Yesterday, my son-in-law, Eric, competed in the Lost Dog 5k race. He won first place in his age group, then first place in his weight group, and was 15th overall out of 300 plus runners. Here is a picture of him.
The picture on the left is him around Christmas of 2009, and he weighed 380 pounds. He had his gastro surgery (they cut away about 2/3 of his stomach) about 5 or 6 months ago, and on Sunday, he weighed 256 pounds. Amazing. He took up walking and riding a bike, then progressed to attempting to jog. He has really done well. He looks sooooo much better, and feels about 20 years younger. Just goes to show, it's never too late. I want to declare right here.... I am proud of him. He has worked very hard at losing the weight, and it shows.
I haven't heard yet how the gambling went for Mark and Sheila. I am presuming if they'd won a ton of money she'd have called to let me know. I just presume they broke even. I spent the day cleaning my kitchen. Take my word for it..... stainless steel appliances take a lot of work....aka elbow grease, to keep them looking decent. If only I'd known. I tried to give Sheila, then Gerry, a refrigerator that I got from Linda L., a friend who moved into an apartment from a decent sized home (3 bedroom, formals, etc). Gary wanted to keep our garage one, even if it is smaller, cause it was newer. He also cleaned out all of the snow cone making supplies he had stored there (4 gallon jugs of flavorings), and some of the paint brushes he's started storing there. I did notice he kept the worms, though he hasn't fished in over a month. YECH! Margie came over today and looked at it, and she's taking it for her garage or laundry room (fit is an issue). She's also taking a brass and glass 1/2 wall table. It is very nice, and expensive, but I have no room for it either. Now I just have to get Ralph and Gary to coordinate moving it to her house. She didn't want the 8 chairs that go with the table I'm keeping. I guess it's off to Goodwill with them.
I decided today to move my TV service off of AT&T Uverse and onto Direct TV so I could get television service when I'm gone in the RV. I did the research, and the price seemed to be the same. Well, about half way thru the process, I found out that I have to purchase the receivers for every room, and that is done by paying $5 a month for each receiver. We currently have five. We could get by with 4, but these are already paid for...sorta. I get to keep them until I disconnect my service. There is not a monthly service charge involved as long as I return them when I disconnect my service. It's all in the fine print!
Anyway, my TV bill would go from $86 a month to $106 just for switching to Direct TV. I decided not to do that. I talked to Margie, who has Direct TV already, and she will get an additional receiver, and I'll put it in the RV. Gary doesn't like the arrangement, but I think it will work out fine. I'll pay Margie $5 a month to keep it in the RV. We never watch HBO, etc., here, and we don't do pay per views, so I think it will work out ok. I hope Ralph thinks it's ok. I am also paying $25 a month for internet. It's the slow speed DSL, so I may cut back on the TV channels we pay for that we don't watch, and upgrade to a faster internet speed. Maybe it will help me BLOG more often.
Course, it'd help if I had something to BLOG about. Yesterday, Gary, Chloe and I went to the Cottonwood Festival here in Richardson. It's all about art. They have artists from all over the country come in. They had some really beautiful stuff. Most of it was expensive. They also had a drinking area, beer and wine area (well cokes and coffee also) with tables all around. They had a band playing music There was quite a crowd there. We went to the food court right off the bat. Chloe was hungry. We passed up the Bison tacos, the deer sausage on a stick, the funnel cakes, and I can't remember what else, and settled for a Texas Tornado. They take a whole potato, put it in a hand cranked spiral slicer, and make one huge glob of potato, then deep fry it. It was really good. Nice and hot right out of the oil. Chloe added ketchup. The three of us shared it with Stella, who I took with us.
Don't these look good? Fattening maybe?
About 30 minutes after eating it, I got sick. Too much grease, I guess. Oh well. Nothing like getting sick in a place where they only have portable toilets.
Chloe wanted everything she saw, but ended up not getting anything. That's mainly because it started raining on us, and since it was close to closing time, most of the vendors left. I did buy 4 CD's by Gary Schnitzer. He plays the violin, and has his own ensemble. I was sitting on an iron bench under heavily leaved trees, it was misting rain, and this haunting violin music was wafting through the air. I was surrounded by work from various artists, and there were 3 men and 1 lady artist under an umbrella drinking wine, and talking about their weekend. They were the type of artist you'd want to buy from. Wild glasses, scarves, hats, and goatees (on the men only). I thought of Europe. When we were in Italy, while walking around the hotel area, there was this old lady playing the violin. She had her money basket sitting by her, but she never begged for money, or solicited for it in any way. As you walked for blocks around, you could here her music wafting thru the air. I decided to buy the CD that was playing, and since he was closing up, he gave me 4 for the price of 3. Really neat experience. He has a web site in case you want to hear some really haunting violin music.
www.MoodMusic.com
We came home, and Chloe decided to eat dinner with us, as we were having steak. I made her and Gary one huge Rib Eye, and Chloe ate about 2/3 of it. I had leftover chicken vegetable soup, opting out of the "tortilla" add ins because my stomach was giving me grief over the Texas Tornado. It was a school night, so she left fairly early for home.
Today, except for a brief dog walk with Stella, I haven't done much. Maybe something exciting will happen tomorrow. Tomorrow night I'm going to a city council meeting, but that won't be very exciting.
Hope your days was more exciting than mine!
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