Trip to San Antonio

 

[caption id="attachment_207" align="alignright" width="225" caption="This painting of Bill Clinton wearing a La Tierra T-shirt was on a wall in the restaurant."][/caption]

Since Saturday evening I have been in San Antonio for work, and I will be here until late Saturday morning. On this trip, I finally met my functional manager in person for the first time, and I visited my company's San Antonio office. We have had a productive week of work, meeting with a client. Tonight though, a coworker from Iowa City and I got to see some of the sights of San Antonio. A colleague of ours who lives here drove us downtown where we went to Market Square, where I got gifts for Mel and Emma. We went through Mi Tierra Restaurant and Bakery, although we did not stop there to eat. We also checked out the exterior of the Alamo since it was closed for the day. After visiting these sights, we had dinner at La Tuna Grill. There was a lot to see on our shopping trip, and the food was good where we ate. It was nice to try something for dinner besides eatting at a chain restaurant another night, although I do like chain restaurants as well.

And before I complete this blog posting, no visit to the Alamo would be complete without mentioning the basement as in the video below.

Watching My Weight

Over the past few months I have really been struggling with my weight. I have been paying for the Weight Watchers online program, but I have not been as diligent as I need to be when it comes to recording what I eat. I am usually careful the first two or three days of the week, but by the time I get to the weekend I am not recording everything. This is the behavior I need to change.

Last week my weight increased significantly, mainly due to overindulgence while on my business trip to Sioux Falls. I am therefore redoubling my efforts when it comes to watching what I eat. Since I likely will not be carefully tracking my points next week while I am on RAGBRAI, I thought about waiting until the beginning of August to restart the Weight Watchers program. However, the more I thought about it, I really should start immediately. I do not need an extra week of overeating. So I started back up with Weight Watchers today.

My weight this morning was 230.0 pounds. That worked out being a nice, round number. For my height I need to get my weight below 200.0 pounds for my body mass index to be in the normal weight range, so I am setting my goal to be 199.0 pounds. I have had my weight this low before, but not since October 3, 2007. I will get to this weight again. And to help me succeed, I recorded everything I ate today, even the package of four smaller-than-average Oreo cookies I had after donating blood.

A Semi-successful Trip

[caption id="attachment_31" align="alignright" width="225" caption="Water Slide at the Sioux Falls Ramada's Buccaneer Bay Indoor Water Park"][/caption]

As I previously wrote, I am in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for a business trip. Overall my trip has been a good one. I facilitated meetings both today and yesterday, and they each went quite smoothly. My group got done with yesterday's meeting fairly early. We did not finish today's meeting as early as yesterday's, but we still got done with some time to spare.

Part of my trip has been less successful as I hoped however. I had hoped to get work done in the evenings on another project I work on. I got a little work done yesterday afternoon after finishing my meeting early, but I have had a heck of a time with my Wi-Fi connection. I am not sure if the fault lies in the hotel's service or in my old laptop, but regardless of what was at fault, after being connected initially for almost an hour, I was disconnected and then repeatedly lost my connection again just minutes after I regained it. That made it impossible to get anything done. Hopefully my new work computer arrives shortly after I am back in my office Friday.

Since I have been unable to get much work done, I had time to check out the hotel's water park. I went down the large water slide a few times last night and a couple times tonight. It was fun, but it would have been a lot more fun if Mel and the kids had been here to enjoy it as well.

I fly out tomorrow and am really looking forward to getting home to see Mel, Emma, and Maximus. I don't mind business trips but I do miss my family while I am gone.

Sioux Falls

[caption id="attachment_21" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Pirate Ship at the Sioux Falls Ramada's Buccaneer Bay Indoor Water Park"][/caption]

Today I flew from Minneapolis to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for a business trip. My flight was uneventful. Prior to leaving for my trip though, I heard that the hotel I was staying at had some sort of water park. When I got here I discovered that the Ramada Hotel and Suites has a pirate-themed water park which it calls Buccaneer Bay. I think that my wife and kids would have enjoyed this water park. It would have been nice if they could have come along on the trip. The slides on that pirate ship, and the larger water slide, shown in the background, look like a lot of fun. It is a good thing I brought my swim suit. I may have to check out the pool and water slides some time during my stay here.