Staying the Course -- 05-23-2016

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Superbob

Superbob

Steely Resolve!
Supporting Member
Joined
Apr 21, 2005
Messages
8,481
Location
Coastal Carolina
Went all winter without a cold and now I'm trying to fight off the creeping crud. Nevertheless, still upright and started week with 10,000 steps on my tracker yesterday.

Weight is stable -- still minus 15 for the year. Glad none has creeped back on (speaking of creeping), which can happen when you have to get take-out or eat-out rather often.

Taking wife to cardio checkup tomorrow. She has had some twinges, little painful in chest -- very brief, don't think they are heart-related, but better to check it out.

Hope you all are well.

I think I am going to open these threads on Tuesdays as a regular thing. Mondays are consistently manic for me.

Cheers,

Superbob
 
Hope everything is ok with your wife Superbob. Still chugging along here. Weather has been great. Heading out Monday for my first round of golf this year. Can't wait to lose all of those new balls I just bought. Fore! Let us know how things check out with the Mrs.

Happy Tuesday to all.

Tom
 
I'm baaaaack!

Sorry for departing without notice, but we don't tell anyone on the web that we're going until we get back. Makes the DW feel a bit more secure. We spent the last 2 weeks touring England, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland. It was a whirlwind group tour, and we had a total ball! We ate far too much of all the wrong things, drank a bit, saw a million great things, and got totally tired out many times over. The weather was generally delightful - low to mid-60's, sometimes sunny and seldom rainy. One of the best things was that although we ate what we felt like eating, I didn't gain any weight. We (both wife and I) did experience a bit of fluid retention (more salt in their restaurant foods?), but that has resolved quickly. Now I have to go back to work to get some rest.

SB - How's your wife? I can imagine how you feel, as my wife occasionally has chest "twinges" of some sort, too. She has a stent, and is under a cardio's care, but they don't feel that anything is amiss. We still are concerned when it happens, so I do know what you're going through. Hope all is well.
 
epstns;n865468 said:
Thanks, Anne. Too bad I didn't have any real control over our itinerary -- we could have had a cuppa!
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That would have been nice Steve ! Next time ? Did you, perchance, go to Hampton Court ? (often on tourists' itinerary)
 
No, we didn't get to Hampton Court. Our flight was delayed on Saturday, so we just had enough time to walk around the hotel a bit before dinner. The hotel was the Park Plaza Westminster, right near the Tower and the Eye, etc. We walked over to Westminster and had Saturday dinner at a place called The Cinnamon Club, which was a really nice Indian restaurant, located in the building that formerly was the Westminster library. Then on Sunday, we went about shopping. We got to a number of boutique shops, specialty stores, etc. We also got to Selfridge's, but ran out of time to get to Harrod's. (Too far to walk.) Even coming from a big city, I was nearly overwhelmed with the crowds everywhere we went. I was also impressed with the customer service at Selfridge's, which reminded me of what Marshal Field's used to be like here in Chicago. We took the tube, and did just fine getting around. We even wandered over to a local pub for some fish and chips.

The rest of the trip, right now, is sort of a blur. We went many places in the (almost) two weeks, and enjoyed every minute of it.

I have just one question for the Brits among us. In nearly two weeks of touring Great Britain, none of the homes, apartments or even hotels had window screens. Do any British homes have them? Here in the States, virtually everyone has them. What have I missed? Oh, and by Chicago standards, the electrical wiring in some of those buildings is positively scary. . .
 
epstns;n865491 said:
I have just one question for the Brits among us. In nearly two weeks of touring Great Britain, none of the homes, apartments or even hotels had window screens. Do any British homes have them? Here in the States, virtually everyone has them. What have I missed? Oh, and by Chicago standards, the electrical wiring in some of those buildings is positively scary. . .
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The British don't have window screens because they don't seem to mind flies or mozzies coming into their houses, or they've never heard of window screens ! Crazy eh ! BUT we have screens in our house :) Not fitted screens as you can't seem to get them here, just screen material that I cut to size and secure with velcro to the inside of the window frame. I put them on every spring till autumn as we get a lot of mozzies round here (near Hampton Court) because there are several reservoirs nearby.

