The 11th week of 2024 started with a busy day on Monday. My worry over my flight for my upcoming cruise was put at ease & I saw my friend Martin for a drink on his birthday before hearing my friend DeeAna sing at a bar in Orihuela.
2024, week 11.
Monday, 11th March.
I woke up around 6:45 am, got a coffee, and sat at my computer to work. I published last week's blog page on my website and then tried to solve today's Wordle puzzle on the New York Times website. After doing the puzzle, I showered, shaved, and dressed. I took a rubbish bag to the bins and went to the doctors' surgery to get my regular blood test.
Today, the vampire had trouble locating a vein to get her breakfast. She even used baby fangs on my wrist but couldn't get a drop. Feeling sorry for her, I helped by pointing out the vein I know has a food supply for her. It was still difficult for her to find what she desired, but she sank her tiny baby fangs into my arm & finally got her sweet red reward. It had hurt me quite a bit both times that she tried for the blood, but I didn't mind too much. She was a beautiful young vampire & kept apologising so much for any pain she caused me that I felt sorry for her. Once she had finished & had stuck tape over the wounds in my arms, I left & went back to my apartment.
When I returned to my apartment, I phoned NCL and spoke to an agent who took all my details before contacting the flight department. After being put on hold briefly, the lady spoke to me again. She told me that her colleagues would arrange a new flight for me and would phone and email me later in the day to check that what they had arranged was okay with me.
After speaking with NCL, I went online, & checked out the Fussy Librarian website, & downloaded 10 new books to read. I had arranged for Martin's dad, Dave, to give me a lift to the office today, but unfortunately, he was running late. He phoned me to let me know & I was able to get the bus to the office. The bus driver must have recognised me as he waved to me from the bus, & as I climbed aboard, he told me not to hurry. I clambered up the stairs with my walking stick & into a seat at the front of the bus. The bus is a great price at only €1 for a journey around Los Alcazares & if you get off & back on the bus within the hour, the second trip is free.
When I got off the bus, I sat beside Martin at the office and wished him a happy birthday. We chatted and toasted his birthday with a beer served by the beautiful Rosa. Dave turned up at about 1 p.m. and joined us, as did Kate a short time before Aria's bus arrived. Aria joined us, singing Happy Birthday to her dad. Dave offered me a lift home, and I took it. I went back to my apartment & checked my email for any messages from NCL.
NCL sent me a reply when I was out. It said the flight was still going and had not been cancelled as far as they could see. I emailed them the message KLM sent me saying it had been cancelled. They quickly responded, telling me that KLM had been running the flight using a flight share and that although KLM was no longer using the flight, the flight was still running without the KLM flight share. The company running it are Privilege Style, a Spanish-owned airline. While I was reading the message, KLM sent me another message confirming this, and after being a little worried, I felt much better about my flights.
While on my computer, I saw that my friend DeeAna was singing at The Royal Oak bar in Orihuela. I sent her a message and asked if I could go with her to see her sing tonight. She said it would be good to see me again & said she would pick me up at 4 p.m. I went to the Chiringuito El Lobo next to my apartment for a beer before meeting DeeAna. I had a pint & when I was ready to leave, I paid for my beer, but as I picked up my things off the table, the barman gave me another drink, telling me it was from the owner. I was delighted to have the free beer but had to neck it quickly to walk to meet DeeAna. After rapidly drinking the beer, I walked to where I was being picked up & got there just in time.
We drove to the bar & I listened to DeeAna sing for the next couple of hours. I hadn't heard from her for a while, and it was great to hear her sing again. Her voice had improved, and she performed more confidently than before. She is a great artist, and I am proud to have her as my friend. When she finished her set, she packed it up and drove me home. We had a good catchup on the car journey home, and I was glad I had been able to see her and listen to her sing again.
When I got in, I watched TV for a while before having an early night.
5 hours, 45 minutes. 4417 steps. 0 metres.
Tuesday, 12th March.
I woke up at around 7:30 am, I felt refreshed after a good night's sleep. I got myself a coffee and checked my computer for new messages. At 10 am, I sent my neighbour Liz a message, and we then walked along to Buena Vista for a coffee and tostado. We had breakfast and talked until midday, when we returned to our apartments. I then did some indexing of my website pages on Google while I waited for my friend Jim to pick me up to go out for lunch with our friends Lottie and Ali.
