Elephants!

Yesterday we went to the Caring for Giants backstage tour at Animal Kingdom.  It was definitely worth the price of $26 a person and an hour of your time.  That's an extremely cheap price for anything DISNEY!

In addition to the elephants, we walked through the Gorilla trail and saw all the animals at their most active followed by a similar experience riding the safari vehicles with our fastpass.  When we left the park, we took Mark to the imaging center for his head CT scan, which went quickly and easily.  When we get results, I will post them here.

All in all it was an outstanding day.

I had an excellent day for calories as well.  My total for yesterday was 1118, and we walked about four miles during the day.  For that I was rewarded with another pound and a half gone, weighing in this morning at 281.7.  WOW!  That was exciting to see.

My first mini-goal is to be 279.  It represents getting out of the 80s, and it's what I weighed in early January when we left on the first of six cruises.  If the convention next week does not set me back too far, I should be able to make that goal very soon.

The second mini-goal is to reach 273, which is what I weighed heading out to Aulani for my 65th birthday.  That is only six pounds from the previous goal and should be attainable in two to three weeks.

At that point we are heading up to Maryland with a lot of time eating in restaurants or other people's homes.  I am never at my best in those situations, but I promise to try hard.

Today is Shabbat, which always make the calories higher.  That's because for dinner I have wine and before dinner an alcoholic drink.  It's our one day a week for Happy Hour at home.  Usually I have a shot of whiskey for 96 calories, but today is Cinco de Maya, so I plan to have one of Mark's special margaritas, which is essentially a double. Also tequila is apparently a little higher in calories than whiskey.  My margarita of tequila and cointreau will be 246 calories.  That's a real indulgence.  It's Shabbat, so there is also wine at dinner.

In order to make the whole day reasonable, I am cutting the wine down to only two ounces and eliminating the margarine on the challah roll.  I love the roll too much to eat only half of it like Mark does. I'd actually rather just eat the whole thing dry!  He is making a low calorie, low fat tamale pie for a main dish, so that helps a lot.  I am also cutting my breakfast by one sausage link and leaving out the usual bedtime snack of Arctic Zero ice cream (150 calories per pint) in favor of sugar free popsicles (30 calories for two of them).  These small changes will bring my total calories in at 1370 for the day, a bit over my new goal of 1200 but still very reasonable.  It's also Friday, so I'm going back to the gym for the same forty minute work out that I did on Wednesday. That should burn about 130 calories bringing my net intake down to 1240.  It should still be a very good day.  Guess I'll find out tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, here are some pictures from Animal Kingdom yesterday.

Our Disney Fan Club group.

Our name tags were made out of elephant poop paper.

Baby Stella was born December 14, 2016, so she's four and a half months old.  She is sticking close to her mom.

Yes, I'm holding a blob of elephant poop, now where is the hand sanitizer?

Adorable bird in the aviary.

Hey big fella!

The meerkats were absolutely adorable today.

Two year old gorilla toddler with his dad.

Father and son.

Fastpass for the safari ride.