This week I did some work in my kitchen, work in the office & a lot of work on my computer. As I worked so hard this week I then booked a Mediterranean Cruise for myself to go on later in the year.

Week 23 of 2022.

Monday, 6th June.

I woke up around 7 am today, checked my email & then waited for my friend Martin to arrive to help me move the old dishwasher, oven & cupboard from my hallway down to the garage. Martin arrived at about 9:30 & between us, we carried the heavy oven, dishwasher & cupboard down into the underground garage at my apartment block. The oven & dishwasher will wait for Urbaser to collect them & hopefully recycle them, the cupboard was put in my storage cupboard in the garage & will eventually be put up on the wall in there. My cupboard is an Aladdin's cave of empty cardboard boxes from things I have bought, I need to keep the boxes for a while in case the items have to be returned.

After the work has been done we both go to the chiringuito next door for a coffee & a sit-down. After finishing his coffee Martin leaves & I go back to my apartment to publish last week's diary page on my website. Pretty soon it is time for me to leave to go to the office where I will again meet Martin & work for a few hours.

There were no problems at the office this morning & the work was a lot slower than normal. Martin was very slow in his work ethic this morning & I believe this is because he was daydreaming of his date with his wife Kate tonight. He will be warned but no action will be taken as his work record is normally very good. After working at the office I stopped off at D´Pollo on the way home & got some dinner, a powerful garlic chicken that tasted fantastic but even I could notice the garlic vapours oozing from the pores of my skin after eating eat. I will be safe from vampires for a while.

This evening I watch television before going to bed early.

Tuesday, 7th June.

I woke up around 7:00 am, checked my email & then got ready to go for my morning swim. I swam out to the rocks, do some water aerobics then swim back to the beach. Because I am feeling good this morning I then swim back to the rocks again, do more water aerobics & swim back to the beach. I did swim into a couple of jellyfish today but other than it being a surprise when your hand passes across one, there is no other sensation, no sting, no slime, nothing, & I expect they felt the same about me as well.

There were quite a few people from the school on canoes this morning. They all seem very careful of me & keep an eye open for people in the water in front of them. The motor boat that accompanies some of them always goes very slowly past me so that its wake does not cause any difficulties. I will probably get out on my kayak again soon but I will avoid the times when they are out as I don't want to show them up with my pure strength & display of raw power as I cut through the water.

After my swim, I take a shower & then go to the Euronics store to return a package to Amazon. It is very painless, they take the package & scan it & almost immediately my phone beeps with a message from Amazon saying it has received the package & that the refund for it has gone to my account. I leave the store & head to the ATM to get some money, I use the one near the Post Room in Rio Nalon because I want to pop in & see Eddy. I am going to see Madness at the end of the month & Eddy has organised the transport. I get my money, see Eddy & get confirmation that everything is going ahead as planned.

I then head to the office to work. There was a lot of serious work done today even with the boss leaving early. I did notice that he did come back after a short while to check on myself & David though. After work, I headed home & after working so hard fell asleep in front of the television. I woke just in time to watch the England vs Germany football match. The game finished 1-1 but I think England was lucky to get the draw, Germany was a much better team & deserved more than a point from the game.

Wednesday, 8th June.

I woke up at silly o´clock today, at about 6 am. I did some work on my website before popping across to the beach to feed the fish with a couple of stale rolls. Then I head off to the Economy Cash store for fresh bread. I get my shopping then head home & have a coffee before heading back out to see my friend Vince who arrived from the UK on Monday. I have tried to message him but have had no answer.

When I get to Vince's apartment there is no answer & everything is still shut up, I wonder if he is staying there or somewhere else. I message the guy who picked him up from the airport & I am told that he is staying there, he must have already gone out & closed everything up. I head home & go back to work on my computer. Whilst I am working, Vince messages me, he is in the bank & will be out shortly so I go back along the beachfront to meet him. We go to the cafe J. Navarro & sit for a while catching up before Vince heads home to catch up with organising some help to clean his apartment & I head back to mine for some lunch.

When I get home I use my new air fryer/oven to do a cheeseburger for lunch. It worked well using the air fryer to cook the burger & it tasted lovely. This afternoon I watch a string of films on the television before going to bed. It is getting very hot at night now, & sleeping is becoming more difficult due to the heat. I use the ceiling fan tonight & have it on a timer so that it stops in an hour. It won't be long before I have to start having the air conditioning on to sleep at night.

Thursday, 9th June.

I woke up around 7 am, checked my messages on my computer, updated my website & then headed to the Mar Menor for a swim. The wind is quite strong this morning & the waves are being blown up quite a bit. I head off on my swim but because of the wind, I decided to just do ½ km today. By the time I am finished, I am quite out of breath & tired.

After my swim, I shower & then head off on the Sharky mobile towards the supermarket for some tomatoes for a Tostado. I get halfway to one store & realise that there isn't enough power in the battery to get me there & back, I change my mind about the store to visit & head to Plaza de Dia, my local supermarket instead. I only buy two things in the store, some tomatoes & some Baileys ice cream, both of which are very healthy.

I spend the rest of the day working on my website or doing family tree research. This evening when I go to bed I listen to a hypnosis session on my mobile phone which is supposed to help you sleep. I really can't say if it helped much as I fell asleep before it finished.

Friday, 10th, June.

