifast appointment tomorrow morning.

As of first thing this morning I have one and a half pounds to go to reach my original Medifast goal.  That should be very doable for a fasting day.  I will be drinking water like crazy all day to desalinate.

Today Liesl decided to come into my office and point to her wrist and tell me that she needed a clock.  She handed me a marker.  So I drew a watch onto her wrist.  She thought that that was awesome.  She would come into the room, look at her wrist and say “Look at the time, I have to get going!”

I had to work all day as I am the on call for the office this weekend.  The on call really seems to be a twenty-four hour weekend.  It is rather exhausting.

Dominica decided the other day that she is giving up on the Medifast plan until we are back from Europe.  She has been craving food horribly and really struggling for months to stay on diet.  Her being half on, half off of the diet makes it nearly impossible for me to stay on it.

It was pretty much an all work day, even though it is Sunday.  I have to be up at three in the morning to deal with some stuff in the UK so not much sleep coming for me tonight after getting not very much last night.

I woke up on my own very early this morning, around five.  I lay in bed for a while contemplating whether to get up or to attempt to fall back asleep.  Oreo wasn’t snuggling with me this morning so getting up was more of an option than usual.  I tried going back to sleep for a while but the weight of all of the tasks waiting for me was weighing on me.  I tried playing Triple Town but only got five minutes of it or so before Oreo got up and had an accident on the floor.  So, at around five thirty, I was out of bed and cleaning the floor and taking Oreo out for a walk.

No point in going back to bed after that.  So I logged in to begin working, wrote some updates, did some SpiceWorks posts, updated some tickets, cleaned up the kitchen, did some general cleaning around the house, put Oreo’s food away that Dominica had cooked yesterday but that we had forgotten to put away last night, etc.

Dominica and the girls got up around eight thirty so I had about three hours to myself to be productive alone.

This afternoon Liesl came up to us and said something that we thought was “Mr. Lumley!”  We were very confused.  She was wearing a toy on her head as a hat and kept coming up to each of us stating “Mr. Lumley!”

Finally I figured out that she was pretending to deliver mail and was saying “Special Delivery.”  She was pretending to keep mail in her hat and was taking it off and handing it to us.  She has such a vivid imagination that sometimes we have real problems following what she is saying because she responds to questions from inside of her fantasy context but when we are trying to figure out the context, that can be nearly impossible to do.  Once we repeated “special delivery” to her she said “Yes, Special Deliver!  I’m the post officer.”  We were dying.  ”Post Officer” is a perfectly logical name for the mailman but heaven only knows where she came up with it!

Last night she did something similar telling us all about this yellow cat that she used to have that ran away and that she doesn’t have any longer.  We were so confused as we have never had a cat.  Today it finally occurred to me that she was referring to the pretend cat that she used to pretend to be.  At times she would not answer to her name but only to “kitty.”  She would meow and in her mind, she was a cat.  She no longer pretends to be a cat, but is a dog more recently, so I guess she sees it as the cat having left.

I am the on call for the office this weekend so I was tied to my desk for most of the day.  I swear that there is more work to do as the on call than there is to do when you are in the office.

For dinner Dominica cooked a lean Medifast style meal of shiritake noodles and mushrooms in a cream sauce.  We re-watched the new travel video that we got yesterday about Belgium and The Netherlands.  Liesl watched with us with interest and mentioned that several of the places that she saw were places that she would like to get to go.  That works out pretty well since we plan to be going many of those places in just one month!  It is hard to believe that we are two days fewer than a month until we fly off to England!

I was working in the office pretty late this evening when I found that my friend John the storage engineer from Houston was in town.  We were both posting on SpiceWorks at the same time when he mentioned that he was down in Preston Hollow, practically down the street.  So I ran, showered and headed out to pick him up.

John and I headed out to Sfuzzi to hang out for the evening.  We ended up hanging out very late then going back to his friends’ place in Preston Hollow where they were having a party.  It was nearly five when I straggled home.

The weather is a little bit cooler and overcast today.  It felt like there were going to be storms coming when I walked out of the house this morning to commute in.  No rain came today but it had that feeling about it.  The weather report shows a weekend of intense storms expected with tornado warnings coming, already, for Sunday.

Overall work was slow today.  I went home at lunch and hung out with the girls.  Luciana has started colouring now.  She was playing with Crayola Color Wonder markers today.  At one point she and Liesl both sat at their little picnic table colouring together.  It was quite adorable.  Dominica and I watched a couple episodes of Lie to Me.  Then back to the office.

The afternoon was decently slow.  I was able to wrap up in the office by around five thirty which is pretty nice for a Friday.  I had some late work to do so I came home and just did that from there.

On the way home I ran over to Fry’s and picked up two travel BluRays for us.  We watch our European travel videos so much that having some more makes a lot of sense.  We’ve watched every episode of Rick Steves several times and we’ve watched our “Visions of…” series multiple times as well and we’ve exhausted what little travel stuff there is on Hulu+ and Netflix, at least what we are able to find.  It appears to be a generally lacking genre of television altogether.

