Nice visit from Chas

Good friend from Victoria Chas Martin spent the night on his way to Orlando. Good to see him again. 

  Chas

I'm using the 'Blogger' ap on my iPad to put in these posts, which is why there are so many. It's super easy to make a post. Only problem is that there's no run-around on photos. 

Apple Store 1-2-1

Went to Apple in Tacoma to fix the iPhone. It needed to be nuked and paved. Did it during a one-to-one open training session. It has some residual problems, but at least the camera works again. It is our "main" camera. Bill came with, then we had our Red Robin burgers. It was a good day.

Working a bit,

. . . getting electronics and other info into Evernote. Finally.

Manfred's almost-new iPhone gradually stopped working.
He's getting used to his new teeth. Learning to stop biting cheek.

Here's a photo M took in our yard.
The birds are one of those
"They told us we could be anything, so we became..." photo jokes.

Back in P.O., facing austerity & weight loss

We have been back in Port Orchard for a couple of days, now. Mercutio, our cat, came running from the woods to greet us when we arrived around 8 pm. He has been über-affectionate ever since. Our flights were not delayed, in fact, they were early.

We have to go into austerity mode now, to pay for all that extra activity.
No buying nothin', not nohow. Sequester kicking in. : (

Manfred is making another attempt at losing weight. Me, too, I am getting fat and lazy. We have been eating mostly soup, and some yogurt, for the last 2 days.

M's fav cook on Food network, Alton Brown, had some good rules:
Daily - eat fruits, whole grain, leafy greens, nuts, carrots, green tea
3x/wk - eat oily fish, yogurt, broccoli, sweet potato, avocado
1x/wk - eat red meat, pasta, desserts, alcohol
0x/wk - never eat fast food, soda, processed meals, canned soups, "diet" anything.

I don't agree totally with those 1x restrictions, but I'll try it anyway.

 Alton Brown

Today is the day . .

The day that Manfred gets his new teeth. We need to leave Chuck & Diane's house at 11 a.m., to get to the dentist appointment at 4.

?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!!?

Well, it was pretty horrendous, but we made it. The dentist took too long, and we had to take a taxi which drove really fast and got us to the train station in time to just catch the last train to Encinitas. It cost us $60. Luckily we had round trip tickets.

There was a lovely lasagna dinner waiting for us.
Tomorrow is our flight home.

In Encinitas near San Diego

We are having such a good time with Charles and Diane. We're doing fun things with computers and iPads.

Manfred got his dental prep done and is waiting for the lower permanent denture, which will be installed Monday. Tuesday we leave.

TJ again

Logan left yesterday and we spent today getting to Tijuana. We are in the hotel now. Tomorrow the dentist, then to San Diego to visit Chuck and Diane.

Logan visit

Logan came on May 5, and it's been so nice. We went to Seattle to see Jurassic Park 3D at the IMAX theatre. It cost a lot, but it was worth it as it was Logan's first ferry ride, and first IMAX.

Then Bill invited us all to come to his place. We drove to Port Angeles and took the ferry on foot. After the usual hold up at the border, Bill picked us up and drove to Port Renfrew. That was yesterday. Today we saw Maurice Tremblay, and Betty, and Ted and Loretta.  And the big spruce. We didn't see Bruce and Angie, but we saw them last week.

Tomorrow, we go back to Port Orchard. It makes for a long trip.

<

Between visitors.

Bill left yesterday. We took him to the ferry, met with friends, did not attend SMUG meeting. Today we prepare for Logan's visit. He'll be here 10 days, April 5 -15. Can't wait to meet him. We haven't seen him since he was a few month old, now he's 21, I think.

Happy Easter!

I'm writing this post on my cute little iPad, so the writing is really tiny. I have to depend on the spellchecker because I can hardly read it.

Bill is visiting again.  He was going to stay in BC until April 8, but couldn't stay away.  We are working on the traditional Easter ham dinner. Already had the Deviled Eggs (delicious), including a couple of painted eggs from our wonderful neighbor, Charri.

We have just booked our flight to San Diego for April 16, returning April 23.  Logan will be here from April 5-15, so it will be a busy month.

Cat photo

We never seem to have any photos of our cats, so when we don't have the critters anymore, the chance is lost. So this time I'm putting a photo here of our present feline family member.