Jim picked me up at around 12:30 p.m., and we drove to Lotties home to pick up her and Ali. We were soon on our way to the San Marino restaurant in El Pinar de Campoverde. When we arrived, we sat down at our table & ordered our meal. I had the bolognese starter, with a breaded pork fillet with mushrooms for my main & banana in chocolate sauce & whipped cream for my dessert. We had some lovely wine with the meal & sat chatting for hours. When we left, Jim drove us to Torre de la Horadada, where we stopped at a bar overlooking the sea. We sat in the sun enjoying the view, chatting & laughing until around 5:30 p.m. When we left Torre de la Horadada, Jim dropped off Lottie and Ali before taking me home. We all had a great day; the time had flown by, and we enjoyed each other's company.
Whilst I was out, I had a phone call from DHL telling me that one of the deliveries I had arranged for tomorrow had been left with my neighbour Liz today. I was annoyed that they hadn't followed my instructions but glad that Liz had been able to take in the delivery for me. After Jim dropped me off, I went into my apartment block and collected my parcel from Liz before returning to my apartment.
I watched the Arsenal vs Porto Champions League game on TV this evening. Arsenal were losing 0-1, the score from the first leg, but in the first half, they scored to make the overall score even at 1-1. The game finished that way and went into extra time. I spent the entire period of extra time worrying that Arsenal wouldn't win. By the end of the additional time, neither team had scored a winner, and the game had to be decided by penalties.
Arsenal's penalty-takers were brilliant; all of them scored, but the game's hero was David Raya, who saved two of Portos' penalties and sent Arsenal through to the last eight of the competition. By the time the game finished, my nerves were a wreck and as tired as I was, I could not sleep & I lay in bed, tossing and turning. When I did drop off to sleep, it didn't last long & I woke again at 5:30 am Luckily, I fell asleep quickly, tired but very happy.
8 hours, 13 minutes. 3962 steps. 0 metres.
Wednesday, 13th March.
Today, I had to wait for separate deliveries, one by DHL and one by Amazon, so I expected to spend the day working on my computer at home. When I woke up this morning, I got myself a coffee. Because I didn't have much food in the apartment and could not get out in case my delivery arrived when I was out, I cooked some sausages in my air fryer and had them for breakfast.
I was just about to take my morning tablets when I realised I hadn't checked for my blood test results on Monday. I logged on to my doctors' web portal and looked for my results. My INR looked good and was in the middle of the range it should be, so I can carry on with the dosage I have been taking.
I did the morning Wordle puzzle, and then I spent the morning working on my website and stopped at midday for a pot of tea. I have decided to lose some weight. To help me and spur me on, I will start to track how much sleep I get each night, how many steps I walk a day, and, when it is warm enough, how far I swim each day. It is currently not warm enough for me to swim in the Mar Menor yet, but as soon as it is, I will start to swim each morning again. I have added a section on each day of this blog to track my results. These will include the time I slept the previous night, the steps I took that day & the distance I swim each day. I can track my sleep and steps with my Fitbit watch & when I start to swim by using Google Maps to measure the distance.
My first delivery to arrive this afternoon was from DHL. It arrived at about 2:30 p.m. & after I had signed for it, I opened it & checked it out. I had bought a spare battery for my new video camera, and I put it on charge once I had checked it was right. My second delivery arrived at about 4 p.m. and was from Amazon. It was a harness that attached the new video camera around my chest. This will mean I can make videos whilst still having my hands free while I walk around. I checked it and saw that it was correct. I then attached my video camera and walked outside wearing the new harness. I videotaped my walk outside my apartment building. The video came out amazingly clear and very high quality. All I have to do now is watch some videos on using the camera properly and practice using it before I go on my cruise.
This evening, the temperature seemed to drop quickly, and I had to turn on the heating in my apartment. I put on my pyjamas, got under a blanket on the sofa, and watched TV all evening before going to bed early.
6 hours, 17 minutes. 2330 steps. 0 metres.
Thursday, 14th March.
I woke up early today and got up as ideas buzzed around inside my head. I got myself a ginseng coffee and sat down at my computer. I logged onto the internet and did today's Wordle puzzle before getting myself some cereal for breakfast.