The one video that I got was an adventure travel video of Switzerland.  The other is a more traditional travel video of Belgium and The Netherlands.

I went to Brookhaven and picked up dinner for Dominica and I and then came home so that we could eat and watch our new travel videos.  While we were watching the first video our package that we have been waiting for from Amazon arrived.  It is the LittlePims DVDs for Liesl to help her to learn Italian vocabulary before we travel.  It is a three DVD set (heaven only knows why as the running time is not long enough at all to justify that) designed for kids up to Liesl’s age (yes, she is at the older end of the spectrum) to pick up some words especially around food, animals, household items, etc.

Liesl enjoyed watching her videos and watched all three of them tonight.  She watched the first one out in the playroom with us but then when we wanted to watch our travel videos again she went into our room and watched her new videos in there instead.  She does that pretty regularly, going into our bedroom to watch shows on her own.  She really likes that our good leather chair, the non-recliner, is there and she takes her Dora pillow and her pink polka-dot blanket and climbs into the chair and watches her shows.  That television is much bigger and nicer than the one in the playroom and instead of television built in speakers it has the nice receiver with B&W speakers.  So the viewing experience is a bit nicer there as well.

Liesl went to bed around ten and Dominica and I were right behind going to bed at ten thirty.  Better to get to bed and get rest than force ourselves to stay up just because we think that we should.  Once we are just up watching television or whatever it really should trigger to us that going to bed would make more sense.

I am the on call for the office this weekend so will be home and working much of the time.

I slept in a bit this morning as did everyone else.  I don’t think that people were out of bed until eight thirty at least and maybe nine.  Even Liesl slept in late and she was in bed pretty early last night.

I got stuck at the house this morning on one phone call after another.  So I was pretty late going in to the office but I did log in and work from home earlier this morning.  So I decided to skip my lunch break and just worked straight through in the middle of the day.

This afternoon Dan and I made our regular, weekly run to the liquor store.  Their selection there has been getting weaker and weaker each week, though.  They used to have a pretty good selection but now the shelves are mostly empty and there are whole ranges of drinks that they don’t have any longer.  They are fine for stocking the basics and the average liquor shopper probably would not notice but I am a bit beyond the basics these days and if I am buying stuff it is likely something more obscure.  So we did some basic restocking but that was about the best that we could do.  So we decided to go across the street and see what there was there as well.

Going across the street was well worth the effort as the Big Daddy’s there had an amazing selection and we found tons of items in which we were very interested.  I picked up a couple of interesting items like actual Maraschino Luxardo and Biscotti Famosi.  The Biscotti Famosi turned out to be one of those complete gems of a find.  Completely, amazingly delicious.  It actually tastes like you are drinking a cookie!

Dan made a good find as well, Tres Leche liqueur which we dried and liked very much too.

This evening I got home and Dominica decided to send me back out to pick up dinner at Brookhaven.  I drove down there and just got us salads and grilled Rainbow Trout.  I came back home and we ate while we watched the last two episodes of Hot in Cleveland that had recently released.  It was funny because in the last episode that we watched they set the show in a Cleveland area country club – the one in which we are associate members.  The events and club in the show were fictional but the name and the rough location were not.  It was very odd to watch a sitcom joking about the members of a country club to which we are associated while we were eating dinner cooked in the kitchen of the club that founded that one.  Likely we are the only members or one of only a few ever to have had that happen.  It could only have been weirder if that was our home club or if we were actually at the club at the time watching the show.

Dominica went to bed early tonight.  I stayed up until around two doing some work that needed my attention.  It was a bit of a long night.  Quite tired when I turned in finally.

This morning I had a ton of stuff to do so I just stayed home and worked from there through lunch.  It was a very busy morning.

I rushed home after work, ran into the house, grabbed the family and we turned right around and ran straight out to get to Brookhaven for their new member welcoming event this evening.  We have been trying to go to one of these for months and our schedules just never allow it.  Finally today it was on a Wednesday evening and we were able to squeeze it in without too many problems.

We got to Brookhaven right as the event started at six.  They had a tennis court set up specifically for the younger children which ended up being perfect for Liesl.  They had oversized tennis balls and a low net and there were several kids there.  Liesl was definitely the little one on the court but she tried hard and had a really good time.  She probably played tennis for an hour.  It was adorable.

We got a table right next to the “tennis court” do that we could keep an eye on Liesl.  Luciana was pretty fussy wanting to crawl around and to do something active.  I walked around with her a bit.  We have been working with her a bit recently as she is really close to walking.  She will hold our hands and walk with us.

Tonight, Luciana decided that it was time to walk.  So, while Liesl was on the tennis court playing, Luciana took her first six steps by our table!  Liesl took her first steps a few days before her first birthday across a table in Ariel’s Grotto in Walt Disney World.  Luciana is nearly the same age with her birthday just two weeks away.  We are very excited as Luciana being able to walk while we are in Europe is going to be a big deal.  She won’t be able to crawl around on the train to get exercise or in restaurants but walking she will be able to do and that is a big relief for us.  We were really worried that she would wait to walk and would not be doing it before we left.

