Friday Weigh-in is good.

I had a good day yesterday, eating 1550 calories.  There was no actual exercise, but my phone Health Data app said I walked 6,800 steps.  I actually found that hard to believe, but I'll take it.

This morning I weighed in at 271.2, which made me very happy.  That is down 3.6 in just one day.  I just KNEW it was mostly water retention.  That means I only gained 8/10 of a pound on the big vacation road trip.  For me that is outstanding. lol

Today should be a good day.  If it doesn't rain, I'll be doing my water aerobics routine for the first time in three weeks and then working in the library.  I'm also eating all my meals at home and will log them all in.  It would be so nice if the last 8/10 are gone tomorrow morning.  Today's weight put me back to where I was in early July. I'm clearly not making a lot of progress because I'm backsliding on each trip (Buffalo, Evey's house, FL's east coast), but now I'm home until October 3.  Well, sort of.  We have a road trip to St. Petersburg on Tuesday that will involve 2 meals out.  Sunday we are going to SeaWorld which will mean dinner there.  September has ALL the Jewish holidays this year, and that always means extra big meals.  We always stay two nights in the Comfort Inn near the synagogue for Yom Kippur with a big dinner out at Landry's before the fast and a break the fast at the synagogue.  So there's lots of opportunity for backsliding if I'm not careful even though we aren't really on any vacations.  Still, I'm determined NOT to backslide because when we leave October 3 on the auto train to board the cruise ship in NJ, I do NOT want to start out in the 270s.  My goal now is to lost about five to eight pounds in September so that I start the cruise trip weighing in the mid to low 260s.  I would love that.

In mid-March we will be going to Evey's and then flying to Hong Kong for the five week Asian trip.  That trip is going to involve 10 nights in hotels and 14 nights on the ship as well as a few nights at Evey's house.  It's also going to involve a LOT of WALKING!  Walking AND sitting have become a problem in the last week.  That day at Castillo de San Marco was very painful.  It used to be that the sciatica, knee arthritis, and spinal stenosis would flare up walking and go away immediately when I sat down.  If I sat for even just a few minutes, I could buy some more time of painfree walking.  Now that doesn't seem to work so well.  The amount of painfree walking was reduced to about one minute after sitting a little while.

But even more worrisome is the sitting!  Now sitting hurts!  It's a different pain, but I'm sure it's still related to the spinal stenosis.  Sitting is giving me a dull ache in my right hip and a throbbing ache from my knee to my ankle on the outside of my leg, mostly the calf area.  This goes away when I stand up, which makes me think sitting is pinching some nerve as a result of sitting.  So now I'm kind of like my friend Judi who has the same condition.  She sits awhile and then stands awhile.  She can't do either one for very long.  The only thing that doesn't hurt right now is laying down or pushing back in my recliner.

In fact, I've been sitting on the kitchen chair typing this blog for about ten minutes, and I can start to feel the hip pain. I'm going to close this out and stand up!

End of conference, Fort Caroline, then home.

We got home around 9:30 last night, tired but happy.

This morning I jumped on the scale to see how much damage I did.  I left the house 11 days ago weighing 270.6, and this morning I weigh 274.8, a gain of 4.2 pounds.  Actually that wasn't was bad as I feared.  Today I hope to be back to my normal eating habits with all meals at home and drop a little tomorrow morning for my official Friday weigh-in.

This morning I played Mah Jongg (won only one game), and after lunch we got all of our papers together for the China Visa application.  I drove it over to the FedEx drop box this afternoon, so that's a good feeling to get that chore done.

The final day of the convention was a four hour marathon business meeting including awards presented to outgoing board members, installation of new board members, Alzheimer's reports and other business type reports, Memorial service for members lost in the last two years, etc.  We sat with Bill and Pat, Laura, Evelyn, Franklin, and Terry, all NARFE friends from Florida that we have been attending NARFE events with for the last eight years.  It ran until 12:30 and then we ate lunch in the restaurant in the hotel that we had not tried.  I had blackened mahi mahi tacos and fries.  Tons of sodium.  We had planned to go to Denny's for dinner, but we ended up going to Sweet Tomatoes instead, which had so many delicious soups, all full of sodium, I'm sure.  lol

Here are some pictures from the final meeting and our visit to Fort Caroline in Jacksonville.

Selfie with me and Pat.

Forst Caroline Visitor Center in Jacksonville.

Getting another passport stamp.

Beautiful view St. John's river, outside of Visitor Center

Entering the fort, a re-creation on a site probably near the original.  

