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Greetings all

It is cloudy here but dry. And it seems calm. Works for me. So yesterday I took Tesla for her vet visit and made a stop at the bank. I had received a suspicious looking email pertaining to a recent CD I purchased but the banker told me it is legit and did come from them. There are bank fraud scams going around and it seems the smaller banks get the worst of it. Oh well. After that I went to the hippie grocery across the street from the bank. Walking in I got a sudden jolt of pain from my right ankle and almost fell. Gimped around the store with a shopping cart. I have had these pain jolts before but this one was much higher on the richter scale. I kept having pain in the night and got up early and took advil and ate two crackers with it. That helped but I think it will be back. Self diagnosis: arthritis. I remember my grandmother gingerly gimping around with it for years. Crap. Now I have to read up on what is to be done.

DD welcome home from your big adventure!! At least the rough part came at the end of what appears to be a fabulous trip. Agreed on staying out of that elevator. No place to be in a brown out. And congrats on maintaining weight. Being busy and active sure makes a difference! We are so glad you are safely home. Sorry you did not get to see Manaus - but best you rested. And those back end seats in the airplane don't recline in addition to being next to bourbon boy. Whew.

Liz glad you are having fun with DD. Good that the event is over so you don't have to deal with President Busy Body. Every club has one. Sending healing energy to your feet.

Peps why not sub on occasion if it is fun. You are on your teaching game and I bet the kids love a fun sub. Sure eggs for dinner indeed.

So studio buddy was over yesterday afternoon for computer help from DH. This started at 1;30, was still going on at 3 when I left for the vet apt and was still going on when I got home close to 5. As near as I can tell all that happened was updating software and selecting and installing a malware protection package. Our friend overthinks everything to the point it is almost disabling. Plus she is lonely. Another session on Saturday and I will make sure I have paperwork and stuff to do. DH is very patient- more so than me.

Time to go out and about.

Diane S

It will make for good stories in the future, that's for sure. Sleep helps bring a better perspective. At one point when we were in the Uber, driving through a rough part of the city, I thought, what the hell are we doing? We don't know where we're going or if we are safe. I feel really bad for the tourists that didn't speak Portuguese. At least we had that going for us.

Good morning, posting from my home office with a view of the snow covered back yard.

First good news, I didn't gain anything in Brazil. I'm a smidge lower than when we left. After I drop some of the travel weight, maybe I'll even have a measurable loss. DH is up 5 pounds, which I also think is a win considering all the food we ate and our daily ****tail. A few thoughts: Brazilians main meal is midday and dinner is more like our version of lunch. Especially in restaurants, food is not manufactured/commercial, it is a lot easier to eat whole foods. Snacking is limited, but still exists. The manufactured snack foods are just not as enticing. We only ate them in special cir****gtances like a 6 hour bus ride. You don't see Brazilians eating while they walk, around, snacking on chips etc, although a sweet and coffee midafternoon often happens (evening meal is usually after 8pm), meals are very protein forward (at least in this part of Brazil and the economic group we were with). DH really liked the idea of the main meal at noon, but I just don't see it working that well here in the states. But maybe I can be more deliberate about pumping up lunch a bit, so that the mind registers a meal was consumed and that reduces urges to snack.

The trip back was something else. We arrived at the airport in Porto Alegre at 5pm, departed on the plane at 8pm. The arrival in Sao Paulo was super stressful as it is a huge, chaotic airport. We sprinted to our connection, and made it with about 15 minutes to spare. I don't know why Delta makes these connections so tight. We could have flown out of Porto Alegre earlier on several flights. But, satisfied because we got bumped up to Economy Comfort again. I fell asleep, and was awakened about 4:00 by the pilot announcing that one of the electrical generators had failed, and in an abundance of caution, we were diverting to Manaus. Landed at 4:30, got off the plane at 6am ( the airport opened at last). Delta did nothing but tell us a plane was coming to get us at midnight. If you wanted a hotel, they would reimburse you. We had no idea how far we were from the hotels, etc and nobody to ask. I took a chance and booked a Holiday Inn, and an Uber got us there in about 30 minutes. We had to pay for 2 nights (will submit to Delta) so we could get into the room at 8:30 am.

It would have been nice to tour some sights as Manaus is at the headwaters of the Amazon river, but we were just too tired. Mostly slept and watched TV. Just as we were getting ready to leave, there was a brown out and all the lights went out in the hotel, and as far as we could see outside. We then invisioned ourselves carrying 3 big suitcases down 5 flights of stairs with light from our phones. Ugh. Happily the lights came on, but there was no way I was going in the elevator. We had a cart in our room, so I suggested we pu**** into the elevator, and push the botton for ground floor. I would give DH a headstart down the stairs, and then send the bags to him, and walk down myself. Worked like a charm : )

When we got to the airport, it was a mess. Since Delta has zero presence at this airport, there was no way to board with our electronic boarding passes. You had to stand in line, hand them your phone, while they copied it onto a paper pass, which had a flap they could pull off to collect to document who boarded. So instead of leaving at midnight, we left at 2am, meaning now we would miss our 2nd rebooked connection to Minneapolis. After 7 hours, we arrived in Altanta, made our new connection, and "enjoyed" sitting in the last row infront of the bathrooms, with a huge guy, drinking bourban at 10am, and spilling into my seat. DH offered to awitch, but I thought he would be even more uncomfortable than me so I took one for the team.

House looks good, although BFF did fail in keeping one of my houseplants alive. It's possible that if she is here next year, we might not have her house sit. If we're gone for a couple of months, we could suspend things like Netflix, garbage pick up etc and use the money to pay for snow removal and someone to check on the house.

It's going to be in the 40s today, and I am happy to know we probably escaped the worst of the bitter cold. There could still be significant snow, but spring will come. The thing that is amazing me now is how low the sun is in the sky. I forgot about that.

I'll get caught up reading here today. Nice to know I will be connected with everyone here again on a daily basis : )

Sales already! Good for you!

Amazing tha****er aerobics was possible for you yesterday. Of course ours are held at 9 am and it was still about 45 at that point though we warmed up to the mid 70s finally.

Yes, roaches definitely can bring out the cringe feeling. It seems like there are a lot of creatures in Arizona that can do that in one way or another though...