Iditarod time

The ceremonial start in Anchorage was Saturday, but we forgot!  We stayed home all day and tried to get caught up on lots of TV shows since we are still two weeks behind due to the February cruise and our company.  No matter how much we watch we always seem to be two weeks behind.  LOL!  Anyway we watched the actual start out of Willow yesterday evening.  This year there are 85 mushers, and it's so much fun to watch all those dogs.  Ever since our two trips to Alaska we have been following the Iditarod, even buying the live news feed online, which is how we watch it.

My eyes are improving.  The stitches are itching a lot, so I will be glad to get them pulled out on Wednesday afternoon. I'm still swollen, but it's improving day by day.

I spent Friday and Saturday eating WAY too much sodium, so I hit a whopping 290 yesterday morning.  That's really depressing because it means I really have undone all that work in 2009.  I spent yesterday eating appropriately and little sodium.  This morning I am 285.5, so the water retention is mostly gone.  It's sad that I gained seven pounds on the 10 day cruise in February, lost the seven pounds in about three days after returning, and then gained TEN pounds at home.  Now I'm trying to re-lose the seven from the cruise before we go on the next cruise.  We leave on Sunday, March 20, so I have two weeks to lose those seven pounds again.  That will be tough to do, but it is possible.  I will be eating one breakfast, one lunch, and two dinners out in restaurants between now and then, but most of the meals will all be at home.  There are no dinner parties to attend, so that's a good thing.

We had fun planning all of our shore excursions for the next cruise.  It's fourteen days and 9 of them are port days.  Only St. Martin is a repeat for us, so we are going to the beach.  The other ports are all new, so we carefully picked out a shore excursion for each day.  Three others will include some beach time, but mostly we chose bus tours that give some history and overview of the island.  Each of the 9 days in port will involve a three to six hour stretch on the island, but mostly we are back by lunch time or mid-afternoon.  Hopefully, that schedule won't make us too tired!  Our stamina is definitely less than it used to be.  Between all the extra weight I have put on and an odd weakness and pain in my left leg that started up suddenly Thursday morning, I cannot walk as easily as I could a few years ago.  Even Mark is complaining of a twinge in his left knee.  Eh....as they say, getting old isn't for wimps!