With four days left until we leave...

With four days left until we leave to drive South to our boat which has been stored for hurricane season in Indiantown FL, I feel busy. We celebrated the various Fall family birthdays and Christmas on Saturday with my Dad and Dave's daughter's family and spent Sunday and Monday with my father, brother and extended family in Winchester, ON just south of Ottawa. Yesterday, I took my Dad to an appointment with his dentist, today I have an appointment in Toronto and then lunch with my best-friend whom I will miss dearly, and tomorrow my Dad has an appointment with his oncologist. On Friday, my Dad and I both have appointments with our opthamologist and then we're off to Port Perry, north-east of Toronto to spend Hallowe'en with Dave's daughter's family. When one looks at our calendar, it appears that I have most of one free day left to clean the house and pack before we leave on Sunday. This seems like a very good time to stay in the moment and make this post brief. Smile.
It's currently 0 degrees Celcius in Ottawa with 15 cm of light snow predicted this morning. Here in Oakville, we're still at 1 degree Celcius with a prediction of light flurries. My intention is to leave early for my drive into Toronto.
Yesterday, we ordered food on-line to be delivered to the marina in Florida where our boat is stored. Most of our supplements and seed for sprouting (i.e. alph alpha, clover, Men's Formula, Women's Formula, Veg-Cal (Calcium), Brain (PEA), Body (AFA flakes), Systemic Enzymes, and Lipase (fat digestion) came from The Store at The Hippocrates Health Institute (http://store.hippocratesinst.org/LifeGive-C17.aspx) in West Palm Beach, Florida. We ordered our 6-month supply of Chlorella and Spiralina in bulk on-line from Pure-Planet (http://pureplanet.com/) and our Maca and liquid iron from Upaya Naturals (http://www.upayanaturals.com/Supplements_s/7.htm). It's quite the process figuring what and how much to order and from which source but certainly easier than last year when we were new to the concept of whole food supplements and superfoods. This year, we have dehydrated herbs from our organic garden. We're looking forward to good nutrition in our lunch-time smoothies each day.
My Dad's cousin called with information on possible side effects of Stevia. This was new to me and something I want to look into. I've been using Stevia Leaf's Liquid Chocolate Raspberry Flavoured Stevia (http://www.buywisdom.com/products.asp?dept=2&pagenumber=1&sort_on=&sort_by=) in Dave's smoothies all summer. Stevia is an herb native to Paraguay. We definately prefer the liquid types of Stevia to the more processed white granules that simulate the appearance of white sugar. One can kind find lots of info on the herb through Google. The result of an investigative report done by CBC Marketplace can be found at http://www.cbc.ca/consumers/market/files/food/stevia/index.html.
In this moment, I'm continuing the process of downloading to my I-Pod Touch, the thirteen additional titles on cd that I borrowed from the library late yesterday afternoon. Hopefully, another dozen titles will await me when I return these later today. I love the library and it's on-line site for putting holds on items. You can search by title, author, subject, genre or format and take out a good number of items at any one time. Down-loading e-books from their library to one's computer over the Internet was new to me this summer and something I look forward to doing when we're down South. One is allowed to burn most books to cd or transfer to an audio device. Unfortunately, the .WMA format that most of the audio e-books are saved in isn't complient with my new I-Pod Touch. E-books automatically check themselves back into the library via the Internet after one week so there is never a concern about overdue fines. I had to laugh when the woman who helped me sign-out the cd's and books yesterday in the library itself said they'd be happy to pick-up from us in The Bahamas, any items we forget to return before leaving. I've always found them to be very helpful!