My office was closed yesterday (Friday) for Veteran's Day, so Sheri and I had a fun-day.

We got a pretty early start (8:30 AM) and went to Panera's for breakfast. I didn't want to overdo it there so I mixed up a glass of soy protein before we left.

Sheri had her usual Spinach & Artichoke Soufflé and I just had a toasted bagel with light cream cheese. I had just a little freelance work to do while Sheri read her book and worked a couple of puzzles from the paper. We ended up hanging out right into the lunch rush. We were getting hungry for lunch and trying to figure out what to do. We were already there and comfortable so we split a Bacon Turkey Bravo sandwich.

Sheri found an on-line coupon for 40% off at Hobby Lobby and I have been wanting to put together a plastic model lately, so that was our next stop. I wasn't a huge modeler when I was a kid, but I put together a few of them, and I guess I have had some nostalgic feelings surfacing lately about building them.

I wanted to build a World War II era bomber. My first choice was the B-29 and my second choice was a B-52. If they didn't have either of those my third choice was a B-17. They didn't have any of those. They had a huge 1:400 scale Queen Elizabeth and a 1:350 scale Titanic. They were each about three or four feet long! Sheri was pushing me to get one of those but they were $90 each ($54 after the coupon) and that just seemed like more than I wanted to invest in this right now. (Maybe if I really enjoy putting this next model together I will think about it.)

I ended up getting the USS Saratoga aircraft carrier. With the coupon it was only $13. I also picked up a tube of plastic modeling cement. I took the cap off for a little whiff and that instantly brought back a lot of memories too. (No, not from huffing, just the smell.)

I am looking for a little air brush to hook up to my compressor to give it a really finished look. Testors has one for only $15.

After that we went to Meijer to pick up some food for dinner. We got the $3.99 8-piece Friday chicken special that we tried last week and liked so much.

While we were having breakfast at Panera I read a New York Times article on-line about the increase in popularity of organic milk, so we tried a half gallon of that too. You have heard of pasteurizing milk to kill harmful bacteria. That is where the temperature of the milk is increased to 145º for 30 minutes or 163º for 15 seconds. The article I read said that a lot of organic milk is "ultra pasteurized" to extend the shelf life for a few weeks. This almost completely sterilizes the milk by increasing the temperature of the milk to 285º for two seconds. The only reason I can come up for this is because organic milk doesn't sell as fast or has to travel farther distances to the store because there are fewer organic dairies. The article said there are pros and cons of ultra pasteurizing. It is possible that it can impart a burned taste to the milk, but the story also said it can make the milk taste creamier. You know what? It really did taste creamier. We could not detect any burned taste. Maybe that is only if it is done wrong. The high heat can also change the protein structure a little bit which can make it more difficult to whip cream that has been ultra pasteurized.

We went home, put a fire in the fireplace, ate our chicken and watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. A really fun movie! I am not sure if I liked the voice that Johnny Depp used for Willy Wonka, but I got used to it.

This morning (Saturday) I had to get up early for a doctor appointment. My doctor bought a new machine that lets him do hemoglobin A1c tests right in the office rather than sending the blood out to a lab. This is great because he can change meds and courses of action during the appointment rather than waiting a week after the appointment. The 30 pounds I lost is really making a difference. My A1c was 6.1% which is in the upper range of a non-diabetic! (Lower is better.) A year ago my reading was around 7.5%. The target for diabetics is to be below 7%. He said if I can get it below 6% by my next appointment in four months we will start to drop and reduce meds. My blood pressure was really good too; 112 over 80.

We are at Burger King now doing our normal weekend hanging out. After this we think we will go to Whole Foods for some food for this evening's movie, Last Days. We also need to rake some leaves in the backyard and take them to the curb. We were going to do that yesterday, but by the time we got home from our day out we only had an hour of sunlight left and we both felt kind of tired.