They had a light dinner for us tonight.  Crackers, cheeses and fruits for the adults.  The kids’ buffet was out and there were mini pizzas (bit sized ones, much smaller than their normal small pizzas for the kids), corn dogs, fried mac and cheese bites and French fries.  No veggies or other healthy fare so we were pretty limited in what we could eat.  We cheated a bit and had some of the mac and cheese bites because they are amazing, especially with the chipotle ranch dipping sauce that they had out tonight.  Yum.

At a quarter after seven, long before the event was supposed to be over, Liesl threw a bit of a tantrum and got into some serious trouble so we had to leave immediately.  The hazards of having little children.  Luciana was pretty restless as well.

Liesl was pretty unhappy being in so much trouble so she mostly pouted in the back seat.  Dominica really wanted to go out, again, for frozen yogurt and we needed some food, so we drove up to Frankfort instead of going back home and we ran into Subway and got salads there and ran into Yogurtland and got some fat free, sugar free yogurt with fruit and went back home to eat.

We watched the remaining episodes of Happily Divorved tonight.  Liesl was put straight to bed without any stories.  After a while I went in to check on her and she was laying in bed with her head propped up on her arm glaring at the door.  We had a talk and she was allowed to come out and stay with us for a little while.  Then I put her to bed again and she got some stories.

I stayed home from work today working on the theory that I could use the time to get caught up on my homework.  No such luck whatsoever.  I got a bit done today, but not my homework.  This class really isn’t too bad on homework either.  I just don’t seem to be able to get to it.

After work this evening we went to our usual Tuesday night dinner at Brookhaven with the kids for kids’ night.  Dinner was good but both Dominica and I were craving something more after our meal.  We had contemplated getting some soup to go with the meal but it is not the healthiest option and so often it is too salty that we figured that we should not.

On the way home Dominica decided that she just could not resist some ice cream.  So I proposed getting frozen yogurt.  She thought that that was a great idea.

We drove up to Yogurtland on Frankfort near the where the Dallas North Tollway crosses Frankfort.  We each got non-fat, sugar free frozen yogurt with fruit, mostly berries.  I am officially supposed to be eating berries now (fruit in general, but berries especially) with my current stage on Medifast.  As of yesterday I am supposed to be eating dairy as well, especially yogurt.  So this seemed like a natural way to go.  Liesl got chocolate real froyo with candy in it, she thought that it was quite good.

The frozen yogurt was amazing.  We are going to have a hard time not coming up here all of the time if this can be argued to be on diet!

This morning was my Medifast check in.  I got in and weighed in at nine.  While my morning weigh in was not my personal all time record, it was quite close and it was the best that I had ever done at Medifast on the official weigh in.  So while it was a tiny victory it was a victory nonetheless and I am invigorated and going to try hard this week to push forward to get to goal.  I really want to get this over and done with.  It is taking too long.  I want to be thin!  And I want to be eating real food again.

I was in the office today.  I spent much of today working on homework.  It was an uneventful day and I have nothing to report.

It happens sometimes.

This morning was a scramble to get everyone ready and out the door so that we could make it to the early seating of Easter Brunch at Brookhaven.  Our reservations were for eleven.

We made it to Brookhaven on time and brunch was really awesome. There was a huge selection including baked salmon, smoked salmon, smoked trout and loads of other good stuff.  I have to admit that we cheated a bit on the diet today!  Cheese blintzes were a particularly difficult treat to pass up.  Dominica cheated far more than I did going so far as to even eat cake.  I was reasonably restrained, if I do say so.  The whole meal was just incredible, though.  It was terribly hard to resist.

After brunch was over we came home and the Grices were pretty much immediately on the road back to Houston.  Normally they would not have stayed this late but Francesca really wanted to do brunch at the country club and it really was awesome.  That is the place to go for brunch.

We had a quiet afternoon.  I mostly worked on homework today.  I am way behind on my class.  Argh.

Francesca and Dominica had discussed the Easter plans and Francesca was very excited about the food and activity lineups at Brookhaven so we decided to do events there both Saturday (today) as well as tomorrow for Easter Sunday itself.

Everyone was up moderately early this morning since we were all in bed so early last night.  There were a lot of kids to get ready to go to Brookhaven, though.  Our reservations were for noon.  Unfortunately Oreo has a vet appointment today as well at a quarter after one that could not be rescheduled so I had to arrange to take him there while everyone else got to stay and hang out at the club.  I wish that I could have been there for more of it.  Liesl had such a good time at La Cima’s event last year.

Emily and I drove to the club separately.  We went a few minutes ahead of everyone else so that we could get us checked in and ready to save time as I would barely have enough time to eat before I needed to leave.  We got there minutes before noon and managed to get the perfect table – all the way up front directly next to the buffet with tons of space around us and room for all of the kids.

The food today was excellent.  Salmon in a caper cream sauce!  Very tasty.  Neither Dominica nor Francesca really liked it though.  I thought that it was a truly phenomenal salmon style.  Normally Dominica and I have more aligned tastes.  There was a Caesar salad as well.  It was a tasty lunch.

