My family and I went to Martha’s Vineyard with some really awesome friends for the Thanksgiving weekend. It was a great adventure, except that I had to work on Friday, and Erica caught strep throat.

We drove down Wednesday afternoon, parked the car, took the bus, then the ferry, then the minivan, then a nap, then some coffee. Erica brought ingredients for her awesome spinach lasagna, and Ted brought a lasagna that he had frozen - so dinner was delicious - so was the coffee.

On Thursday the crew worked all day preparing the turkey and all the fixins. The turkey spent most of the day in the oven, then moved out to the grill - it was awesometastic. After dinner and dessert and all-day coffee, they drove me back to the ferry. I took the last ferry, back on the bus to my car, two hours of driving, three hours of sleeping, then to work at 5AM.

By noon Friday we had made over $76M with no site failures of any kind, so by 1PM it was safe to leave. Another two hour drive, then a bus and a ferry and a minivan and some coffee. Back on the island by 4:30PM. And then some coffee.

On Saturday we had some coffee, and a couple really nice walks. We got out to the beach, which was amazingly pleasant for a late-November day. On Sunday we had coffee, then packed up. Somewhere along the line Erica caught a nice case of strep throat, so, we had some coffee. Then got in the car, on the ferry, in a bus, back to our car, and a two hour trip home. I took off Monday and Tuesday to take care of her and the kids.

So, now, how about the coffee? Oh, and the food?

Things started to get bad when Halloween hit, but now combine that with Thanksgiving and you have a disaster. For the past month I’ve been overeating all kinds of bad stuff. I managed to gain about 7 pounds - bringing me up to one pound under my goal weight (okay, so I shouldn’t complain). I’m at 154 now. I’ve also completely overdone it with coffee. I started to get to the point that coffee wouldn’t wake me up anymore, and only helped get rid of the headaches.

So, starting this past Monday, I started a 21 day cleanup routine. I’ve dropped coffee and soda - replaced it with a little green tea when I really need it. I’ve also gotten back on plan with eating. I’m not counting points, but just using the common sense I learned from losing 50 pounds. I’m also upping my exercise to daily, alternating biking/weights with biking/abs. I’ll keep you all updated on my progress to cleandome.