CHOLESTEROL

For our Father's Day celebration, we had a cookout and barbecued hamburgers, hot dogs and brats.  The kids mostly wanted hot dogs and everyone else mostly wanted hamburgers, so we had a couple of packages of brats leftover.  I told my husband to cook all of them and then we could freeze them.  He and I ate one for lunch a couple of days in a row and then I put them in the freezer.  The 3rd day I asked him what he wanted for lunch.  He said he wanted another brat.  I said, "Don't you think you're pushing it with your cholesterol by eating brats for lunch 3 days in a row?"  He said, "No, it doesn't raise your cholesterol if you eat them for lunch." 

Who knew???

CAFFEINE FREE

I went for my breast sonogram today.  As usual, they said everything is okay.  (I've been doing this the past 4 years).  They're safe for another year!  :0)  But....I decided 2 weeks ago to give up diet cokes.  I know my breasts have several cysts, and I've come to the conclusion that caffeine affects cysts.  You may disagree with me, but I've done the experiments - drinking lots of diet coke, and then cutting back drastically.  I've seen the difference and I think the caffeine makes them worse.  It's been harder than I thought.  I tried caffeine free diet coke, and to tell you the truth, I'd rather drink water than drink that.  Pretty gross.  In the meantime I've tried diet 7UP (pass), diet cherry 7UP (ok but not great), dark cherry Fresca (better than diet cherry 7UP), and Sparkling Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice (pretty good), and Sparkling Ocean Spray Blueberry/Pomegranite Juice (also pretty good).  Good old ice cold H20 is the best, but when I really get a craving, I try one of the above.  And every once in a great while, I do have a diet coke.  But you know what?  As time goes by, it doesn't seem as satisfying as it did when I was addicted to them.  So I think as time goes by I will crave them less and less.  A few years ago - I think it was about a year or two before we went to Ireland - I gave up diet cokes (caffeine).  But since my husband is a diet coke addict, I slowly got back on them.  But not this time.  It will be really interesting to see if all the cysts in my breast clear up, or not.  Another interesting thing - since I've given up diet coke, my husband has cut back drastically.  He's drinking all the substitutes I mentioned above, but is still drinking diet cokes too.  Who knows?  Maybe someday he'll kick it competely! 

APRICOT JAM

My husband and I picked all the apricots off of our tree this morning and I made 18 pints of jam.  We still left a few on the ground for the rabbits and squirrels to enjoy. In fact when I went back out to the tree for a few more, the squirrel was running off with an apricot in his mouth!  I even gave 2 gallon-size ziplox bags of

apricots to a friend who also made jam.  After I made these, I was glad that I had given them to her.  :0P

YOU CAN BE IN MY BAND...

Watch this - this is incredible!!  Somebody tell me if there's a way I can adjust my settings so it will show the whole picture better.

YEARLY MAMMO

I had an interesting experience the other day.  Last Tuesday I had to go get a mammogram.  Just my yearly thing.  As I walked into the waiting room after signing in, I was surprised to see a man sitting there playing classical guitar music.  As I sat there waiting my turn to be called, I wondered what this guy's story was.  Did they hire him to try to make the mammogram experience a bit less stressful?   Did his wife, or mother, or sister have breast cancer, or maybe died of breast cancer, and this waer,s his way of helping others?  Did he just need a place to "practice" his classical guitar in front of a live audience?  Whatever his story was, I was glad he was there, because it was so soothing to just sit and listen to his music.  When he finished his first number, I thought, "Should we clap?" But no one did, so I didn't either.  But as I listened to him play song after song and felt my body just relaxing more and more, I finally felt like I should say something.  The next time he finished a song where he paused for a minute, I thanked him for his beautiful music and told him it was very relaxing.  He made a comment about how wonderful the 1960's and 1970's composers were of the music he had been playing.  I knew a lot of the songs he was playing and the words to those songs went through my mind as he played them.  When my name was called, I went back into the dressing room to disrobe and put a gown on, and realized that his guitar music was piped in back there.  I got to sit there for about 10 more minutes listening to him play.  I don't know if I got my music term right or not, but when I say classical guitar, I mean he didn't strum it, and they weren't Spanish songs.  He just picked each note. I hope you understand what I mean.

