Friday, January 22, 2010

21st Jan- A good fast walk


 

It was a little more cloudy this morning but the weather is improving every day now and the temperature is expected to reach around 75 degrees F (25 C) but strong winds are expected.

Nevertheless we togged up and walked the 2.5 miles to the Sarasota Crossing shopping Mall as Jennifer would like to book a hair appointment and also Noel need's to visit the Bank. Our walking speed must have been faster than last time as we trimmed about 15 minutes of the journey there and it took about 55 minutes. We did our little jobs and then looked around the shops for a while and even in the Electrical shop (Like a Dixons) we found the people so friendly and ready to offer advice on touring and places to visit. It would appear that 'Mardi Gras' is on in New Orleans as we pass through in mid February which prompted us to start planning the next bit of our trip to Austin as we need Hotels in New Orleans we had better book them soon.

A quick smoothie in Keiva Juice and then we headed back at perhaps a slightly slower pace and by the time we were got back to the house at around 1 pm it we were rather hot and in need of a shower. A very good walk indeed and we will continue with this every other day as we always seem to need one day to recover in between.

The rest of the day we read books and then we had some of the delicious Lamb Chops that we had purchased last week in Costco and it was a lovely meal.

We watched another episode of 'Spooks' again and enjoyed that very much before watching a programme about police work on TV about the first 48 hours after a murder is committed. This was a little gruesome as it covered a story about a Guatemalan male who was found cut up in plastic bags floating in Miami Bay. Anyway after a one hour programme with about 15 minutes of adverts the end came and they did not have a clue who did it. So it was a bit of an anticlimax really.

The recent state race in Massachusetts has caused some concern for the Obama camp, this was a state where the Senator was always from the Kennedy Family and following the recent death of the last Kennedy in the Senate it was hoped that the state would remain with Obama and he flew in to support the new candidate only it failed quite miserably and the opposition won. This messes up Obama's new healthcare plan as it was already skating on thin ice and now by losing an important vote in the house make it far more difficult for Obama to introduce his programme . All this boils down to the fact that, the have's do not want to pay for the have not's ,as the plan is to raise taxes to cover the cost of healthcare for the 50 odd million that are currently not covered. No doubt the bill will be watered down to appease the opposition who will then claim it was their plan anyway. We may criticise the NHS but make no bones about it this helps the majority of people well. The challenge to the NHS is to control all those people who arrive in the country just to be treated, as well as the illegal's.

As I write this on Friday morning is has just stopped raining after quite a heavy downfall.