Missed all my Mah Jongg

Mark and I had doctor's appointments this morning at the family doctor, Dr. Dunn.  Unfortunately, I had the time wrong for his appointment.  I put 10:15 for Mark and 11 a.m. for me, but it was 11:15 for Mark.  So we arrived at 9:50.  Oh, well....my mistake.  We waited.

Then it was 11 and I expected to get called.  Nope.  We got called back at 12:45 together. The doctor finally made it into the office shortly after 1 p.m.  We were annoyed, but it turned out the office had been inundated all morning with walk-in patients exhibiting flu symptoms.  Those of us with appointments got pushed aside.

Now we are worrying about all those people that had been in the waiting room with the flu for those hours.  UGH.

The appointment was all good, though.  Even though I was up 10 pounds since my last visit, she didn't notice or comment.  My BP was slightly elevated, which I attributed to being angry about the wait and missing both morning and afternoon Mahj, but she didn't notice or comment.  My A1C was normal, 5.6, so she's not testing it again for a year.  That's fine with me.  She is refilling all of my prescriptions, which is all I really wanted from her.  Mark is also fine and got his refills.

So most of the whole day was shot, but we are healthy.  I guess that's good news.

We got home at 2:30, starving for lunch, and at 3:30 we are going up to Mosaics for the book talk on Beowulf.  Such is life in Solivita.

Last night we attended the gala to honor our friend Marian from the synagogue for her volunteer work with Jewish Pavilion.  We signed up for a lot of silent auction items and won the Pink Bucket.  It included a beautiful necklace and matching earrings that I plan to give to my daughter-in-law.  It also had a little purse with a $20 bill in it, a $25 gift card to Bahama Breeze, some microwave popcorn, some chocolates, and a bottle of Chardonnay.  The BEST thing was that my name was drawn from the cards of people who put in to donate to Jewish Pavilion.  And I won...are you sitting down?....a gift card to a jeweler up in Lake Mary, Florida in the amount of $1,800.  YES, you read that right. one THOUSAND eight HUNDRED dollars!  I could hardly control myself to walk up and pick it up.  I never win anything!  Guess I can't say THAT anymore.  LOL

Catching up

We got up extra early and ran and ran around all week long, so today we slept in, stayed in our jammies, and just watched TV, napped, and read all day.  Delightful.

Mark made two presentations at the District 6 NARFE meeting in the Clearwater area yesterday.  He did a great job.  I only took a few pictures so that I could get one on Facebook, which I did.  I'm not posting it here.

Tomorrow I'm getting my cellphone repaired.  Then we are going to a black tie dinner event to honor one of our synagogue members for her volunteer work.   It's going to rain tomorrow, so that should make driving up to Maitland interesting.

Even though I have gained over 12 pounds in three months, my blood work was great.  I got the lowest A1C I've ever had, a 5.6, which is in the normal range.  My fasting sugar was 112, above normal, but with a normal A1C, I don't really care.  My cholesterol and triglycerides were all great, too.  The doctor will yell at me about gaining weight, but since everything else looks good, I'm not worried.  All my joints are doing well right now, too.  It took a month for that cortisone injection to kick in, but once it did, my shoulder has felt almost normal. It's the best it's been since July.

Here are some pictures from our day at the Epcot Festival of the Arts.

This is only the second year for this event.  It's celebrating the Visual,  Performing, and Culinary Arts, so we just looked, listened, and ate!  This is possibly our favorite event yet at Epcot.

Posing with a Living Statue

Artist at work

He painted this upside down with his fingers.  Until he spun it upright, I had no idea what it was.

We bought two of his pieces, which he signed, and then he posed with us for a picture.

Poster art of attractions at other parks.

White chocolate jigsaw puzzle to put together and paint with icing, then eat!  Beautiful.

We got to participate in the paint by number mural of the monorail.

Rubbings in our book of some art in each of the world pavilions.

We found all of the Figment art for our sticker page to get a pin.

Panda rice

Fabulous concert by this husband-wife team.  

She created the role of Katherine in Newsies and he was Tarzan, both on Broadway.

Morocco at night, beautiful.

Figment as The Blue Boy in the UK pavilion.  Cute.

Epcot at night as we left.  Gorgeous.

Missed my weigh in

I didn't have time to do a Weigh-in Wednesday blog yesterday, so here it is today.  Not good. I'm out of control and over eating every night watching TV, which means I'm up two pounds today from last Wednesday.  This morning's weight was 268.6.  On Monday we are seeing the family doctor, and I'm up TWELVE pounds in three months.  She is going to have a fit.  Should have gone the other way.

Sigh....

