NARFE Convention

The convention is over. It was very interesting to see how the process of making changes to the rules and by-laws took place, as well as resolutions. The speakers and the entertainment were all excellent. Tuesday night was "Nevada Night" with a Mark Twain impersonator as the entertainment. Wednesday night we went to the National Car Museum and tonight was the banquet. Mark and I danced until our feet hurt. I figured this was a good thing because I've been eating way too much.

 As you know, the computer has been acting up like crazy. Mark spent a lot of time on this trip trying to diagnose and correct it. I'm currently online, so I figured I should do as much as I can before something else goes wrong! In general this road trip through Nevada has been a blast. I'm going to try to post a few pictures on this blog of a couple of our stops. I haven't uploaded all of the pictures yet, so I'll post a few each day that I can write a blog.

Tomorrow we are heading to Sacramento. We are going to check into the same Red Lion Motel near Sacramento that we used last year. Saturday will be another relaxing day poolside. Then Sunday and Monday will be a lot of fun in Old Sacramento for the Gold Rush Days. Laverne and Kelly are going to join us Sunday. Tuesday we arrive at Evey's place and will take her and Eric out to dinner to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. I can't wait. I have not seen them since last December.

The first picture is me with a statue of Helen Stewart, an original rancher in Las Vegas. 
The second one is Mark at the old Mormon Fort, right next to the site of Helen Stewart's ranch house. 
A view of the Hoover Dam from the new bridge is next.
The fourth picture is me pretending I'm climbing on boulders!  I actually had to have Mark help me up.

 The next set of pictures is from the road trip out of Las Vegas and into Ely.
The two pictures are of Mark and me hiking in the state park near Caliente.
Third is Mark outside an old hotel and saloon in Pioche.
The next three are in Ely at the railroad museum. 
The last two are the charcoal ovens outside of Ely.

Using Mark's iPad.

My laptop has not been able to connect to any hotel Internet systems. Mark worked about three hours one night trying all kinds of things to fix it, but nothing worked. Tonight we have checked into the Hotel Nugget in Sparks, Nevada. I thought I would try to write a blog on his iPad. At least the keyboard is bigger than on my Kindle. Our trip has been amazing so far. We went from Las Vegas to Caliente, Pioche (a town with more murders than Deadwood, Tombstone, and Dodge put together), Ely, Wells, Elko,and Winnemucca. Each town has had its charm and interesting points of interest related to the railroads and the wagon trains going to California. I've been making photo albums as I go, and I hope to upload them and email them out eventually. We are holding out hope that the computer will work at Evey's house. If not there, then surely when we get home on September 10. Meanwhile, tomorrow we are going to Virginia City for a train ride and then to the state capital of Carson City for more museums. Saturday should find us resting around the hotel pool before the NARFE Convention begins Sunday. I will probably not write another blog until we get to Sacramento on Labor Day Weekend for the Gold Rush Days. My girlfriend Laverne and hubby Kelly are going to come and hangout with us on that Sunday. As for food and weight? There's been some great food! I didn't pack my scale, so I have no idea about the weight. My best guess is that I'm gaining, but I'm having fun!

Good times snd frustrating times

We are having a wonderful time on our trip. Tonight we are in Ely Nevada.

My frustration is with the laptop. It won't connect to the Internet. This means no uploading of photos to share and limited blogging. I'm making this blog from my Kindle. I'm glad it can access the web, but typing on it isn't much better than the iphone. One fingered at best. SIGH.

So don't panic or worry if you don't see a blog or get the photo albums for awhile. If you are on FB, you can follow our adventures through our status updates.


As soon as my laptop works again, I will be sending out pictures and
stories like crazy! I still do small emails on the phone, too.

Viva Las Vegas!

Except for going to bed at 11 p.m. and getting up at 3 a.m. to hit the road by 4, yesterday was fantastic!

Our flights out of Orlando and Memphis were both flawless yesterday, on time, good weather, not bumpy.  We were very happy with Delta.  I snoozed solidly for the ninety minutes to Memphis, but that kept me going the rest of the day. I watched The Avengers on the video during the three and a half hours to Vegas.

It took us way too long to get the rental car.  We chose Fox Rental, which is in Florida and out west.  Using Orbitz, they beat everybody else's price.  I knew they were off property, so first we had to take the shuttle to the airport rental building and then another shuttle to their building.  That went smoothly, but it was about a 20 minute ride to their building.  The check in went well, but as always with car rentals, there is lots of requests from them to buy services and insurance you don't want.  We held tight, but they still got us by tacking on a previously undisclosed drop off charge of  $90. because we are leaving it in San Jose, CA and a $100 security deposit, which Mark is sure will never be refunded.  Our 25 day car rental went from $814 to 1017.  So be it.

