Getting a Jump on the Weekend

DH took the day off and we're busy doing some errands and packing because we're going on a Bike Holiday today!  Last fall Sharon (Gains and Losses) and I biked the W&PD trail from Leesburg to Alexandria (34 miles!).

W & OD Bike Trail

DH was sidelined by a broken wrist, but was our support-team for the ride.  He has wanted to do this trail ever since he had to listen to us enthusing over the great biking surface, the beautiful country scenery, the trail-side BBQ place, and the beautiful towns we went through.  Well, today (and tomorrow) he gets his turn.  We're going to HQ in a hotel along the way and drive to the trail head, in Purcerville, VA.  We're going to bike over two days (I'm not up to doing the whole thing in one fell swoop).  Tonight we're going to have a 'date-night' with dinner and a movie (The Help).

Yesterday, day two of my line-in-the-sand fall campaign, went super well.  Got many errands done, ate and tracked every BLT (bite, lick, and taste), got in a nice visit with my BFF (hi, Marilyn!),  and did my weight routine at the gym.   Oh, and at lunch (at Coastal Flats, a very nice seafood restaurant) I scored big-time.  I had their Yucatan Shrimp Cocktail and a green salad for lunch.  The YSC is fabulous and BFF and I often wonder exactly what they use in the sauce.  I asked our waitress if she had the nutritional info for it and she did me one better.  She came back with a list of the ingredients.  Not the proportions, but I can guess.  I feel a Yucatan Shrimp Cocktail coming up on the menu at our house, soon.   Ingredients:  Shrimp, mango, avocado, jicama, radish, lime juice, ketchup(!), celery seed, tomato,  tobasco,  cracked black pepper, onion, cilantro and, the surprise ingredient, orange soda.  The sauce is made with the soda, ketchup, and lime juice--I'm guessing it's about 1 T or less apiece of these ingredients, not a diet-buster.  My best calculations puts this at 5 WW points plus.  Not bad!

My aunt, my mother's sister visited for a week at the end of August.  She's loads of fun! She turned 88 while she was here. One of the things we did together (besides puzzles, mending, shopping, watching movies, and talking) was to look through three huge plastic bins of "stuff" I have from my parents' attic.  I chose these because they were labelled "Lattin"--my mother and aunt's maiden name.  We had a ball.  Found lots of fun pictures (including one of my grandparents on their wedding day) and she recalled and told me lots of fun family stories.  One of the upshots of this was that she paid for me to sign up on ancestry.com so we could pursue a couple of questions we came up with.   Here's  one of the fun pictures we found-- my maternal grandparents.  On their wedding day.  They were married at city hall in Paris.  He was an officer in WWI and was shot in fighting along the Marne.  While he was hospitalized, he met a charming young French nurse.  They were married a few months later.  She was 19. The year was 1919.

Have a great day!