I had my annual ophthalmology appointment yesterday and all is well.  Then we went to an excellent presentation in the ballroom my Jan Kanoss, one of the cameramen for Saturday Night Live.  He worked on that show for 27 years!  I think that's what he said.  He had memorabilia including his Emmy award.  Wow!  An Emmy Award winner lives here in Solivita.  So cool.

Today I played Mahj and did not win at all.  Boo Hoo!

Now I'm eating lunch too quickly and walking the half mile up to my friend Barbara's house to take her a mac and cheese and some veggie soup and two Get Well cards.  She had surgery last Wednesday and is recovering slowly.  I still don't have my car, and Mark is out shopping.  But I can AND SHOULD walk that half mile!

Later this afternoon I'm finally getting my car back after a week.  They installed a new, and very expensive, battery, and hopefully they have also fixed my key fob so that both of the work.  I'll be so happy to have my car back!

If we aren't too worn out, we will go up to the ballroom tonight to see the free movie.  Tonight it's Victoria and Abdul.

Tomorrow there will be no blog because we are busting out at 7:30 a.m. to go to the Clearwater area for a NARFE district meeting.  Mark is one of the presenters.  Should be a long but enjoyable day.

Otter Box Fail

My phone fell of the kitchen table yesterday, and the screen cracked all over.  I am sad.  It looks almost as bad as Mark's old one did when it flew off the roof of the car at 30 mph.  I had an Otter Box on it, which is supposed to protect it.  It has a rubbery lip that extrudes about an 1/8 of an inch all around, so I have no idea how it landed that the lip allowed the glass to hit the tiles.  Weird and very sad.

Now I have an appointment for 12:20 p.m. at the Best Buy by Florida Mall on Sunday to get the glass replaced.  UGH.

I didn't have time yesterday to finish my Epcot photo album, so no pictures today.

Today we are picking up Susie and Ed to take them to Sea World on the Take-a-Friend for Free promotion this month for pass holders.  We can get them in, but we can only stay until lunch because we have a Cove Singers rehearsal in the afternoon and then dinner out at Millers Ale House with Judi and Peter.  Long day but a good day.

My car is ready to get back, new battery in the car and new battery in the key fob, but I don't have time until Thursday to do it.

So I have two big expenses this week, a car repair and a phone repair.  UGH again.  It's hard to make head way on credit card debt this way.

I was up for forty minutes, from 1:30 a.m. to around 2:10 a.m., with bad leg cramps last night.  Eventually, I settled down in the new recliner and slept until 5 a.m. when another cramp got me up.  it wasn't too intense, so I was asleep again by 5:30.  Not the restful night I was hoping for.

A great day at Epcot yesterday

We spent 10 hours at the Epcot Art Festival yesterday.  We walked 7 miles!  We painted; we ate; we listened to an amazing concert.  There will be pictures eventually.

My blood sugar was 118 this morning, which I didn't like because I had my fasting blood work for the family doctor's appointment next week.  I know the A1C and blood sugar will be bad.  I am not going to be surprised if she finally diagnoses me as a diabetic and not longer a pre-diabetic.  I will be sad and angry at myself, but not surprised.

My appointment at Quest was for 7:15, but somehow I stupidly made it under Mark's birthday.  When I signed in on my actual birthday, I showed up as a walk-in.  I got there t 7:05 expecting a 10 minute wait, but I actually waited 35 minutes.  Oh, well.  My fault.

In a few minutes I'll be leaving to play morning Mah Jongg and then this afternoon I'll play again.  The day started off poorly, but it will be all good in the end.

Here are the last of the pictures from our cruise on the Epic.

Looking at the ship from the tender on our way to Grand Cayman.

The oldest house on the island.

Yes, we went to Hell, for the second time.

Unusual rock formations, which gave the town the name Hell.

Seas were rough today.

Petting the local dog at the Tortuga Rum factory/store.

The Turtle Farm.

Big green sea turtles are bred here for food and for releasing into the wild to replenish the species.

Heading in to the hatchery.

Love holding the baby turtle.

You are required to wash your hands before and after holding the babies.

Ed also held the baby.

Heading back to the ship.

In the afternoon Mark went down the slide.

Then we relaxed and read by the pool.

Wearing my new Caymanite necklace that Mark bought me at the Turtle farm because my other  one broke.

Howl at the Moon was the dueling piano show. 

My only Miami Vice of the trip.

The weather was too rough to go to the private island, Great Stirrup Cay, so we went back to Nassau.

We stayed on board reading and relaxing all day. Then we sat up in the bow of the buffet to watch us back away from the dock and spin around to head out.

We saw the Carnival Sensation leaving right in front of us.  That's the ship we had our family cruise on last January.