Rudy is heading home today.

Rudy is heading north today. His objective is to stay overnight in Fayetteville, NC and then make it home on Thursday. I wish him safe travels.

We sure had fun yesterday with him at Epcot. We took a TON of pictures, so I can only post a few of them here. Eventually there will be a huge Picasa album coming out by email. It includes 356 items. Most of those are photos, but there are also about a dozen little videos of various things in there. I hope to have that going around by tomorrow. The photos are up and I have captioned them. I just need Mark to read all the captions to look for any typos I missed and to add captions to a group of pictures from last night. There are a lot of pictures from their time at the Treasure Tavern, but I wasn't there. I have no idea what to say about them! If you are reading this blog, want the photo album, but don't get it, feel free to ask me for it!

Epcot was wonderful yesterday. The weather was a bit blustery, but in the sunshine, it felt great. Even though the Flower and Garden Festival didn't officially open until today, all of the topiaries and most of the beautiful plantings were already out and ready for viewing. The Sorcerer's Apprentice and other characters from Fantasia were some of the main ones this year.

We did a few rides, had a great lunch, and drank some wine. The guys did the Wine Walk, which is two 2-ounce glasses of wine from France, 2 from Italy, and 2 from Germany. I'm not a wine lover, so I took just a small sip from each of Mark's glasses. I only liked one wine from Italy. Rudy was generous and bought us all a large glass of that wine! I posted that picture here.

We've had a great visit with him. I don't envy him the long drive back north. At least the weather is warm up there as well. Tomorrow in Baltimore is listed as 73 degrees. Wow!

Today is Weigh-in Wednesday, but I have not weighed in. Mark hides the scale all week, but he got home so late last night and has been so busy this morning with cooking, laundry, printing things out for Rudy, and generally saying goodbye to his friend, that he has not had time to bring out the scale. Now I've already had breakfast and been up two hours. I don't think that weight will be accurate, so I'll probably weigh in tomorrow instead. I already know it will be very, very BAD. I can feel that I have gained weight. I have not been to the gym since last Wednesday. I have not taken any long walks, other than walking around Epcot yesterday. It's been a week full of great food, good company, and lots of fun, but that is not always a good recipe for weight loss. Yes, I can feel the weight on me.

Tonight is Purim. We are going to the synagogue for the Purim services and there will be Hamantaschen. We tried to find sugar-free ones on Tuesday. Some synagogue folks had suggested that BJ's had them, but they did not. We did buy some regular ones to take with us tomorrow night to dinner. We are invited out for dinner tomorrow night, so it seemed appropriate to bring Hamantaschen. There will be Hamantaschen at shul tonight as well as ice cream after the Megillah reading. Well, it's time to get back to my routine. I need to go to the gym today, take a long walk, and NOT overeat at shul tonight.

Rudy has now driven away at about 8:30 this morning. The Google maps says his destination is 560 some miles north of here, so he's facing a long drive. I hope it goes well for him. Now we will be awaiting our next two guests. Robin will be here April 2-7 and Frank will be here April 5-16. That way they will both be joining us for the first seder the night of April 6. Fun times ahead!