Where to begin? When we last left you, we had returned from our cruise, I was recovering from COVID, and it had snowed. Since then – we made a quick trip to Florida to see my youngest brother’s wife who was dying from metastatic pancreatic cancer. We managed to spend several wonderful hours with her.
We combined the visit with Stu’s Retired Firefighter Reunion, held in Kissimmee each February. I wasn’t much up to socializing but did have some good chats with friends while there. While there, we decided we were done with hotel coffee makers and bought a single cup Keurig from Amazon. We had it shipped to the hotel (gotta love next day delivery in bigger cities) and later added a great carry case on Amazon for it. The final addition was from ebay, a little plastic box that slides in where the coffee cup would sit and lets us store 9 coffee pods inside it (in addition to the ones we can put in the carry bag). Oh, we got pink because red wasn’t immediately available, we wanted a colored one so it will stand out and we won’t forget it in some hotel. LOL!
Back home, the doods were enjoying doggy camp and we have the pictures to prove it!
It wasn’t long before we got the news that my sister-in-law had passed. Too young, too quick.
Once home, it was time to clean house, do laundry and yes, start planning/packing for our next cruise. We are doing a back-2-back on the new Mardi Gras. My late husband and I took our first & only cruise on the original Mardi Gras (Carnival’s first ship).
Mardi Gras Oct 1989
We had initially booked the inaugural cruise of the ship out of Port Canaveral but it was delayed several times. When we heard about Carnival’s 50th Birthday Sailabration, we knew that was the cruise we wanted to book. Later we added the week before, making it a B2B. This allows us time to become familiar with the HUGE ship!
We also had a huge volume of mail and packages to go through since this was a surprise trip out of town. One thing that arrived was Herbie, our new Eufy RoboVac. We’ve been using him once a day for a week and can really see the difference in the amount of dust in the house. We (um, Stu) have to empty and clean him each day but that’s a small price to pay. We have had to block some places from access (like under our bed where he tends to lose his brush on the heated mattress pad cords) and we haven’t allowed him in the guest room yet (too much stuff on the floor while we get ready for our cruise).
The other big thing that arrived last week was our new iPad Pro tablets. Stu got the 12.9″ and I got the 11″. I had also ordered an Apple pencil (helps tremendously since my dry fingers often don’t play well) and the Magic Keyboard (even has a trackpad). My hope is I will be able to take the iPad, keyboard, and a mouse on our transatlantic trip and leave the laptop at home. Less space/weight and less accessories needed for charging.
I played with it a bit yesterday and like it. Still some kinks to work out – had to find an app that can read/edit Excel spreadsheets. I’m trying out Collabora which is based on the same platform as LibreOffice (my MS Office replacement I’ve used for years). Both are open source and thus free. It’s interesting to mix the gestures on the trackpad (on the keyboard), the mouse, and touch on the screen. Each week I will play with various apps, simulating what I do often on the laptop, seeing where I might need another app or change how I am doing things. All in all, we are both quite pleased with the iPad Pro.
The weather has been up and down – waking to snow one morning to a nice, warm sunny day the next.
Just to make things more interesting, Cooper presented Stu with a half-eaten rabbit a couple of mornings ago. No telling if he killed it, ate it, or found it. Two days later the diarrhea shows up, then the vomiting. Since they are going to doggy camp tomorrow, it meant a quick vet visit to get some meds to help him through it. Our vet was full up as was the one we have used in Jamestown when we had Sadie. We found one that said bring him in and Stu did just that. A shot and a bottle of pills later and he should be fine. Happens all the time, the vet said.
It did give Stu a chance to try out our carpet cleaner for the first time – I think we bought it three years ago on sale. LOL! Did a good job…the entire carpet will get done before we leave (he just did the area Cooper messed up).
No idea if I will blog before we get home so don’t worry if you don’t see one before mid-March.