FEDcon18 is a success.

Current NARFE President Thissen welcomes everyone to the conference.

It's Tuesday night, and I'm back in the room after the gala dinner and dancing.  We have had some wonderful speakers!  We have also enjoyed reconnecting with other NARFE members from around Florida and the whole country the we run into only at NARFE conventions every year.

Highlights of the speakers were Joe Theisman (former Redskins quarterback), Mike Massimino (former NASA astronaut and space walker at Hubble Telescope), and Henry Winkler (I'm sure you know who he is!).

I also spent a lot of spare time watching the dolphins in the river.  Today I saw a pod of three dolphins who were coming up higher than the one did on Sunday.  It is so much fun to watch. I also learned that the St. John's river, although flowing north, flows so slowly that when it gets up in to the Jacksonville area, it is affected by tides.  I noticed this because it was flowing right to left Sunday and Monday afternoons, but this morning I noticed it was flowing the opposite way, and later today it was back to the original direction. I googled it.  Yep, it changes direction.  That was very cool.

I will not write a blog tomorrow because we have to load the car with our stuff at 8:30 a.m.  The final session is 9 a.m. to noon, but check out is at 11 a.m.  Clearly, we have to have everything out before we go to our meeting.  I'll write again Thursday morning.

Yesterday we attended the session on Legislative Updates by Jessica Klement, an excellent employee and lobbyist for NARFE.

Mark took lots of notes during Jessica's session.

And he asked a question.

FABULOUS and inspiring speaker.

Dinner Monday night was bar food at the outside section of Morton's Steakhouse.  I ordered tuna tacos, but I didn't realize it was RAW tuna. Shockingly, I liked it.  It was the first time I ever ate raw tuna anything.

We mailed in our ballots last Monday from Amelia Island, but since today was the Primary Election date for Florida, Mark and I wore our "I Voted by Mail" stickers today.

Lunch today with Pat and Bill, although he kind of got cut out of the picture.

He was an awesome speaker.  So much fun!  Worth the registration fee alone.

from Jacksonville, sadness at the Landing

About 90 minutes after we got to the Hyatt Regency Riverfront in Jacksonville, the hotel announced the shooting at Jacksonville Landing, two blocks from our hotel.  It was announced in the session Mark was attending.  Later they slipped a note under all the doors.  A 24 year old man from Baltimore shot 11 people at a gaming event in a pizza place.  2 gamers were shot dead.  9 others went to the hospital.  The shooter shot himself dead.

How very sad.

The Landing, a fancy complex of shops and restaurants, was shut down for the rest of the night.  The bridge crossing the river, which came in right by the Landing, was closed down for hours.  The SWAT team, firefighters (first on the scene because they happened to be doing drills nearby and one of the wounded ran to them asking for help), helicopters, and lots of police were all over the area, closing streets and looking for the shooter.  Eventually, it was announced that the shooter had killed himself.

People in our hotel were asked to stay in all night and not go out anywhere. We were going to go out to buy some groceries for breakfast and eat dinner out somewhere, but we bought some breakfast stuff in the hotel shop and had a very late dinner with five friends from NARFE Florida at Morton's, which is in the hotel.  Because everyone had to stay in the hotel, all of the food venues were crowded due to the conference attendees.  We were able to get a reservation for 8 pm;, but it was 9:20 before our entrees arrived and an hour after that before we left the restaurant.  We had never been to a Morton's Steakhouse before.  Mark got halibut and I got sea bass.  They were both excellent, but the dinner was close to $200!  Not what Mark and I had planned to do last night.  We were going to go out and find a Denny's!  lol

We had a busy morning yesterday cleaning out the condo, and when we got here, it appeared that I left a nightgown behind.  Geez.  I could have sworn that I looked in every drawer and closet five times, but that nightgown is definitely not here.  Oh, well...it was old and of no value.  Better than losing jewelry!

We had a pleasant, easy drive to the hotel.  The room was ready at 11:45 when we arrived, which was wonderful.  We had flatbread pizzas in the Starbucks/Marketplace shop before Mark went to his 1 p.m. session.  I hung out in the room on the fifth floor with a view of the river.  If I leaned out of the balcony to the right, I could see the Landing and all the commotion going on over there.  I also watched a dolphin playing in the river for hours!

The first general session was 5 p.m.  It was Redskins quarterback Joe Theisman, who is now a motivational speaker.  He was excellent, very funny and also motivational. NARFE is undergoing a lot of changes right now in structure and organization, so Theisman's main theme was about dealing with change.  Very timely.