COMMENTS FROM A 6 YEAR OLD

When we went on our recent trip to Texas, my 6 year old granddaughter was not happy.  I think she was afraid that we were going away for a long time, like we did when we moved to Ireland.  I saw her a day or so before we left for Texas and I assured her that we were only going to be gone for 11 days.  She said, "Not for a long time?"  and I said, "No." When we got back from our trip, they came over to see us.  When they left that night, as she walked ou the door she said, "And don't ever go away again!"  :0)

 Last night they all came over and she saw our suitcases sitting in the foyer (still not put in storage).  She looked at me accusingly and said, "What are those for?"  I told her I hadn't put them up yet.  She said, "Good."

Today she told me what she wants to do when she grows up:  She is going to work at the Rainforest Cafe and drive an orange Lambrigini with purple flames on it.  Wow!  Who knew you could make enough money working at the Rainforest Cafe to drive a Lambrigini?!! 

MORE PICTURES :0)

    Dee Ice asked for the pictures of us "at the Alamo", so I thought I'd give you the whole set.  Disregard what looks like a faded streak on my shirt - it's not faded and is actually brand new.  Their camera mistake, and yet we still bought them. :0+

OUR GET-AWAY

My husband and I have been out of town for the past 11 days visiting around Texas. We started out by going to our niece's wedding. It was a beautiful wedding and reception and we were glad to be able to be there and to visit with family.

We next went to the small town where my husband's mother and 2 sisters live. We stayed there for a couple days visiting. It was nice to see his mom looking so healthy after her scare with her 2nd bout of colon cancer in February. She lost 100 pounds during that time but she's doing really well now and she really looks fantastic!

Next we headed to Fredricksburg, on our way to San Antonio. My husband used to go to Fredricksburg and take his scouts so they could go climbing at Enchanted Rock. He always wanted to go to the Admiral Nimitz World War II Museum there, so that is why we went. What we didn't know is that they were about to close. We had no way of knowing how much stuff there was to see. This is the greatest museum of World War II I have ever seen. They had 4 war planes, a jeep, a submarine, and a tank. Outside they had the top part of the sub and some big guns. We spent an hour in there and had only gotten started when the lady came walking through to tell us they were closing. She told us we could come back tomorrow and our tickets would still be good, but we told her we had reservations in San Antonio and couldn't change them. We went on to San Antonio, and decided to come back 3 days later, on our way to Dallas. We got up early that Friday morning and headed back to Fredricksburg and spent 3 1/2 more hours in the museum and even then we had to hurry through to see it all. I wished what they'd really do is give everyone a wheelchair and go through so we could read everything there is to read and listen to everything there is to listen to. It's hard to stand that long but it was so interesting! We had hoped that they would honor our tickets even though it was 3 days later, but they wouldn't, so we had to buy tickets again. I really thought that was not fair since we had not been able to see it all because they were closing at 5, and we had made the effort to come all the way back there again. I wanted to ask him, "Really? You really can't let us just use these tickets?" So - another $12 apiece to see it.

When we were finally able to tear ourselves away (and after we went and spent some money at the gift shop) we headed to Dallas to visit our daughter and her family. We had a lot of fun with them and as always, wished they lived closer to us. It was so hot and humid in Dallas, it was a reminder to us of why we love Albuquerque. While we were in Dallas my husband wanted to go to the Bass Pro Shop. That was really fun! It's almost like a mini amusement park in itself! We took my 7 year old granddaughter and she loved it. She hung out with grandpa because she told my daughter and I that we were "too boring" because all we were looking at was clothes and bags. :0) She and Grandpa went and checked out the boats and she got to climb in them and then they went to shoot the guns (electronic), and watch the fish in the huge tanks. They tried to see if she could go fishing, but they only did it at 11am and we had missed that. We even ate lunch there.
Later that afternoon we went to Cabella's but it wasn't near as much fun as the Bass Pro Shop. Later we found out that there was an even bigger Bass Pro Shop north of Dallas. We'll check that one out next time we go.

