I Explored the Twin Cities Yesterday - An Experience Saved by Google Maps

 It's Saturday. What are your plans for the weekend? 

I know what I'll be doing - I'll be raking leaves on Sunday. NOT one of my favorite tasks. DH has let them pile up, and we're having one of our last nice weekends, so he'll be out there today and tomorrow, raking and I'll be expected to join in the "fun" tomorrow. I hope he gets the upper front yard done today, then we can work on the upper back yard tomorrow. I think he wants to load the leaves into the back of the pickup truck and haul them to the County yard waste recycling center. Whatever, it'll be a Sunday of hard labor, and somewhere in there he'll want to watch some football and I'll need to do a load of laundry. 

I'm not looking forward to raking the leaves. Up to me? I'd 
hire someone to do it. We have a LOT of trees, so there are 
a LOT of leaves. Ugh! 

Yesterday I was scheduled to see a new doctor - a step up from my standard doctor. He's a specialist in bone work. Since I have now been on Fosomax twice, and the bone scan results from my test earlier this year were disappointing, I'm moving up the scale to a specialist instead of my regular GP. I thought he was located at the clinic just north of my home. OOPS! I was seriously off base on that. 

I had never been to this location of Allina Health before. I guess 
I'll get used to going here if I need an injection every six months. 

Silly me, I didn't check my phone's calendar carefully enough. Instead of being a few short miles from the house, he was at a clinic completely on the other side of town in Coon Rapids (don't ask about city names in my area - they're varied, somewhat weird, and often not in English). It's all part of the greater Metropolitan area, but for me, a person from Denver where it's ALL Denver for miles and miles before getting to the suburbs, the little areas of local government that make up our Metro area is confusing. I had no idea how to get to the new clinic, and had less than an hour to get there. 

I had never used this feature of Google Maps 
before. It worked out REALLY well, and I 
arrived in plenty of time for my 8:50 am 
appointment. 

Fortunately, the receptionist at the wrong clinic was able to help me get Google directional maps on my phone (which makes sense - I use a Google phone), and show me how to use it. Voila! I now knew where I was going and how to get there. I was there in plenty of time. It was a large three-story building, so a major hub of my medical clinics. My new doctor was very nice, quite young (of course, everyone is young to someone of 70 years of age), and very thorough. I enjoyed both him and his assistant, Kate. They sent me down for labs, where I had to wait for 45 minutes before my name was called. The vampire assigned to me needed seven tubes of blood, but she was GOOD. No problems, no pain, and no mark. Results are in my in-box today. I'll take a look later this morning. 

So it was an eventful few hours, and I was really glad to get home. I suspect I'll be shifted over to injections every six months, and if that doesn't work, they'll have to do infusions. All to keep my bones from breaking apart. I'm not a fan of broken bones, so I'll manage to do whatever is needed. I'm out of here, have a great weekend and I'll be back on Monday. Slava Ukraini 

Google is Once Again My Friend and Adventures in Cooking

I'm back up and running after a very busy, but very productive day. Circumstances forced me to act and grit my teeth, hoping that all would be well. I uninstalled Google and then re-installed it, and it works great. My splash page bookmarks have switched, but all of my normal bookmarks are in my pull-down menu, so I can rearrange over the next week or so. 

I use Google Chrome a lot. It's really a total 
go-to program for me and there's not a day 
when I'm not accessing it. It's a total relief 
to have it back up and running on my main 
computer. Such a time-saver over the laptop! 

It was a matter of necessity, and the old saying "Needs must", came totally into play. I had listened to the last of my current audio book while finishing up yesterday's swim, and I needed to load the next in the series onto my underwater player before getting to the YMCA today. So ... I jumped off the cliff and found safe waters. I'm now quite happy. 

Sometimes (actually often, when it comes to computer 
work), I just have to grit my teeth and dive in. That's 
what I did yesterday, and fortunately, it worked. Google 
is back and functioning well once again. 

It was a very productive day yesterday. I made three large containers worth of stuffed cabbage for my meals. This will last me a week or more, and I'm delighted. So good! They take about an hour of prep work (the recipe says 30 minutes of prep work - obviously they're underestimating it - LOL). Then, after they're ready for the oven, it takes 3-1/2 to 4 hours of baking before they're finished. I pulled them out of the oven with half an hour to spare before I needed to start the chicken for our dinner. I also managed to do my grocery shopping and three loads of laundry, plus had a lovely chat with Aearwen. Score one for me! LOL

Most of the photos for stuffed cabbage rolls are 
a bit neater than my own pots of cabbage. This 
photo is a bit closer. Each of my two containers 
had two layers of cabbage rolls in them, and 
they were they covered with tomato juice and 
baked for four hours. I can hardly wait to eat them. 

Today is cold and getting colder. I hope I picked good clothes for the day, but I have my heater at the shop and I'll be using it. I have the smaller heater on in the computer room, so at least I comfy while writing my blog to all of you. I'll try to catch up with some computer stuff at the shop today before I have to dive into whatever tasks DH left for me to do. Hope you have a wonderful Thursday and I'll be back tomorrow. Slava Ukraini.