Monday, February 16

It was pretty nippy this morning, so only 17 of us showed up at water aerobics. Sadly, our leader informed me that Hubbie's and my friend, who has been battling breast cancer, died this morning. She was only 54 years old. Later, I learned that a memorial service will take place Saturday morning at 10 a.m., at her family's church. We will truly miss this very fine and generous lady, whose bubbly personality lit any room she walked into. Of course, we will attend the memorial service.

Once I was ready for the day after water aerobics, I met an 11 a.m. appointment with the coordinator of a local hospice program, who has asked me to do photography of their patients and family to use in creating memory books. She is also interested that I am a newspaper journalist, which means I can record folks' memories and write them in story form. The coordinator will contact patients' families and set up dates a couple of weeks from now.

I got back home from the meeting around noon. Hubbie had cut up lettuce and veggies for chef's salads for lunch, and fruits for dessert.

After lunch, Hubbie and I went to the WDCS to get groceries for this week's menu. Mother stayed home to make shepherd's pie from a recipe we acquired at Weight Watchers. It in no way resembles a shepherd's pie, as far as we could tell, but with lots of tweaking, it did become a tasty veggie soup for supper.

When we got home from shopping, I made a pot of veggie soup from another recipe I got at Weight Watchers. In tasting it after the veggies cooked, I found it bland and watery, so I added lots of stuff to pump up the flavor, then let it simmer uncovered to boil the liquids down. We'll try this for lunch tomorrow. We didn't intend to end up with two pots of veggie soup, but we did.

Tonight's local newspaper featured a front page story of the Go Red for Women Luncheon. A dim picture of me modeling an outfit was on an inside page. What an awful photo...it was shot profile from below, making me look all pudgy-tummy. There is also a flaw at my eye-line that makes me look like I'm wearing a pair of 50's style white sunglasses. Fortunately, my name doesn't appear under the photo, but I know a lot of people in town, and they're going to know it's me.

Except in the event program, at no time have the organizers listed the names of the three heart disease survivors. I guess it has to do with privacy issues.

Nothing else important happened today. We did acknowledge President's Day by displaying the American flag outdoors.