Then it took an HOUR for them to produce a car.  I actually think the man who was supposed get it for us just forgot us.  I wanted a Ford Fusion because I'm vaguely interested in buying one in the future, so I thought it would be fun to try it out.  He said a silver had just been returned and he wold send it through the car wash and call us.  Then an hour later, I get his attention.  He seemed startled to see us, but presented us with a 2010 black Fusion. OK. I started to drive it away and noticed it had a warning light for low tire pressure showing. I turned around and spoke to him again.  He said no problem, take one of these two blue ones over here.  I did and it's fine, but if there was a black one and two blue ones on the lot, why did I have to wait an hour for a nonexistent silver one.

After that the hotel, lunch, museum, dinner and show were all great. I have to run now to go to the Hoover Dam. I'll tell you more later and hopefully get some pictures up also.

Weigh-in and Weigh anchor.

Let me start with the weight and get it out of the way.  256.5 is a drop of two pounds.  I'm not too impressed, but a drop is always better than a gain.  Today is the last day before we weigh anchor, so to speak, and head out west for a month. My goat was to weigh 245 today, so I failed to reach that goal by a whopping 11.5.  Sigh.  When I returned from our three week trip up north, I was 258 and I wrote about how I was going to drop 13 pounds in the month that I'd be home.  I definitely failed to do that.  I guess I will just have to be very, very careful on this month-long trip beginning tomorrow.

I packed my suitcases yesterday, which really took two days.  I was tearing my hair out over this packing because of all the types of clothes that needed to be packed and the limited suitcase space, but Mark gave me an excellent suggestion on Tuesday. He said to write each day down and plan what to wear, see where we could do laundry, see what can be worn several times.  It took me several hours on Tuesday to do that but it was a great idea.  I laid everything out on the spare room bed on Tuesday.  Then yesterday, I just gathered a few more items and put it all in the two suitcases, so now all that's left is to pop in the last minute toiletries tomorrow morning.  Tomorrow morning is going to come quick, too.  We plan to be out the door at 3:45 a.m. to catch our 6:30 a.m. flight.  Today I have a mani/pedi at 10 a.m. and a choir rehearsal at 7 p.m.  In between I will be puttering around the house trying to be sure everything is in order for the early exit tomorrow. 

So where are we going and what are we doing?  Here's a day by day list.
Thursday, 8/16 Fly to Las Vegas, visit a fort and a museum, go to the Rat Pack show at the Rio
Friday, 8/17  Drive to the Hoover Dam, then back to Vegas to visit another museum
Saturday, 8/18  Shabbat, play in the hotel pool, possibly visit Frank's niece and nephew
Sunday, 8/19  Start our tour of the railroad towns of Nevada by driving to Caliente, Pioche, and Eli, NV.
Monday, 8/20  Explore Eli and its museums and take an historic train ride
Tuesday, 8/21 Drive to Elko for some museum and then on to Winnemucca, NV
Wednesday, 8/22 Visit the historical museum in Winnemucca
Thursday, 8/23 Drive to Sparks, NV and check in to the convention hotel, visit sites in Reno
Friday, 8/24 Explore Virginia City, NV
Saturday, 8/25 Shabbat, hang out at the hotel pool
Sunday to Thursday, 8/26-30  NARFE Convention in Sparks, NV  Mark and I are our chapter's representatives to this national convention
Friday, 8/31 Drive to Sacramento, CA for the Gold Rush Days over Labor Day Weekend
Saturday, 9/1  Shabbat, relax and swim
Sunday and Monday, 9/2-3 Gold Rush Days in Sacramento
Tuesday, 9/4 Drive to Santa Clara, CA and take Evey and Eric out to dinner on their first wedding anniversary
Wednesday to Sunday, 9/5-9 Hanging out in Santa Clara with the kids with some side trips to SF
Monday, 9/10 Fly back home

AWESOME trip!  It's going to be fabulous. 

I am taking the laptop, mostly so that I can upload and caption the many pictures I plan to take.  I will try to write some blogs from the hotels and put a few pictures up on the blog, too.  A lot of that depends on how tired I am each night. LOL!