After breakfast, I felt I should start tidying up my living room. I had let it get very cluttered, and I wanted to start using my dining table again. I also wanted to move some of my furniture around. My first job would be to store some of the boxes I needed to keep. I would put them in my garage store room and throw away other boxes I did not need any more. I flattened the boxes I no longer required and walked to the paper recycle bin to remove them. When I got back, my knee popped out & I was in a bit of pain. I collected the remaining recycling bags and the parcel that had to be returned and went on my disability scooter to the recycling bins. After recycling the paper and plastic, I went to the Euronics store and returned a parcel to Amazon.
When I left Euronics, I decided to go back to the beachfront. I saw my friends Jo and Michael and quickly chatted with them before stopping off at La Playa bar. It is now run by people with an Irish bar on Rio Nalon. I stopped and chatted with my friend Yuan, who works there. He told me that the bar will soon have a new name and that there is still a little work to do. It looks very different to what it did. There is much more room inside, and the place looks less cluttered. I finished my coffee, said goodbye to Yuan and carried on home.
When I returned to my apartment, my friend George called to say he could take me to the Mercadona store in his car if I wanted to go shopping. I needed to go shopping, and within 10 minutes, he picked me up. We went to Mercadona, and I did all my shopping before George took me home. When I returned to my apartment, I put all my shopping away and had pasta and seafood salad for lunch.
After lunch, I went to take a quick siesta before starting to clear the clutter on my dining table. This didn't quite work out as I couldn't sleep and watched a film. This evening, I decided that tidying my dining table could wait. I flicked between TV channels, watching several games of football at once. I cooked some chicken wings for my dinner before returning to the TV and watching the football. It was a good night for the English teams still in European competition. Liverpool, Aston Villa, and West Ham joined Arsenal and Liverpool in the next round of European competitions. However, Brighton and Hove Albion were knocked out, as were Rangers from Scotland.
While watching the football, my phone buzzed to tell me I had received an email. When I checked to see what it was, I received an email from KLM apologising for their mistake in sending me a cancellation for the first of my flights for my trip to Honolulu for my cruise in April. I was happy that they had confirmed that it was their mistake, but also surprised, in a good way, that they had sent such an excellent apology. Now, I hope they might upgrade me to first class.
7 hours, 1 minute. 5072 steps. 0 metres.
Friday, 15th March.
I slept well last night, and when I woke up, I got a coffee before attempting this morning's Wordle puzzle. I was pleased I got the word "erupt" in four guesses. I just hoped it would not be an omen for next month when I tour the Volcano National Park in Hilo, Hawaii.
I went to the Dia supermarket near my house this morning. I needed a few extra bits for the bolognese I intended to cook this afternoon. When I had got the bits I needed, I went home and dropped them off before walking to the Buena Vista restaurant with my neighbour Liz for a coffee & tostada. We sat chatting for a while, and because of our conversation, I thought about buying myself a clothesline that could be installed in my bathroom in the shower cubicle. I have trouble getting to the roof of the building, and this would be an ideal solution. I used my phone to order one on Amazon that will be delivered tomorrow, and luckily for me, I saw my friend Mick at the restaurant, and he agreed to install the clothesline for me when it arrived.
When we had finished chatting, Liz went home, and I continued along the promenade and walked to the pharmacy around the corner from my apartment. I bought some more sintrom tablets as I was running low on them, and because my breathing had become very difficult because of my constantly blocked nose, I bought myself a Viks inhaler stick. Hopefully, I will remember to take it out with me when I go out and will remember to use it if my breathing gets difficult. After buying what I needed in the pharmacy, I walked home and began working on my website.
While working on my website, my friend Frouk messaged me to ask if I wanted to go to lunch with her and her boyfriend Frouk next Tuesday. I hadn't seen them for a while and quickly agreed to go out with them.
This afternoon, I started to prepare the bolognese. Halfway through the preparation, I realised I didn't have enough tinned tomatoes. My neighbours didn't have any I could pinch, so I had to walk to the spice shop around the corner. Luckily for me, they had some tinned tomatoes, and once I had got home and added them to the bolognese, I put the slow cooker on for four hours. I sat back down in front of the TV, got myself a Radler beer and waited for the aroma of the cooking to waft its way through to me from the kitchen.
When the bolognese finished cooking, it tasted great, and I left it to cool off entirely to freeze it in different-sized portions. This evening, I worked on my website. My genealogy research section has many articles about my family, and I changed the Google Structured Data for each. I changed their designation from "Article" to "Person". I will have to edit more of the Structured Data for each person later.