Today we have a 9 a.m general session, so I have to go get ready.

View from our fifth floor room.

That big Blue Heron sat on that platform for HOURS.  Once I saw him almost catch a fish from there.  I also spent hours watching a dolphin swim up and down the river, probably feeding on fish.  I was never able to take a photo of him, but he amused me for a long time!

Later the bridge was closed to traffic since it came down right next to The Landing.  It's hard to see in the photo, but I could see the police cars flashing over there blocking the bridge entrance.  Two helicopters were hovering over the river near the bridge for a long time through the afternoon and into the evening.

Our room at the Hyatt Regency is nice, but there are very few drawers, not even one in the desk, and no microwave.

This morning I leaned out of our balcony (really just a big window with a railing but the sliders open up) and took this shot.  The orange roof is the Jacksonville Landing, the site of the shooting.  It's almost due west, so yesterday the sun was over there and I could not get a shot.  You can see how close it is to us and to the base of that bridge over the St. John's River.

So I do have time for a morning post today.

We are leaving the condo this morning and heading to Jacksonville.  Our goal is to drive off at 10 a.m., so we got up at 6.  We waived the cleaning fee on this place, so that means we have to do it ourselves.  We are currently washing the sheets and will then make up the bed.  I washed all the towels last night with our final load of laundry, and they are all folded and put away.  We brought in a beach towel from the car for each of us to use for our morning showers.

We have to clean the bathroom and kitchen and vacuum the whole place, too.  I've already emptied the dishwasher.  Anything we use for breakfast this morning, I will wash by hand and put away.  We have left them a new roll of paper towels and toilet paper to make up for what was here that we used.  We knew we would have to do that, so we brought stuff from home.  We also brought our own laundry detergent and dishwasher pods.  We never cooked anything here other than microwaving a few things and making coffee, so there weren't that many dishes used anyway.  We loved the condo and it's beachy decor, but it's so much easier to walk away from a hotel room!  We are kind of regretting waiving that $75 cleaning fee now!  lol

Yesterday, we had a final day here and enjoyed Fort Matanzas and Ripley's Believe It or Not.  We were relaxing in the condo by 4:30 p.m. for the rest of the night. Mark found an episode of the Ghost Hunters TV show where they investigated the Old Jail here in St. Augustine.  They didn't find much, but it was fun to watch having just been there.  There really were a lot of things we did not have time or energy or knees/backs to explore like the Wintery and Distillery, Government House, the Plaza, river cruises, and beaches, and so much more.  It would be easy to do another three days in St. Augustine, but we probably won't because there are so many other places in Florida to explore.  Currently, we would like to do a road trip down to Key West and stop at lots of the other keys on the way down and back.  We are thinking of making that next summer's road trip.

Today Mark has a 1 p.m. session at the conference.  Then there is a 5 p.m. General Session.  Joe Theisman is the speaker, which should be interesting.  At 6 p.m. there is a Welcome Reception, then we'll find a place for dinner.  Vacation is over.  Conference time is beginning.

Here are our pictures from yesterday.

25 minute drive from our condo.  Great drive along A1A.

Boarding the free ferry to run over to the other island where the fort is.

It's a very small fort, six cannons, seven men stationed there.  The second level houses the six soldiers and the top level houses the one officer there to "keep them in line."  Men would serve 30 days as a tour of duty coming out of the Castillo de San Marcos just up the river.  This was built to protect the "back door" to St.  Augustine up the Matanzas River, which is really an inlet, not a river.

I got this new shirt yesterday at the Castillo de San Marcos gift shop.

Inside the soldiers' living quarters.

View from the second level.  A lot of jet skis were going  down the river.

Mark was a little too tall to stand in the sentry box.

I had no trouble standing up in there!

Mark is standing by one of the two original cannons here found on site when the Park Service took over the crumbling structure and restored it.

Got my next passport stamp.

Then we had a Subway picnic lunch under the shade of one of the many live oak tress on the property.

Next, Ripley's. This is the first and original one!  It's in a building called Castle Walden. It was built as a winter residence for Walden and his 14 children, and yet it had only one bathroom originally  At the time indoor plumbing was still pretty unusual,  During WWII, it was a hotel owned by the author of The Yearling, Marjorie Rawlings. Ripley liked it and always wanted to buy it to display all his oddities in a museum.  It didn't happen until his family  bought it after his death and made his dream  come true in 1950.

Mark studies every case of exhibits on all three floors.

I'll just show two of my favorites.