I am NOT packing the scale; there's just no room for it.  I will weigh myself as soon as we get home, and I can only hope that all the walking we will do as we tour around the various sites will help to keep my weight at least the same.  OK, got to go shower, dress, and get off to my mani/pedi!

I voted.

Yes, I voted today. That's what my sticker says!

Mark and I had several errands before we went to the polls (dentist, shoe store, post office, grocery store), but we finally made it to the Starlite Ballroom, our polling place, around 2:15 today.  There was absolutely no line, so it did not take us long to go in and vote.  It was a great feeling to vote today in our community.

I certainly hope the fact that there was no line does not mean that the people in Solivita don't care enough to come out to vote.  Maybe it just means they all got there earlier in the day.  People here are kind of early-birds, so we can hope that's what it was.  They certainly aren't waiting until they get off work!  At least not the majority of them.

Mark got no real satisfaction from the dentist visit.  She didn't see anything on the xray to indicate that he needs a root canal, but there was nothing to show why he's having pain either. It was just like his trip to the ER for his abdomen.  He got a deep cleaning on half of his mouth, so at least that was productive.  We were also able to make our next appointments in September.  Geez, it just seems like we go to the dentist way too often anymore.

When we were in the grocery store today, I noticed a whole line of products that had zero carbs and zero calories. These included tomato basil spaghetti sauce, alfredo sauce, marshmallow dip, caramel dip, three flavors of jelly, bacon ranch dressing (KOSHER!  Can you believe it?), and among the many more too numerous to name was my favorite, peanut spread. It looks just like peanut butter, so I bought it and was hoping it would be a fun snack to eat on a spoon instead of the 190 calories in real peanut butter.  YUCK!  I took a teaspoon and I thought it was nasty.  It was very salty and light, fluffy, mousse like texture.  It really didn't have any peanut butter taste to it at all.  I didn't even finish my teaspoon.  On the other hand, Mark thought it was great!  Now come ON!  Which of us needs to cut calories?  I might give it another chance.

Tomorrow night we are going to try the zero carbs, zero calories spaghetti sauce on our 40 calorie a plate shiritake noodles. There will be some calories added to the sauce from the veggie crumbles and parmesan cheese, but the dinner will be under 200 calories.  I'm not sure Mark can survive if he keeps eating this stuff.  Maybe it will be foul, like the peanut spread.  I'll let you know.

After my late lunch, I'm going to pack my suitcases!  The trip is just around the corner.

Happy at home, but boring blog entry.

Yesterday we had a lovely Disney day.  First, we went to the movie, "The Watch." It is a sci-fi comedy with Ben Stiller and was much better than we expected.  After that, we had a veggie chili lunch at Pollo Campero, one of our faves.  That was followed by an outdoor concert at Downtown Disney of the Neverland Pirates.  It's a group that plays for a Disney pre-school cartoon show called "Jake and the Neverland Pirates," loosely based on Peter Pan.  Very crowded with little kids!!  Then the big event: we renewed our annual Disney passes for the third year in a row.  Whoo!  Hoo!!  That was fun.

Today I spent all morning trying to figure out what to pack for our big trip out west.  I think I got it. I actually made a list of every day and what I could wear.  We have touring in hot Nevada, business casual in a freezing hotel plus a formal banquet, and then more touring and fun with Evey and Eric.  That's a lot of days and a wide variety of styles of clothing, so I got a great head start on that project.  Most of the clothes I need are now laying out on the spare room bed. I am hoping they all fit into my two suitcases, and I'll have to pay lots of luggage charges.

I played Mahj for only 90 minutes, but I won three games in that time.  Nice.  I cut the Mah Jongg time so that I could go with Mark to the doctor for a follow up to his ER visit.  The PA said all looked well and that he should be thankful.  She suggested it might have been a spasm of the colon and some Advil might do the trick if it happens again.  I hope it's something that simple. The doctor's visit was followed by a quick trip to the gym for our weight routines and then back home. Mark made a delicious meat chili tonight for dinner. Scrumptious!

Tomorrow he has a deep cleaning at the dentist for his gums and hopes to see a dentist about some pain in another tooth.  Teeth are really causing us both some concerns right now.  Other than the dentist and a few things to pick up at Publix, the rest of the day tomorrow will be mostly packing and getting things ready for the trip.  We fly out of Orlando at 6:30 a.m. Thursday, which means leaving the house by 4 a.m.!  Not much sleep Wednesday night.  I am taking my laptop and I WILL be setting it up on this trip. I have to keep uploading photos!