I had to eat quickly and run out to go back to the house and get Oreo to take him into the vet for his appointment.  Back at the club the family visited with the Easter bunny, did face painting (Liesl got a little chick breaking out of an egg painted on her cheek), temporary tattoos and had an Easter egg hunt.  They had a lot of fun although Luciana and Clara were scared of the Easter bunny.  Clara was more terrified and Luciana more concerned.

Oreo’s vet appointment went well.  They feel that he is making good progress at recovering from his horrible skin and eye problems.  It was a good day for him to go in because he was really showing improvement today.  I could look at him and tell that he was better than yesterday.

The family got back to the house before Oreo and I did.  I spent much of the afternoon uploading loads of pictures to Flickr.  My Nikon D90 has been loaded with pictures dating back to 2010 that have not yet been uploaded!  Oops.  Going through the pictures I cannot believe that things like our trips to the Fort Worth Zoo with Liesl were mostly in 2010.  To me they seem really recent but they were, in fact, two years ago.  I can’t believe that we moved to Texas in 2009.  I still feel like we just got here but it has been nearly two and a half years at this point.

So anyone interested in seeing lots of pictures, check out my Flickr feed.  I would estimate that at least four hundred pictures are being uploaded.  Lots of really good ones too.

This morning marks the beginning of Easter Weekend with the Grices.  Francesca and the kids left Houston around five thirty this morning.  Francesca really likes to get up early and get out the door as quickly as possible when she is traveling.

I had to be up around six thirty so that I could sit in on the fed’s non-farm payroll call today.  At least it got me out of bed and kept me from sleeping away my holiday weekend.

I worked pretty solid for a few hours this morning and helped Dominica to do some cleaning when I could.

Francesca made amazing time getting up to our house in just over four hours!  That has to be a record.

This evening, once work was done, since I had to do some number of Friday night deployments, we all went out for a walk to Cafe Brazil.  We were quite the entourage with the nine of us traveling along in a caravan with two strollers and me with Luciana on my back.

Dinner was good at Cafe Brazil.  After dinner we walked back but decided, at the last minute, to take a detour and take the kids to the local park.  Liesl hasn’t been there in a while and the Grice kids have never gotten to go.  I doubt that anyone but Emily was even aware that there was a park there.

The kids had a good time at the park. The weather was great and it was quite busy.  Lots of kids out playing.  The highlight was Luciana taking her very first time out in a swing.  Liesl tried the swing at this park over a year ago but hated it and wanted to get down immediately.  Luciana, on the other hand, had a wonderful time.  Liesl even spent some time pushing her little sister.  We managed to get Liesl to try the swing as well but the effect was the same as before.  A few seconds of swinging and she wanted to get down.  It could be that she gets vertigo like me.

It was after eight when we got back to the house.  We had to head back because the insects were starting to come out and we had a little bit of walking to do yet before we would be back to the house.

It was a very early evening for everyone.  Everyone but Dominica had been up crazy early so we were all ready for bed very quickly.  Clara was using my office as a place to sleep so I was kicked out of there and unable to keep working at a pretty early hour which was actually decently convenient as it forced me to stop working.

Today was an overall pretty uneventful day. I was in the office and have several phone meeting today.  Nothing really worth noting.

Tonight was a quiet night in.  We did a little cleaning as Francesca and the Grice kids are coming up from Houston early tomorrow morning and will be staying with us for the weekend.  Today is my “Friday”, more or less, because tomorrow is marginally a holiday.  We were originally going to have tomorrow off completely but it turned out to not officially to be a holiday so I do have to work but it is going to be a very light day and I will be working from home all day.  Unfortunately the federal government is still doing the non-farm payroll announcement tomorrow morning so I have to be up early to deal with that.

Today was just a boring day compared to yesterday’s exciting day of tornadoes.  It will be hard to top that one.

This evening we went for a walk again as a family.  We are getting better about going out regularly.  Dominica is able to walk pretty far now without it being much of a problem.  We are much better prepared for Europe already.

We walked to Cafe Brazil, no big surprise there, and got dinner.  We are still loving the food there although it really encourages us to cheat heavily on the diet.  There is so much stuff there that is very not on plan and looks so good.

I stayed home from work today and we were very glad that I did because the weather today ended up being very exciting.  The morning wasn’t exciting.  In fact neither Dominica nor I had any inkling that we were in store for any interesting weather at all.

I worked as usual this morning.  At lunch time we talked about going out for a walk to Cafe Brazil.  We were just about to walk out the door when I had an emergency come up and I had to work for a bit. Then we checked and it was starting to rain, so we decided that it was best that we hadn’t set out for a walk at that particular moment anyway.

Within a very short time I got a text message from Watson asking how we were doing and if I was taking shelter at the office in Irving.  I asked what was going on as we had no idea.  He told us that tornadoes were seen and he was watching out of his downtown windows looking out towards Irving and they could see the storm hammering the area.  That’s when we heard the Farmer’s Branch tornado alarms go off and realized that quite a storm had moved in on us unexpectedly.

