NARFE and a very special discovery

Mark and I are going to head out of town today for an adventure. Granted we are only going an hour up the road to Altamonte Springs, but still, it's a trip and I packed a suitcase. We will spend two nights in a Hilton Hotel, which should be awesome.

We are delegates to the Florida state NARFE convention. Just to remind you, NARFE is the National Association for Active and Retired Federal Employees. Mark is the Vice President of the Plant City Strawberry chapter of the group. I am going to be a non-voting delegate, and Mark is the alternate voting delegate in case the president of the group cannot vote for some reason. 12 people from our chapter are going. In fact, tonight we are going out to dinner as a group. They rented a bus to take us to a restaurant and back so there can be lots of drinking. This is apparently a tradition they have maintained for awhile.

I hope it doesn't blow my calories for the week. The convention is three days and runs until very late Thursday night, following the formal banquet. That means all our meals out for three straight days, which is never my strong point. I packed my scale so that I can record my week's weight tomorrow morning. I'm pretty sure that I will have to record a gain. This morning I am down only half a pound for the week, to 248.8 from 249.3.  Out of the whole week, I only went over my calories (by about 300) on Saturday night, and I exercised many times.

Here are my daily caloric totals and exercise amounts for the week:
Wednesday, 1249, 15 minute walk
Thursday, 1180, 30 minute walk
Friday, 1302, 15 minute weight lifting, 20 minutes lap swimming
Saturday,  1936, one hour of walking at Epcot
Sunday, 1293, 50 minute walk
Monday, 1235, 15 minute weight lifting, 30 minute walk

Looking at these amounts of calories and exercise, I'm actually disappointed that I'm only down a half a pound at this point, but that's the way it goes sometimes. I'm sure eating and drinking in a restaurant tonight, even if I don't go over the calorie count by some miracle, will push me over last week's amount just because of hidden sodium in restaurant food. I am not taking the laptop with me because now that the Kindle can let me type a blog, I'm going to take only it. I will use it tomorrow to post my weight and let you know what I ate last night.

Mark and I have been busily transferring our home movies from Beta and VHS tapes to digital format on memory cards.  Last night we finished all the BETA tapes and found a very special one.  I found my old Meese family movies.  Years ago, I took all the ancient silent Super 8 movies to a store and had them put on a Beta tape with some cheesy music in the background. Mark did the same, and when we started this project, we found his family tape. I thought mine was lost!  It was not in a box and had no markings on it at all.  I put it in the machine expecting it to be a blank tape!  Imagine our surprise when the first thing that came up was my high school graduation video!  This tape covers the years from 1968 to 1974.  What fun!  I was just very, very happy last night because of this tape.  There are priceless memories of my parents, friends, and aunts and uncles.  AWESOME!!