Star Wars characters' heads carved on the tops of crayons.  Kind of cool.

Second day on Trolley Tour, but OUCH.

OUCH!  My right knee hurt all day.  Despite taking Advil for the last few days because there was pain in the knee as well was the hip and shoulder and aching around the ankle and back of calf, my knee on Friday hurt worse than it has in years.  If I sat and rested for awhile, I could get about five minutes of pain free walking.  Then it would start up and pretty soon I was limping.  I'm assuming it's just the arthritis that I  know is in there flaring up.  Bad timing.  It used to be things only hurt when I stood up or walked for too long.  Sitting gave great relief. Now that's not true anymore.  Sitting brings a dull ache in the right hip that I'm blaming on the spinal stenosis in the back.  It hits me a lot when I'm driving, but it's hurting right now sitting on a chair at the dining room table in the condo typing this blog.  Standing up makes that better, but then the knee hurts.  This kind of all sucks.

Despite that, we had a fun day and did three stops off the trolley.  We went to the Flagler College tour first, then got off at Whetstone Chocolate  Factory for lunch at the Subway next door, and ended the day with the Castillo de San Marco.  After resting at home for an hour, we had dinner at Denny's.

Today is Shabbat, and we usually don't do much.  We had planned to stay at the condo and swim in the pool; however, we now have other plans.  I was in too much pain yesterday to try to walk around Ripley's Believe it or Not, but we've already paid for those tickets.  So we decided to drive there today. The parking is free and the ticket is prepaid.  No problem.  We are also driving about 15 miles south to Fort Matanzas, another National Park and another stamp.  It's also completely free.  We have bought Subway salads for lunch to eat a picnic at the park.  There's a cooler here in the condo for us to use.  It might rain in the afternoon, so spending that time inside Ripley's should work out great.

Tonight we need to start cleaning up the condo and doing laundry to prepare to leave tomorrow morning by 10 a.m.  We have to check in to the Hyatt Regency in Jacksonville and have lunch in time to attend a 1 p.m. session at the NARFE FedCon18.  Because we have to do so much to get out tomorrow morning and go to Jacksonville, I'm not going to write a blog tomorrow.  Today's adventures and pictures will be posted eventually from Jacksonville.

Here's pictures from yesterday.

Statue of Henry Flagler outside what was built as the Ponce De Leon Hotel and is now Flagler College.

You had to be invited to stay here by Flagler and book for the entire season, December through May, at a cost of $9,000 for the season.  In today's dollars that would be a $250,000.

In the huge ladies' sitting room, there is this wall clock.  The center is the largest single piece of white onyx in the Western Hemisphere.

Dome of Tiffany glass in the lobby.

Dining room for the guests is surrounded by Tiffany glass.  He was a young, unknown artist at the time, but now the windows are surrounded inside and out with bullet proof glass because the windows are valued at over 3 million!n This is the student dining room now at the college, how beautiful for them.  When Flagler ran the hotel, he had his own private entrance into the dining room.  He also had one waiter per guest!

Across the street was another hotel that eventually Flagler bought.  He built recreational amenities like a pool and tennis courts in it because the Flagler Hotel had none.  Now it's a museum. In front of it is this statue of Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the Spanish explorer who landed on St. Augustine in 1565.  The Catholic priest with him claimed the land in "the Name of God."  So today there's a large cross on the spot, a Church, and a free museum.

There are many beautiful Victorian homes in old St. Augustine.  Most are in the area called Lincolnville, the historic black neighborhood.

There was a Subway next door to the Whetstone Chocolate Factory, so we got off here and saw this sign.  We were intrigued because this seemed like an oxymoron.  

After lunch, we went in and bought one.  It did taste like hot chocolate only in a slushy form.

Even Mark tried some.

Then on to the Castillo de San Marco.

Because there was thunder rolling around, the upper level by those guardhouses was closed off today.  

It's a National Park, so I got my stamp!

The fort is made of coquina, which can actually absorb cannonballs.  The fort has never been defeated.

It was under five different flags overs the years.  

The thunder caused the cannon firing to be cancelled, too.  

Sitting on the sea wall waiting for the trolley to come.

Yesterday when the trolley drove down this street, we were told it's considered one of the most beautiful streets in the country. Today there was a bride and groom posing for wedding photos.  Cool.

At Denny's there was a new flavor I had never heard of, horchata.  I was able to get a scoop of it to try for dessert.  It's very creamy and custardy because there is rice in it.  It also has a cinnamon flavor.  Nice.