Finally Feeling Better

After almost 2 weeks of dealing with some type of flu bug, I am finally feeling better.
Yesterday I started to get back into my workouts.
We were gone for most of last week. We went to Herndon for Veronica's work. While up there, we stopped by the Ikea store and bought some new furniture for Veronica's new and improved studio. We spent one full day putting the furniture together. Veronica spent 2 days straightening out her studio with the new furniture pieces in place.
Next time we go up to the Herndon area, we will stop by Ikea and pick up several more pieces of furniture.
I figure that it will take 2-3 more Ikea visits until she has everything that she needs for new studio furniture.
A couple of days ago we went ahead and purchased our plane tickets for our upcoming October flight into Venice and returning home from Rome. These flights are in conjunction with our 2 week NCL cruise.
I have been tracking the prices for these flights and took a chance of getting the tickets now rather than waiting to see if the prices went down. Since purchasing the tickets, the prices have actually gone up a bit.
We will be flying on Delta Airlines for this trip. Delta had good departure and arrival times both in Venice and upon our return home via Norfolk Airport.
We used our Delta Skymiles credit card because Delta doubles the rewards miles for each ticket purchased with our American Express Gold Delta Skymiles card.
We actually used a portion of our previously saved up rewards miles for our upcoming flights into Minneapolis, for our fishing trip to Eagle Lake in Ontario Canada.
By using some of our rewards miles, we only had to pay $15 for both of our plane tickets. Right now we still have enough rewards points accrued for another inexpensive domestic flight.
With the purchase of our plane tickets, I was able to provide NCL with our return home flight information so that I could get our transfer vouchers from where the NCL Jade will be docking in Rome to the airport where Veronica and I will be returning home from.
We also decided to splurge a little bit for seat upgrades on both of the long international portions of our flights.
With those upgrades come larger seats with more leg room and seats that actually recline a lot more than the regular seats.
This seat upgrade should allow us to relax more and be more comfortable while sitting and sleeping on our international flights.
We should land being more relaxed and well rested due to this seat upgrade.
I also ordered our individual soda passes for the entirety of our cruise.
I still need to contact  our pre-cruise hotel in Venice and arrange a private gondola ride with a singing gondolier. I figured that we will splurge for this experience and keep it private rather than sharing the gondola with other couples or families. We will only be doing this once in our lifetimes and decided to splurge a bit.
The only thing left for this cruise is for Veronica and I to browse through the many excursions that are being offered in each port of call to see if there are any we want to take.
Everything for this vacation is coming together and it won't be long until all plans have been made and completed.
Then it will be only a matter of time waiting for our departure date to arrive. Only 222 days until we finally hear those exciting words....BON VOYAGE!

Under The Weather

It has been a couple of weeks since I made my last blog entry. I haven't been feeling great the last couple of weeks and then "it" finally hit.
After returning home from the Polar Plunge, Veronica and I were rather sore with aches and pains here and there. My batteries felt drained and I did not have a whole lot of energy.
About a week ago Veronica came down with flu/cold like symptoms and within a couple of days I came down with this bug.
Veronica is slowly returning to her normal self but it will take a few days yet and as for me, I am in the "thick of it". My throat feels raw and it hasn't hurt like this since...well it has been a long long time.
I have been hoping to get back into my workouts but it is better that I hold off until this passes. If I started doing my workouts, it would set my getting over this bug back an additional week.
Hopefully I will get over this bug within a couple of days.
Until then, I think that I will return to our bed and catch up on some movies that I have missed.

Videos From The 2013 Polar Plunge In Virginia Beach, VA

Here are some videos that I took from the 2013 Polar Plunge that was held in Virginia Beach, VA to raise funds for the Special Olympics:

Below are a few videos of the Deloreans. They were a high energy band that played in the huge heated vendor/sponsor tent. They played on Friday night and they were great.

They had a few ice sculptures on the boardwalk and the ice creations were really good

They even had a flash mob show up for the event. They were dancing on the boardwalk outside of the huge vendor/sponsor tent

Below is a marching bagpipe band that played and marched on the boardwalk and also played on the beach as the plungers went into the water

Below are various videos of the plungers going into the water

Below is a video of the lady dressed as a jellyfish. She won for best costume on the catagory she was entered in

Below is a video of a hovercraft that had a video camera attached to it. I could see it hovering around over the crowd taking videos of the event. Later when I went inside the huge vendor/sponsor tent, I got a closeup look at the craft. It had approximately 4-5 propellers on it. At the time I saw it up close, the owners had it hooked up to his laptop computer...probably uploading the videos that the hovercraft had obtained during its last flight. You might have to look rather closely to see it on this video

More videos of plungers going into the water near the end of the plunging portion of the event

This was a great event to be involved with. I hope that next year, Veronica and I will be able to attend this event and help out again. A great event for a great cause!!!