In no time we were in tornado warning conditions with crazy amounts of wind and rain.  Boy were we glad that we didn’t go out for that walk, we would have been caught quite some distance from home, on foot, with the kids.

We started watching Twitter and NOAA to see what was going on.  It turned out that today was a mad crazy tornado day.  The DFW got completely pummeled by tornadoes all afternoon.  It wasn’t long before we heard the Carrollton sirens and the police announced that there was a tornado at Trinity Mills and the Tollway.  Too close for comfort.

We took the kids and Oreo and we huddled in the master bedroom closet which is the closest thing that we have to a shelter.  It has no windows and is not open to the garage like my office is.  I’m not completely convinced that the office isn’t safer, though, as it is newly constructed and has more structural elements to protect it than the other side of the house does like more brick, a corner, newer walls, more walls, a reinforced ceiling, etc.  While huddles in the closet we watched Twitter carefully to follow the progress of the tornadoes.  Arlington was getting hit really hard.  There were tornadoes all over the DFW and one right down the street from us.  We could hear the tornado but never saw it.

We made it through the tornado without a problem.  There appears to be no damage in our neighbourhood at all.  Having a tornado makes for an interesting day, though!  I spent a while this afternoon sitting out on the patio reading.  The weather, once the storm was past, was perfect for sitting outside.

Once the storms had died down we went out to Brookhaven for kids’ night.  It was a very slow evening at Brookhaven.  No one was out golfing so that severely limited the number of people coming in for dinner as well.

Today is a short week at the office.  Or at least we thought that it was.  Friday will be Good Friday and we traditional have that day off.  We found out today that we don’t actually have Friday off, that was from our old schedule, and now we are officially working but we are going to run the day as much as possible like a day off.  However, Non-Farm Payroll is still being announced Friday morning so I have to be up at six thirty for that.  No fun.

I really don’t feel last night’s walk in my legs.  I am feeling good today.  Walking ten miles (sixteen kilometers) is apparently just an easy walk for me now.  Losing the weight really makes this a lot easier.

I had my Medifast meeting this morning then I ran over to Panera to get some coffee for the office.

After work I got home and Dominica was ready to return to Cafe Brazil.  So we went out for another walk, about four miles, and got dinner there again.  We are really becoming regulars.  We need to watch how much we do that, though, as it is quite a bit more expensive than just going to the country club.

The weather was absolutely gorgeous today so I spent a few hours sitting outside on the patio with the Kindle enjoying the warm sun and catching up on my reading for class.  I got a lot of reading done.  Dominica would have come out and sat with me but her own Kindle has been on loan and she has nothing that she can read outside.  This might be an argument for physical books again.  She has gotten into the habit of loaning out her Kindle like it was a book and goes long periods of time without it so we can’t read together like we used to.

I tried to get Dominica to go out walking with me today but her feet hurt from yesterday and she decided not to do any walking today.  So I decided that I would go out myself this evening as I really want to keep the activity level up.  Without doing the extra exercise I am never going to manage to lose the weight and get into shape for Europe.  So it is really critical.

I left for my walk just before Luciana was going to go to bed.  I had checked out the path earlier for walking from home to historic downtown Carrollton.  It did not look too bad and I need a “destination” when I am walking to give myself motivation.  So I set around eight or eight thirty.  It was dark but the nice was quiet and the weather was good – just a little bit cool so that I could really enjoy my walk. I had “Hard Eight” on the iPhone Touch to listen to while I walked.

I am finding that there are many more late night or all night gas stations around me than I would have realized.  I don’t think that I have ever lived somewhere were getting gas late at night was so easy.  You can go in any direction from our house and you will hit a gas station open all night.  I stopped at Seven Eleven on the way to pick up a fountain soda, some nuts and a package of veggies.  It is Sunday so, for the most part, I skipped eating today as I often do but on the long walk it is kind of important to have something.

My path to downtown Carrollton took me through some areas that I have barely seen previously so it was nice to walk the neighbourhoods and get to know the area better.  I approached downtown from Denton Road and got to see the old houses.  That area looks a lot like I imagine it did in 1950 when those houses were not very old.

I got to downtown just before ten.  I walked all around downtown as I have never been inside the main plaza before and I wanted to see what there was.  Downtown is full of really neat little shops, the train station, a twenty four hour RaceTrac gas station and more.  Downtown is really pretty and very accessible.  It is mostly food, candy, clothing and antiques but it is extremely well done.  It was nice to walk around and at some point I look forward to getting Dominica to walk down here to try out the food.  Sadly, though, there is almost no fish and very little vegetarian outside of a salad here or there in all of downtown’s restaurants and what there is is extremely bread heavy as every restaurant is a sandwich place except for one that is an Italian restaurant whose menu was not available in the window.  There is the rather famous Agave Azul Mexican restaurant there that can be see far and wide because it is so tall that it towers over the highway.  We’ll need to do some exploring here during the day when things are open.  This is not a late night area.

