I’d been doing well at hitting my fitness goals on my Apple Watch so far this month – in fact, I’d had a perfect week last week and had a twelve day streak of closing all three circles.

The day started with my usual Silver Tongued Cats meeting on Zoom. Since it was the last Thursday of the month, many of the members were going to get together in person at a nearby Panera Bread. I’d planned to walk there and join them until the club’s senior member asked me if I could give her a ride (she lives nearby and had just had knee replacement surgery).

I couldn’t say no – it was my chance to pay forward the kindness of a former member who’d taken me to meetings soon after my heart surgery in 2011. So I drove instead of walking.

I had a routine doctor’s appointment this afternoon and I thought about walking there to burn calories, but it was right after lunch and the timing didn’t work, so I drove.

After that, it was the hottest part of the day, so instead of walking, I sat down and worked on photos from Iceland, specifically from Vigur Island. I hadn’t had the time to deal with them while we were traveling, but I didn’t have that excuse today. I haven’t decided whether to go back and add photos to the blog entries from the actual travel days, but photos of cute birds are almost timeless, so I’ll post some guillemots and eiders here.

By the time I was finished with the photos, it was time to make dinner and have our weekly Trivial Zoom call, so my streak of closing all three circles was broken – but I can start afresh tomorrow, right?

My big plan for today was go to to Shir Hadash and learn something about the new A/V system for the Sanctuary; there was lots of gear to be installed and programmed, and it seemed like a good idea for me to know something about it.

Before that, though, I had to get blood drawn for a routine test ordered by my cardiologist. I had to fast for the draw, so I wanted to get it done as early as possible. None of the Labcorp locations near me were offering early appointments; I decided to take my chances with the smaller location near me rather than the larger one next to the hospital. Labcorp’s website said that the location I wanted opened at 8, so I made sure to be there a few minutes early – and discovered that the website was wrong and they opened at 7:30. I was out of there by 8, just in time to hit school traffic near my house (something I didn’t miss at all during shelter-in-place).

When I finally got to Shir Hadash, I was pulled into an impromptu meeting about some High Holiday scheduling issues before I was able to look at the new gear. It’s all rack-mounted and very technical, and I hope to find out more about it soon – today, all I learned was how to drill out a stripped screw head and where the cameras are mounted.

And when I left, I got pulled into ANOTHER meeting – no one told me that being the chair of the Ritual Committee involved MEETINGS!

This afternoon, I finished editing the photos I took on our Golden Circle Tour; we were on the ship with limited connectivity after the tour, so I wasn’t able to post any photos then, but here are a few to make up for that lack.

From Gulfoss, we went to Geysir. Geysir itself is inactive, but Stokkur erupts every few minutes.

 

The final stop on the tour was Þingvellir National Park, the original home of the Icelandic Parliament and the site of the rift between North America and Europe.