Victoria and Albert

Tonight is a big night for us!  We are dining with Barb and Al N. in the premier, five-star restaurant inside the Grand Floridian, Victoria and Albert's.  We have already called to confirm our food issues, no meat for us, no mushrooms for Barb, and nothing spicy or too weird for Al.  For a 7 course meal, the price is $185 each.  For a wine pairing it's nearly $100 per person, plus taxes and gratuities.  We don't expect to walk out of there with a bill under $500 per couple.  But, hey, why not?  Just for grins, I'll report the actual bill tomorrow.

Barb and Al asked us several years ago to start going with us to high end restaurants.  We have done many delightful ones, maybe one or two per year.  Last year we decided to throw it all in and hit up the most expensive, most elegant, most amazing restaurant of all.  In fact, Victoria and Albert's is the ONLY five-star restaurant in Orlando.

Meanwhile the meeting yesterday was excellent, but as I predicted, I ate too much for lunch.  Breakfast and dinner were at home and normal, even low calorie.  Then there was the lunch.  It didn't seem that bad.  I made a cheese sandwich on rye bread with some cole slaw, macaroni salad, potato salad, chips.  There was King Cake, so I ate a piece of that.  During the meeting there were hard, wrapped candies on the table.  Since my throat was still hurting, I sucked them periodically because they were soothing.  For that, I gained a WHOPPING EIGHT POUNDS IN ONE DAY!  That's in all caps because I just cannot believe it myself.  Over night I dropped three of the 8, leaving me a total of up five from yesterday.  Now I can NOT say that I have lost all of the vacation weight.  UGH and double UGH.  Even I NEVER remember a day like that.

Now I will have breakfast and lunch at home, take Mark's car to All Cars for some repairs, run a two hour rehearsal with the Cove Singers, and then dress up and head off to a huge dinner at V and A.  So....tomorrow, for the official Weigh-in Wednesday, I am sure I will have to report a weight that will not make me happy.  Sigh.

Meanwhile, Mark's car needs an oil change and the AC checked.  It doesn't really cool the car, so we made an appointment to drop it off this morning at 10 a.m.  Ironically, the AC in the house died Sunday night.  The repairman is coming tomorrow, and we are hoping he can fix it in one visit.  Luckily for us, the temperatures are sort of moderate and going down.  There will be highs of only mid-70s with lows in the mid-50s over night, so that will make it quite comfortable in the house.  We opened all the windows last night when we got home from the meeting, and it was fine.  We are just glad this didn't happen in the worst of the summer heat and humidity!

Tomorrow I plan to post some pictures from the dinner tonight.