I stopped at the RaceTrak and loaded up on supplies – nuts, V8 and some Green Machine.  Very healthy stuff.  I used the restroom, thank goodness for all night gas stations, and headed back north.  The walk back north went quicker, I feel, than the walk south.  I was feeling pretty good and I decided to stop in at the Carrollton Public Library and check out the external parts of the facility so I walked through the building (there is an open area to go between the two main parts of the building) and down to the waterfront on Josie Ranch Lake where there are nighttime lights and a fountain.  There was even someone out there fishing at nearly midnight.

It was not quite midnight when I got back to the house.  Probably a quarter till midnight.  Nearly ten miles on my walk today.  Not bad at all.  I was tired when I returned.  Right off to sleep for me.

We got up this morning and it was such a beautiful day and we had all of this new gear for our European adventure trip so we decided that it would be a great morning to take the girls out for a walk.  We have the new stroller to test out, the new Ergo Baby carrier and the new Nikon AW100 camera all to test out for the first time.  We packed up and headed out on foot.

On the way “away” from the house Liesl rode in the new stroller and Luciana rode front mounted on Dominica in the Ergo Baby.  Luciana really liked it and was very sleepy the whole time.  It is a very snugly way to travel.

We walked to Cafe Brazil and, while we were there, decided to get brunch.  We sat outside and had a really nice time.  The weather was perfect.  The girls had fun too.

We walked back to the house and this time Dominica pushed Luciana in the stroller and I carried Liesl in the Ergo Baby carrier on my back.  That gave me a handy extra thirty pounds to increase my exercise for the walk.  The total walk was more than three miles!  Pretty good for a Saturday morning for the Miller family.

We got home and Dominica set right about painting Luciana’s room.  We’ve been talking and with the hopes that we will be moving to Europe in the next few years it is just crazy to invest in converting the attic into a second floor playroom for the girls.  It would be six months from now before it was done and Luciana might never be old enough to use the stairs before we move away.  That would be quite the waste of money.  So since no construction will be done in there we no longer have an excuse not to get it painted.  It is being painted a pale yellow.  Very much like the colour of the kitchen before it turned green.

This evening we decided that the walk to Cafe Brazil had gone so well and that there was so much food there that we wanted to try that we would walk back again and eat a second meal there and skip our Medifast meals for the day.  This is my first time skipping my Medifast meals in about ten months but I figured that if it got Dominica out and walking that it was worth it.  It is always a struggle to get her to walk a long distance with me and Cafe Brazil seems to provide much needed motivation.

We walked back as it was getting dark.  We ate inside tonight, rather than out on the “patio” like we did earlier.  Really the patio is just the sidewalk next to the parking lot.  This is a cafe in Texas.  It lacks a certain something, to be sure.  I can’t wait to be eating at real cafes in Europe again.

I got the barbecue salmon for dinner, it was quite good.  The broccoli there is amazing.  Really good produce.  We were pretty happy that we returned to Cafe Brazil.  That was a good decision today.  It made for a nice change of pace – all this walking and hanging out as a family and going to someplace new.  Good exercise too as not only is it a good walk but we are carrying the kids or pushing a stroller the whole way for extra exercise.  Dominica did half of the carrying this morning but tonight I am doing it all.  That will wear her out quickly.

On the way back we decided that we were doing pretty well so walked away, rather than towards the house, from Cafe Brazil and took a really long way around and approached our house from the far side.  Altogether this evening walk was just over five miles for a total today of nearly eight and a half with about seven of that with me carrying either Liesl or Luciana on my back.  That’s some serious walking.  It was nice getting to show Dominica around our neighborhood too as she really doesn’t know the different areas that well.  This will get her used to it quickly.

It is Friday.  I got into the office on the late side.  It was a nice day in general.  I decided that in order to keep productive that I would skip coming home today and instead worked through my lunch break trying to catch up on things.  There is always just so much to do and commuting home during lunch means two more context switches, another hour in the car, money for all that fuel and half an hour of sitting at home not being able to do very much as it is such a short period of time.  So I stayed and got work done.

Today was not all that busy.  Not slow, just not super busy.  I mostly worked on getting my mailbox and ticket queues trimmed down, which overall, went well.

I am very excited because my new camera, the Nikon AW100, arrived today while I was at the office.  This is the camera that I bought specifically for our trip to Europe.  Dominica thought that I was crazy to need a new camera for the trip but once I explained why I needed it, she agreed that we really did need to get it.  This is a small, pocket sized point and shoot camera but rated as being excellent for image quality – according to some reviews it is supposed to rival my Nikon D90 for image quality!  It is a 16MP camera, which is more than we need but a nice feature and results in good low light performance which is very nice as I hate using a camera like this with a flash, it never looks good.  You need a good off-camera flash like I have for my D90 in order to get good flash photos.

I got home this evening and I played with the new camera for a little bit.  Not very long because as soon as the girls were awake and ready we went out to Brookhaven to get some dinner.  It’s not all that often that we manage to get out on a Friday night so that worked well.