6 hours, 55 minutes. 6193 steps. 0 metres.
Saturday, 16th March.
When I woke up this morning, I got myself a coffee and sat at the computer to attempt today's Wordle puzzle. After completing the Wordle puzzle I put some clothes in the washing machine and set it going before getting myself some cereal for breakfast.
It was a bright, sunny start to the day, and by 9 am, it was already 20°c outside. I decided to go for a walk before it got too busy and went for a walk along the promenade. I walked to La Encarnacion Hotel and then turned to walk to the cafe next to the Town Hall. When I arrived, I sat in the shade and ordered a coffee. I was sipping my coffee when I remembered that I had a delivery arriving today. Swearing to myself, I finished my coffee and walked back along the main road to my apartment. I didn't think the delivery would arrive this morning, but I didn't want to risk missing it.
When I returned to my apartment, I sat at my computer and continued working on my website. I don't know if the walk this morning made me hungry, but I felt hungry all morning. At about 1 p.m., I made a cheese and ham toasted sandwich and ate it while continuing my work. My delivery arrived at 2 p.m., and I stopped working on my computer to watch some of the day's football on the television.
I watched bits of a couple of games, but because Arsenal was not involved, I couldn't get interested enough to watch them, so I watched a film instead. The film I watched was American Dreamer, and it starred Peter Dinklage and Shirley MacLaine. I quite enjoyed it, but it did not make you sit there and not move while it was on. It will kill time and raise a smile or two if you are at a loose end.
This evening, I did some more work on several pages on my website, renewing the photos on the top of a few. There wasn't much I liked on the TV so I went to bed quite early.
8 hours, 22 minutes. 6204 steps. 0 metres.
Sunday, 17th March.
When I woke up this morning, I had backache. I spent longer in bed than usual this week and slept more than normal, which has caused the back pain. Once I had finished my coffee and taken a painkiller, I did today's Wordle puzzle and got myself some cereal. After finishing my cereal and working on my website, I put on a green shirt and a St Patrick's Day hat before I walked along the promenade. As I walked along, I got a lot of strange looks from the Spanish people, but I got a greeting from many others. One Irish lady said I was having my own St Patrick's Day Parade and wished me a good day.
When I got to Rio Nalon, my back was in a lot of pain. I sat down outside Harry's bar and had a quick chat with the owners. The bar wasn't open yet, but I needed to rest. When my back started to ache less I continued my walk and got some money at the ATM before going into The Celt Bar for a Paddys Day Pint. I sat in the bar with a perfect pint of Guinness and read my Kindle for a while. When my friend Kristen arrived, she hugged me and said hello before starting work. A group had started to set up inside The Celt, and many people had started to arrive. When I finished my pint, I said goodbye to Kristen and returned to Harry's bar. I sat outside with a pint of lager, read my Kindle and watched the world go by.
I did have a chuckle to myself when one man and his wife walked past. Seeing the football on the big TV screen, the man stopped to see which players lined up for his side. He told his wife his team had a lot of new players in it and then looked at the screen again. When he looked at the screen again, he noticed it was Sky Sports showing the game. He then told his wife that it might be a different set of players in the team on another channel and moved on to find the game elsewhere. I know it was St Patrick's Day, but that was the most Irish thing I heard all year.
When I finished my pint, I set off for home. My back started to ache again quite quickly, and I was pleased to return to my apartment as I was having difficulty walking because of the pain when I got there. When I got in, my back hurt to much for me to be able to stand up and cook for long. I put a bit of chicken in the air fryer, and when it was done I made a chicken sandwich to eat for my lunch.
I took another painkiller and decided to watch a TV series called The Gentleman. It has had a lot of good reviews recently, and I thought it was brilliant. It was so good that I binge-watched the entire first series before going to bed.
7 hours, 20 minutes. 5992 steps. 0 metres.
I am pleased with the amount of walking I managed this week, but it seems to have been too much for me. It has made me sleep longer but given me a bad back. Next week, I will try to walk a similar amount but stretch it out more evenly during the week. It will help when it is warm enough to swim again. Swimming is easier on my legs, will help me lose weight, and will, in turn, help my walking.
Weekly totals: 49 hours, 53 minutes. 34170 steps. 0 metres. Daily average: 7 hours, 49 minutes. 4881 steps. 0 metres.