Introducing Mercutio, whose previous owner must have liked Shakespeare. He's called Merki, is an old guy at 12 yrs, colored "tuxedo", runs the house fairly well, has his own cat door and spends a lot of the night outdoors.  Days are spent mostly sleeping on each bed and chair in its turn.

So easy, so cool

Yo! Now I will be blogging every day.

I just got another new app -- Explain Everything ... It's to make slides that are like ppt videos.
I tried to put on a video here, not from EE, to see if videos work, but it was a still. I guess only still are available to be chosen.

This is the skin I've chosen for my iMini (iPad Mini), and another of the many available for $10.

New app -- blogger -- testing

I just got the *blogger* app for iOS, so I'm trying it out. I'm writing this on my beloved iPad Mini. If this works, I'll be blogging more often. I'm going to try putting in a photo.
I can't control the size or create runaround on here.

NeatDesk is soooo neat..

We have been staying home a lot -- couch potato city.
We will be going to Mexico in April and to Alaska in May.  

We have a new NeatDesk scanner w/ocr & document organizing software.  I am feeding all the paperwork through it.  Nothing is safe.  The NeatDesk scanner works very well, but the software is not totally wonderful.  There are other brands that do the same thing but better and much cheaper.

But I am really happy that I have this.  Hopefully, the forest of papers will someday diminish.

I also got my contact lens replaced (after about 2 years.  What a difference!

I am really enjoying my iPad Mini, just as much as Manfred is enjoying his iPad.  I need the computer to do the Neat Desk thing, but otherwise it just sits there.  And it is the world's neatest 'puter -- a tiny 11" MacBook Air, which is almost as small as the bigger iPad.  

Back after gone long

I can't believe I've neglected this all this time.  Too much has happened since that last post.

Probably the most important thing is that I got an iPad Mini, and Manfred got an iPad.
Before that, he got an iPhone 3GS.  And I have an iPod Touch.  So we have pretty much switched over to the iOSphere.  We spend more time than ever on our devices (lots of time--we so love them), but we hardly ever use our computers any more.  One bad side effect of that is the neglect of this blog.  Blogspot does not play well with iOS.

Anyway, we went to Mexico for Manfred to finish his teeth, and he changed his mind about the kind of teeth he wanted -- permanent instead of snap-on.  So he needed more implants and he still hasn't got the teeth, so we go back again in April.

When we went there, we stayed with Chuck & Diane Fitzgerald in a WorldMark condo in San Diego, and went on a Harbor Cruise (very nice) and to the Zoo (so-so).

We have booked a cruise to Alaska with Chuck and Diane for the end of May.
After the cruise, we will go to a WorldMark condo in  Leavenworth WA. 
No plans for Europe at present.

Bill Jones has been staying here (Port Orchard) since the Coho ferry stopped running between Port Angeles and Victoria.  He will go back when it starts running again, on Feb 7th.  He is also going on the cruise to Alaska.

Home again

I thought I wrote something since we got back, but nothing is here.  We were not really tired after our 17-hour trip, in fact, we couldn't sleep.  The tiredness hit about 2 days later, then I got really sick for about a week.  It seems that happened once before.

We have been busy trying to cope with the aftermath of losing the IDs and credit cards.  Automatic payments were not made because credit cards were cancelled, so our auto insurance was cancelled and we had to get a more expensive one. Manfred has a temp drivers license and is working on the passport.  The credit card I used for things like iTunes, Amazon and eBay was cancelled, so I have to put in a different one on each of those sites.

Bill came to visit on July 3 to spend his birthday (July 7) with us.  We put on a beautiful fireworks display for him on the 4th, then went to see Spiderman in IMAX 3D in Seattle on the 7th.  We all loved it.

Last leg -- Frankfurt - Dallas - Seattle - Port Orchard

We have not had good wifi connections lately, and we have been very busy.  We went to Dresdan for 2 days, then to Berlin for 2 days, and the travel days in between are quite grueling (since we lost the EuRail Pass, so we have to travel the puddle-jumper Regio lines).  We are now in Frankfurt.  It took 4 trains and 6.5 hours for a trip that would have been 2.5 hours straight on the ICE.  Also, we are traveling 2nd class, which is much more tiring than the 1st class of the Pass.  I'll see if I can put posts on about Dresden & Berlin and past-date them.  