I didn't realise the electrical wiring was scary - it certainly is scary France and Italy !
 
The Cinnamon Club was a good choice for a restaurant! I work very close to it, and go there from time to time. I am a bit alarmed by your comments on electrics - our voltage is twice yours! Did you stay in old places only? All the places I know have good wiring.

For your next visit here, I would agree with Paleogirl that Hampton Court is well worth a look, and 'Arrods (as you may hear Harrods pronounced!) is not as good as it was but still impressive if you make it there.
 
Anne and Andy - My comments surrounding the wiring (compared to out here in The Colonies. . . ) pertains mostly to the older buildings. I guess that is partly because so many buildings that were built before the need for electric wiring are still in use. Here, at least in the Chicago area, we tend to just knock down the old buildings and put up new ones, thus there are far fewer old buildings to be seen, regardless of their wiring. Also, even the oldest buildings here in Chicago aren't much over 100 years old, as most of the city burned down in the Great Fire of 1871.

We took the coach tour this year mainly to get a sense of some areas where we want to re-visit when we have more time, and will probably book our own rooms and transport in the future. That way we can set our own itinerary. Definitely on our list would be the larger cities like London, Dublin and Edinburgh, although I'm sure there are many fascinating sights to see in the smaller cities and towns.
 
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P.S. Andy - yes, your voltage is twice what ours is, but then each device only requires one half the current (watts or amps), per Ohm's law. That probably allows smaller gauge wiring to suffice for normal household electrics, where we use heavier wires in homes. I also did note that at least in the hotels, almost every wall outlet had its own circuit breaker attached, so that if an appliance fails or draws too much current it will trip the "local" breaker and not cause fires. Our tour guide mentioned that residential fires are very uncommon in England, so maybe the circuit breakers help.
 
epstns;n865497 said:
Anne and Andy - My comments surrounding the wiring (compared to out here in The Colonies. . . ) pertains mostly to the older buildings. I guess that is partly because so many buildings that were built before the need for electric wiring are still in use. Here, at least in the Chicago area, we tend to just knock down the old buildings and put up new ones, thus there are far fewer old buildings to be seen, regardless of their wiring. Also, even the oldest buildings here in Chicago aren't much over 100 years old, as most of the city burned down in the Great Fire of 1871.
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The house we have in France was probably built in around 1400, maybe some even earlier - terrible wiring, when you pull the plug out of the socket the socket tries to come away, but at least it has fitted window screens and door screens :) Here's a piccie of some of the beams in the house - the bigger ones are simply tree trunks but that's how they used to build them that long ago:
beam.jpg


beams.jpg
 
Now THAT is COOL! To have buildings that old, that well maintained and still in use and around for all to see is a thrill for me. Now I know for sure that I have to get to Europe to see it all.
 
It has terrible damp though, Steve, on the street level floor that is - it has a permanent smell of mould even at the hottest time of year and calcite growing on the 'wet' walls. They didn't build those houses with damp proofing, and the street level floor was never meant for people to live in, it was where the animals would be kept, people living on the floors above. The street outside is only wide enough for a donkey ! We have to park our car some way off. There's a lot of empty properties like that as many locals these days prefer to move to modern villas on the edge of town. Such a shame really as people can still live fine in those old houses, and the fact that they've stood there all those years is quite something.
 
I envy you Anne! The old houses sure are cool. When I went to my friend's wedding in Sussex, I got to stay with the groom's aunt in an old thatched roof house. So I was all excited to stay in this historic old place, visions of Shakespeare etc. And we go into her front door into a sitting room and what is the ONLY thing hanging on the wall . . . a souvenir shop plate from Wisconsin Dells (tourist trap in Nowhere, Wisconsin near my home in the U.S.) Ah well.
 
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