This afternoon I had a half hour meeting planning for the upcoming SpiceCorps Philadelphia event which I am helping to coordinate.  I used to help with that group quite some time ago but it has been dormant for a while so I am assisting in getting it fired up and running again.

After work I ran right home and we headed out to go to La Cima for six o’clock reservations.  We were nearly half an hour late, of course, but they are used to us.

This is our first time back to La Cima in nearly five months – our first return since we left to go to Brookhaven.  Since our last time there a lot has changed, most notably the management.

Everyone was excited to see us, mostly because of the girls.  They have both grown a lot since they were last at the club and Liesl was very excited to be back and to see everyone.  Dominica is very glad to be back too because she really misses the food there.

This is our first time seeing the new menu.  There was a new chef at La Cima who started just before we left so we never really got to experience the changes that he made before we had left so this gave us some new variety.  Overall the menu is really good but we did not feel that it was as good, or as varietal, as the older menu and there is now no regular whitefish on the menu so there is even less for Dominica to eat than there used to be.  So she will be struggling to eat at La Cima very often.  Sadly the amazing smoked gouda mac and cheese has been removed from the menu.  It is good because we should not eat it but it is bad because it was one of the best items on the menu.  I wonder if they could make it for us if we asked.

The new manager of La Cima came over to make sure that he greeted us while we were there.  He seems really nice.  I’m looking forward to seeing what he can do with the club.

Dominica got the lighter, Macadamia crust fish option and I went for the flash smoked salmon which was excellent.  The new salad selection is good as well.  We also split a crab cake appetizer, which we should not have, but splitting it isn’t too bad for us.

We had a nice evening.  We were very happy to learn that our ONE membership with Brookhaven just recently changed and we now no longer have one meal per month to use at either La Cima or at the Tower Club but instead have unlimited ONE privileges to use at either, anytime after five in the evening.  Obviously this is because both clubs are extremely busy for lunch and relatively slow for dinner.  It makes perfect sense – get the country club set out to the business clubs more often for fancy dinners.  We are definitely going to start using them both more.  Now that Dominica is comfortable getting to the Tower Club via rail we will go that much more.

I had to get up really early this morning so that I could take the Acadia in to the shop because of the power steering issues.  I dropped it off before seven thirty and came home to work from there.

I worked from home all day as I had to deal with the car.  It was a slow day at work so a good day to be home.

Originally we had had reservations for La Cima tonight but we had to switch them to tomorrow night because tonight I had to attend a live class session for my class at RIT.

This evening, after the girls had gone to bed – even Dominica, I decided to go out for a walk in the nice, evening air and get some much needed exercise.  I have been needing badly to start getting into the habit of exercising regularly and walking is about the only thing that I can bring myself to do on a really regular basis and mostly because it gives me an opportunity to both explore the area in which I live and because it gives me a chance to listen to my audio books which, otherwise, I never get a chance to hear.

So the weather being really nice this evening I set out for a serious walk.  I started going south when I discovered that there was no sidewalk heading off in the direction that I wanted to go but I then decided to venture eastward out into some residential neighbourhoods and found my way, eventually, back up to the road that I had originally wanted to take.  While walking I finished listening to Janet Evanovich’s “Seven Up” and started listening to the eighth book in the series “Hard Eight.”

By book seven the Stephanie Plum series is already starting to get pretty boring and eight makes it even worse.  The story is the same in every book and the lead character is mechanical and predictable.  It takes a bit to stick with the books but I am a bit invested in the series at this point.  It’s like a bad sitcom, though, where everyone can see that Lucy is about to do something foolish and clearly time after time Lucy knows that she is doing something foolish but does it anyway, and Ricky comes to save her.  The books are no different.  Over the top formulaic.  The formula is simple.  Vacuous Jersey Girl gets job, gets in over her head, acts macho, gets man to save her.  Ho hum.  In every book Stephanie leaves her gun in her cookie jar, is surprised when gun is needed, refuses to put bullets in gun when someone forces her to take it and, the moment no one is looking, puts it back into the cookie jar and needs saving again.  Also, you can bet that she will come home and someone will have broken into her apartment and she will be surprised… again.

The weather was perfect for a walk and I had a really nice time.  I walked down the main drag near our home which works out great for late night walking because there are loads of businesses nearby including a few twenty-four hours places where I can stop for food, drink or restroom breaks.  Having access to those things on a long, late night walk can be pretty important.

I walked due east, taking no side streets.  Living in a city like Carrollton actually gives me a ton of stuff to explore on foot.  It has been a long time since I lived someplace so conducive to long walks.  The area is very safe, pretty flat and you actually can get to a lot of different things pretty quickly.

What is interesting is that there is a sort of natural barrier between our local neighbourhood and the main road off of which we live quite closely.  For the first several months in our new home we really didn’t know what lay in that direction at all.  We are heavily “associated” with the businesses located to our southwest, not to the east or north nearly as much.  So walking to the east reveals a lot of businesses that I see only infrequently when driving.