We had so much fun in San Antonio. Even though I lived in Texas for 30 years, I had never been to San Antonio. We went to the Alamo and to the Texas Ranger Museum. We spent an hour at the Alamo and 2 hours at the Texas Ranger Museum. I know most people like to go to Fiesta Texas or Sea World when they go to San Antonio, but believe it or not we had no desire to go to either one. We also went to the Tower of the Americas. We first went into this 4D movie about San Antonio. If you don't know what a 4D movie is, it's like a 3D movie - you wear the glasses and see everything in 3D, but you also get to experience things like the jerks and bumps you would feel if you were in the helicopter you're seeing on film. Your chair gets bumped back and forth, and it will through you to one side then another, then back, then forward. One part was showing a rattlesnake and when he hissed at the camera, you felt air blow out of the back of your chair onto your neck. That was pretty freaky. Then when he's slithering away (and in the film he comes towards you), you feel more air blow around your legs and it really feels like his tail swished you. My husband couldn't feel it because he had long pants on, but I felt it and it creeped me out more than the air on my neck! Then they showed Sea World and when the whale splashed in the film, water sprayed out into our faces. I have to admit it was quite a bit cheesey, but sort of funny. We rode this elevator that is on the outside of the building up to the observation deck. It has a big window and you can see out as you go up. On the observation deck, you can stay inside or go down a few steps and go out on the deck. It still has windows that come down to the railing, but you can feel the wind through the railing. Walking around on the observation deck really made my vertigo act up and finally I had to go back inside. There is a restaurant on the floor just below the observation deck, but it's pretty expensive. We declared ourselves "Total Tourists", when we bought the picture they took of us before going into the elevator. When we came down, we went to look at it, and it's us with 3 different backgrounds: Us in San Antonio at night, us in front of the Alamo, and us at the Riverwalk. Same photo of us, different backgrounds. Then they also give you a picture of the Tower of the Americas at night.

The rest of the time in San Antonio we just spent going down the riverwalk. We took the boat tour the first night and that was really nice (but hot). The next day we bought all day boat taxi tickets. That was the smartest thing we did. We should have bought them the day before, because they are good for 24 hours from the time you buy them. Then we could ride the boat taxi to wherever we wanted and get off and eat or shop and then get back on the boat and ride to the next place. The second day my feet were really killing me after walking for an hour at the WWII museum and walking up and down the riverwalk. I had meant to bring tennis shoes, but forgot them, so all I had was flip flops. They are good leather flip flops that are comfy to walk in, but you just can't walk all day in them. I can't buy shoes in a regular shoe store because my feet are too big, so I had gone looking at the mall at men's shoes but just didn't want to spend that much money on them. We were resting at the food court and I looked across and saw a Crocs store, so we went there an I bought a pair of crocs. They really saved my feet!

Even though we had a lot of fun on our trip, we're glad to be home. And we had a nice surprise when we got here and found out the septic tank had gone down to 1"! We had put a half bucket of bacteria in the morning we left. So I was able to do a much needed batch of laundry yesterday. That and our showers only caused it to go up to 3", so I'm doing another batch of laundry today!

These photos are out of order, so sorry!


Getting ready to go to the 4D movie at the Tower of the Americas.

One of the river barges - this particular one is the river tour, not the taxi, but the taxi looks the same but has flags on the back.

On top of the Tower of the Americas.  PS. We're wearing hats because it was so hot and sunny!

Mariachis at the riverwalk cafe we ate at. 

Looking down the riverwalk.

At the fountains outside the Tower of the Americas.

At same fountains.