Off we go

We had a great time at the NARFE luncheon yesterday. They didn't have an appropriate food choice for the lunch, but the Outback staff were very nice and let us have salmon. Wow. The speaker was from a guide dog school. They brought a Golden Retriever and an Australian Shepherd, two working dogs, who were adorable. The school has "puppy play time" several days a week from 9-11 a.m. because they want the puppies to be handled and socialized. That's the same as the Iditarod dogs in Alaska. It's only a two hour drive or so! Why not go some morning?

The landscaping lady came by, unannounced again, to show us the proposal for removing a lot of plants in the front and moving two trees, one in front and one in back, to new, more appropriate locations. Considering how much hard labor is involved in this, we were pleasantly surprised that the price tag was only $1048. Mark and I thought it would be two or three times that much. Part of the reason it's low is that she is going to hold off planting the new shrubs for a few weeks until she can work that into an ordinary work order to "fill bare spots," which will make it covered by the HOA fees. Nice. This lady is amazing! It will be all done by the time we get back from the wedding.

Now we are hurrying around this morning to get out of here by 7 a.m. It's nearly a 600 mile drive to the hotel in NC tonight. We are going to the b'nei mitzvah of Mark's cousin's daughter and son tomorrow. It will be fun to see so many of Mark's family members. We haven't seen some of them in a long time. Some we saw at the wedding shower, so that was nice. Unfortunately, none of them are coming to the wedding. I think it's because Boston is so far for them and because they are coming to this simcha tomorrow.

At least the tropical storm is fizzling out. We don't anticipate it being any problem for us at all.

I left my arm in the bandages for 36 hours. After taking them off this morning and measuring again, I brought the size of my arm back down again by about 2 cm. I'm back to where I was last Friday when I took them off. Wrapping works.

I'm taking my laptop on all of the trips, so I hope to write some blogs and post some pictures from our trips as we go along.

One last word: prayers and good wishes to two friends who are having surgery today. A high school girl friend, who I do not think even knows about this blog, is having breast cancer surgery today, a lumpectomy. She was told her cancer has not spread but there are multiple calcifications that will be removed. I'm praying for her today. Also my friend Robin's son is having some surgery today. He is also in our prayers.