I walked several miles tonight, nearly eight miles in total by the time that I returned to the house.  It was a good walk.  I covered all of the reasonable ground that I could along my one path and have a much better understanding of the route now.  I am looking forward to doing it again but branching out along different side streets, there is a lot of area to explore out there.

One thing that really caught me off guard was the large number of bars that were open and quite active late on a Wednesday evening.  There were a lot of people sitting outside on patios as I walked.  I had no idea that there were so many, or really any, bars so close to my home.  And bars that I can easily walk to.  Many of these were only a little over halfway into my walk.

I found several restaurants that I did not really know were there before as well.  Walking is really the best way to discover this stuff.  There are so many little, local businesses around that you would never know are there.  I wonder how half of them make any money.  It is so hard to know when or why you would use many of them.

Overall it was a very good night and I felt good when I got back home.  My trainer will be happy with me if I can keep this up.  I need to get in shape, not just lose weight, quickly as well because when we go to Europe (which is only about six weeks away) we are going to be taking the train and walking everywhere.  So being ready for some serious walking without stressing my knees is very important.

It was about two when I got home.  I was pretty tired.  Right off to sleep for me.  I calculated that I burned nearly nine hundred calories tonight and walked about seven and a half miles.

Medifast Status: Day 314, Down ~77.5lbs (22.5lbs to go)

Had to get up this morning and drive in to my Medifast appointment.  I was pretty excited, though, as I was actually down when I weighed in at home this morning.  By the time that I got in to Medifast I was down even more and the scale was teetering on another half pound.  I am extremely close to my original Medifast target weight.  I could hit it any day if I can stay away from Dominica baking.  I cannot resist freshly baked cookies in the house.  It’s just not something that I can resist.  I don’t have that kind of willpower.  Boy does it feel good to finally be at a new low weight.

Today was supposed to be the first day of classes for the semester at RIT but I was unable to talk to the school to get anything worked out yet for this semester.  I tried to talk to my adviser last Friday but everyone was out.  So I called today and her schedule was full.  You would think that when they told me on Friday to call today that if being booked in advance was necessary that they might have mentioned that at the time.  So today I made an appointment for tomorrow.  Hopefully tomorrow I will be able to book a class for this semester.

Today the family went to the Dallas Children’s Aquarium in at Fair Park while I was at work.  Now that I have taught Dominica about how to use the DART rail system, she is addicted.  It is just way too convenient to get downtown not to do it.  They had a really good time today and I was able to get out of work at a decent time so drove to the Green Line at Royal, parked the car and rode downtown to join them for dinner.

I got off of the train at the West End and met everyone waiting for me on the platform.  Liesl was so excited to see me – screaming from all of the way down the platform and jumping around like crazy.  Apparently she had gotten really sad when another train had come and gone and she thought that I had forgotten to get off of the train.

We all walked around the West End for a bit trying to decide on where to eat. It is tough between our Medifast diets and being pescatarian and the girls being really picky eaters in really unpredictable ways.  We ended up settling on the Spaghetti Factory which was the only restaurant that Dominica and I have eaten at in the West End previously.  But now that we know how easy it is to get here we can easily come back anytime.

Dinner was pretty good and we had a nice ride back home on the train.

Medifast Status: Day 313, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

Today is the first day with the Grice family in town all day.  They arrived yesterday.  The girls were pretty tired this morning after their late night out last night.

This is my “on call” weekend with the office and, like most on call Sundays, I had to work all day.  Dominica and Francesca went out shopping leaving me babysitting at the house.  It was quiet afternoon with the kids, mostly.

This evening we just went out and got take out from McDonald’s.  At least that is what I got for Dominica and Liesl.  I skipped eating today as I often try to do the day before my weigh in at Medifast.

Medifast Status: Day 312, Down ~76.5lbs (23.5lbs to go)

Francesca and the kids are driving up from Houston today.  So this morning I did a bit of work and, when we were able, we did some cleaning.  The house was not in too bad of shape when they arrived in the early afternoon.

This evening, for dinner, Francesca, Emily and I went out and picked up dinner from Restaurant Latino #2.  So Francesca got to witness firsthand how difficult it is to order food there for me.  It was quite a challenge to get them to understand what we wanted and we decided that there was nothing that a lot of the kids would eat.  So while we were waiting for the food there we drove over to McDonald’s and picked up some food there as well.

We came back and Emily and I went inside and waited for the food to be ready while Francesca sat in the car and played some video games on her phone.  She is currently addicted to a game called Temple Runner or something like that.

We got back to the house and discovered that my meal was missing.  We were not charged for it, they were just unable to understand what we were trying to order.  Frustrating though.

So later on Emily and I ran out to McDonald’s and I ate dinner there and she got some fries.  At least I managed to get some of the McDonald’s Fish McBites out of the deal.  I really love those.  I should not have them though.  Very dangerous.

This evening Dominica and Francesca got dressed up and headed out to Addison for a night on the town.  They went to Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar while I stayed home watching the kids.

Liesl passed out on the play room couch tonight.  Playing with her cousins all day really wore her out.