Now we are in Frankfurt, our jumping off place for the long trip home.  We wanted to rest up for it because in addition to the 12+ hours of flying, there is a 6-hour wait in the Dallas airport.  So we planned 2 nights here, to avoid that "check-in at 7 pm, sleep, check-out at 6 am, head for endless flight" rush/hassel.  

Right now, I am kinda stunned.  We thought Murphy's Law had decided to leave us alone, but it has struck again.  Our reservations here in Frankfurt were mistakenly made for May 19 instead of June 19.  We didn't know it until we went to check in.  And we hit town when "there is a fair on, all rooms are booked."  I presume it's some sort of trade fair, since Frankfurt is the financial capital of Europe.  We ended up getting rooms we don't like for horrendous prices ($250 more than our booking price).
Note to self:  always check reservations at the next stop before leaving any place.  We could have stayed one more night in Berlin and saved one of these expensive nights.

We are just across the street from the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof -- the central train station -- this photo is taken from our balcony.  P.S.  I love Photo Stream.  We take photos on my iPod and Manfred's iPad, and they are here on the computer, ready to put into blogs and such.  

This Good Bad is Beautiful

"Bad" is German for "bath" as in thermal or mineral baths from hot springs.  This is thermal activity area, and there is a really nice spa in the nearest town, Lenti, 16 km from here.  It is also a conflux of earth energy lines.  

Today we went to it, the Lenti Thermal Baths and St George Energy Park.  What a day.  We came at 9 am and spent most of the day in warm and hot baths and relaxing in the oh-so-comfy lounge chairs.  We also had a nice lunch there, sitting in our swimming suits.  It cost us US$8.50 each, for the whole day, + $4.75 each for lunch.   Click the link to see more.  

Yesterday I had a riding lesson.  The horse was good, the teacher was good, I was not too terrible, much better than last time, but was very stiff after.  But the baths took care of that.  

It makes up for not getting Manfred or Bill to go to a Bad in Budapest.

Staying longer

This time-share exchange condo is such a good place to rest up.  We will be staying on here until Wednesday, June 13, when we will drive to Budapest, turn in the car, and take a train to Dresden.  We were supposed to go to Prague for 5 nights, but we are skipping that because Manfred has fallen in love with this spot.  It really is quite unbelievable.  It's called the Abbazia Country Club  There are no engine or motor noises to be heard, day or night, just birds and occasional cat, dog or horse.

Last night there was a spectacular lightening storm, with lots of rain, so the weather is still cool.

I finally got the Hungarian maps downloaded to our TomTom GPS.  It took about 4 hours.  I don't know if it's because the connection here is slow, or it just takes that long.  I had purchased them, but the All Europe is only loaded in sections, and our previous section did not include Hungary.  So I had to remove the "Southern Europe" from the GPS to the computer, then download "Eastern Europe" from TomTom to the computer, then only download it to the GPS.  The files are over 1 GB.  If I had done this before, we would have saved 5 hours of driving around in the dark.  : (

I have another riding session today.  I'm so out of shape.  I hope I don't get the same lazy horse I rode the last time.

All is lost

I haven't written for so long, because we have been hoping to get Manfred's bag back. We assumed that it had been turned into lost & found, but we had to wait out a long weekend and then 3 more days to find out that it had not been turned in. Then we had to start the process of replacing passport and credit cards. Eurail Pass is not replaceable, we had used only 20% of the $2000 ticket (for 3 people).

We went on to Budapest, and had a very nice stay there, at least for me. Manfred was not feeling very good about anything. We had to stay extra days because the Canadian Embassy was putting up lots of hoops to jump thru for getting a temp passport.

Part of our arrangement was to stay in a time-share condo in the Hungarian countryside. We had it booked for a week, had planned to use 6 days, but 3 of those days were already gone. We rented a car, assuming that our GPS maps for "all Europe" would work, only to find that Hungary was blank. It took us 8 hours to make a 3-hr drive to this remote place, but it's very nice. Manfred wants to stay here longer and skip Prague, and even Dresden. There's nothing to do or see here, but eat and swim, which suits him fine. I hope he'll be bored with it in time for us to go to Dresden.

Sitting on the verandah in front of our apartment, I took a photo on my iPod, here it is.