This morning I slept till around 8:15 am, maybe the hypnosis recording did help last night. I get up to go swimming & because I have extra energy this morning I do manage to complete a 1 km swim & my water aerobics. The water was really nice this morning, it was clear, warm & invigorating.

After my swim, I have a shower & then have scrambled egg on toast with coffee for breakfast. I then began moving some photos from one online storage site to a different one. I have been using ´Flickr´ to store my photos for backup but they do not allow me to store raw image files. For that reason, I have purchased a large Google Drive backup plan that will allow me to store these files. After losing many important photo files a few years ago I like to have online backups of them as well now.

Unfortunately for me because of the number of image files I have backed up online, it takes me around 7 hours to download the files from Flickr & upload them to my new Google Drive storage. At least this is now done & moving ahead I should now be able to back up my raw image files as well. The Google Drive GUI should make it easier for me to manage the files moving forward as well. 

While the files were downloading I also managed to order a bracket, from Amazon, to attach my microwave oven to the wall in my kitchen. This is one of those strange spooky times everyone gets every now & then. As soon as I had made the order, which will arrive tomorrow, my friend David messaged me to say he would call tomorrow to finish putting the new electric power point on the wall in the kitchen. Now, as long as the brackets arrive early enough he can fit the microwave to the wall at the same time.

I have not been on holiday for a long long time. I did go to Florida quite a bit around 5 years ago but this was always connected to the selling of the apartments that I had there. Because of the lifting of a lot of the travel restrictions, there have been a lot of trips advertised online. On Facebook this morning I saw a cruise on a new very large cruise ship that I liked the look of. After investigating it more & going back & forth with the people running the cruise I booked it. It is a   Mediterranean cruise on board the Costa Toscana. I will be picked up from Los Alcázares by coach, taken to Valencia & then board the Cruise Ship to visit France, Italy & Mallorca before returning to Valencia & the coach to take me home. I have even upgraded to an outside room with a balcony & an all-inclusive food & drink package. I will have to lose some weight before I go as I will be putting a lot on when I am away.

Video of the Costa Toscana that my cruise will be on.

This evening I watch a TV series online called   Outer Range. It is described by the IMDB website as a drama, mystery, thriller TV series, about ´A rancher fighting for his land. The family discovers an unfathomable mystery at the edge of Wyoming's wilderness.´ It starts off quite slowly but there is something about it that makes me want to watch the next episode & the next to see what it is all about. I eventually manage to finish watching it & go to bed at about 11 pm.

Saturday, 11th June.

I woke up fairly early today but don't go swimming in case my Amazon delivery arrives whilst I´m swimming. My friend David is also coming to finish the electrical work in my kitchen today & I don't want to miss any messages from him.

David came round this morning & finished replacing the dodgy wiring where my oven & hob used to be wired into the wall. He replaced it with a double plug socket so that the hob is wired correctly & I now have a spare plug to use in the kitchen. After David left I cleaned the kitchen up & continued to work on my website.

Surprise, surprise, no it's not Cilla Black, it's the Amazon delivery driver with the bracket I had hoped would arrive so David could fit it this morning. Oh well, I expect it will be fitted soon, the microwave can then go up on the wall & my kitchen & living room will then have to be cleared up properly.

This evening I am very pleased when the confirmation for my cruise in October comes through, Im now officially excited. To dull my excitement I spend the evening watching the England v Italy football match on the television. England was once again fairly poor, they have no hope of getting anywhere in the World Cup Finals later in the year if they continue to play as they have recently.

Sunday, 12th June.

This morning I woke a bit later but went for a swim at around 9 am. The water was beautiful, very flat & clear. I see lots of hermit crabs scuttling along the sand & lots of fish swimming around as I get into the water. I swam my 1 km this morning before getting out. As I am sitting on the wall getting my breath back, my friend Vince arrives on his bike. We go to the Chiringuito for a coffee & Vince tells me that he would like to join me for Sunday lunch at Campbell's bar today.

After we finish our coffee I go back to my apartment, take a shower, & then let Campbell's bar know that Vince will be coming with me for lunch, & I put his order in. I then get myself some scrambled egg on toast & a coffee before going to work on my website.

At around 1 pm, Vince came around to my apartment on his bicycle. I jumped on the Sharky mobile & we set off in a convoy of two, to   Campbell's bar in Roda for our Sunday lunch. On the way, we went past a car accident that must have just happened. As we went across the motorway, past the golf club & into Roda, a large silver-coloured Mercedes had careered off the main road, up the pavement crashed through one lamp post completely taking it out, across the small service road & into another lampost also taking this one down. There were a lot of people standing around & the driver was still in the car as we passed. I didn't see the accident but he must have been going at some speed to take out two lamposts, one on either side of the service road.

When in Campbells bar we had a very nice meal, I had roast pork & Vince had roast lamb. After a good chat, we left & returned to Los Alcázares to our apartments, saying that we would meet later at La Playa bar to listen to Diana sing. As we passed the site of the crash, the car had been removed but police were still blocking the service road as a recovery company was dealing with the downed lampposts.

This evening I met Vince at La Playa bar where we sat, chatted & listened to Diana singing. Later in the evening, we joined my friends Bob & Connie who were sitting outside. We had a great evening chatting & it was nice to get out of my apartment for an evening.