I had an eye exam this morning at 10:30 at the Valley Eye Clinic, which is just down from Fayetteville Gastro. I had gone online and downloaded the various form I would need to fill out for my first visit as PDFs and then manually filled them in. I arrived about 10 minutes early.
After a while, I was called back and eventually made my way to an examining room where my eyes were dilated and the various initial checks were performed. I was then told to wait for the doctor to call me… and not read anything until then.
It was 2 hours and 1 minute (12:31 pm) when she called me into her office for a brief visit. She looked in my eyes with a bright light, and everything else had already be done by the tech (Alicia). The doctor said that she didn’t see any damage from the diabetes, and that they liked for annual checkups to be performed to catch any changes that might occur.
I paid $81 at the reception desk and headed outside. *Oh, they had ink pens with fake flowers attached and they were all planted in a little flower pot. Handy, once you know they are pens and not fake flowers in a pot.
My pupils were still dilated when I walked out the front door and across the street to my car. Every car now seemed to be white… bright white in the early afternoon sun. A chance of rain, but mostly sunny where I was.
I had used Google Maps to see where the eye clinic was located, and had noted that there was a café, the “New Deli Inc.” located just down from the clinic so I had gone online and found a menu and had a game plan for my first visit.
It worked out well that it was almost 1 pm when I got to the restaurant. It was small, but full except for about 3 tables. I walked up to the registers, but a young Indian (India) waiter or bus boy, asked if I was eating in, to which I said, “Yes.” He told me to just find a seat and a waitress would be over to take my order soon.
I found a little round table with 3 high chairs (which I normally shun) and took a seat. The table was still a little messy from a previous guest, but that was soon cleaned up when the waitress came to give me a menu and take my drink order.
I ordered unsweetened tea and opened the printed menu to see if it was the same as that which was online. It was almost the same, except for a few extra sandwiches, of which was the one that I wanted.
They are generous in how you can mix and match the various meats, veggies, and sauces & sides. I ordered the Angus Roast Beef sandwich on foccacia (I wanted to try the Wheatberry, but the waitress seemed oblivious to letting me and I wasn’t going to press it my first visit). I ordered Pepper Jack cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, roasted red peppers, avocado (which came out mashed) and chipotle mayo. My side was the mixed fruit cup and there was a dill pickle slice included. I think it was $6.75 for the sandwich, $1.50 for the fruit cup, and maybe the same for the unsweetened tea. However, my total bill was $8 something, so there must have been some combo discount.
There were a few customers in scrubs, a few Bragg soldiers in cammies, and assorted yuppies in casual dress, with assorted medical professional/vendors and assorted wives, etc.
My order arrived in about 15 minutes, during which time I took my glasses off, put them on, squeezed the slice of lemon into the tea, put a couple of packets of Equal in the tea and stirred with a straw. I examined the salt & pepper shakers, trying to figure out if the 3 hole was pepper and the 1 hole salt (which they were) but little pepper came out even when shaken vigorously.
The sandwich was cut in half with toothpicks holding each half together. The fruit cup was in a white Styrofoam cup with a clear plastic lid, and all in a little plastic basket. I prayed, and took a bite of the sandwich. It was really good! I enjoyed both halves for lunch. The fruit had mango and pineapple and both were almost candied and delicious. The whole experience was enjoyable. However, when I made it back to work and saw myself in a mirror, I must have looked pretty pathetic. *The tail of my new yellow shirt was hanging out the back over my dark blue Dockers. True that this morning I weighed the least I have probably weighed in 9 years coming in at 250.2 lbs., but still, I am a 58 years old man with a huge belly and hunched shoulders.
But, I feel good! The Metformin and change in diet has gotten my diabetes under control (At least, I think so.) and I am feeling physically good. I have lost 30 lbs. since the start of the year, and am much more mobile than I have been in several years.
I made it back to work, even with my pupils still being dilated and the office has the shades drawn so I will ease back into the normal world of vision hopefully before time to go home.
I’m not sure who offers this free OCR (Optical Character Recognition) service, so user beware. But, if you have an old printed syllabus that you would like to have a digital Word copy of… without having to retype it, you might take a look at this service:
"…Extract text from image (JPG, JPEG, BMP, TIFF, GIF) and convert into editable Word, Text, Excel, PDF, Html output formats."
I just had a professor bring me a printed (on paper) syllabus that he wanted converted into Word. *It has been a while, but I’ve never used OCR software that would line up multiple columns of information (from an image into Word).
I used our network printer to scan the individual pages and send them to me as PDF documents via email. I then uploaded each PDF file into the above service and had it output the page as a Word document. When I opened the Word document, almost all of the info was lined up as it was on the printed page, but now it was editable in the Word document.
The service seems to say you can upload multi-page PDFs and it will work just as well as one page at a time. Worth a try!
I have fiddled with many applications and web tools in the last 17 years, but this service really is something special, if you have the need.
This is currently my favorite Red Lobster lunch combination. It is Blackened Catfish, wild rice pilaf and a salad with Raspberry Vinagrette dressing. I love the seasoning used on the catfish and the vinegar dressing on the salad.
I am one of the North Carolinians that voted in favor of the Marriage Amendment. I really did not want to vote for Mitt Romney in November, but I now have two overwhelming differences with where you stand, and would lead the Country: You haven’t done anything about Illegal Aliens inundating our country and being a drain on our economy in a time when we don’t need anything else taking away from what we have earned. We have to hire Spanish teachers and provide interpreters for Hispanics because they are a growing population. But, from what I have heard 40% of Hispanics in America are illegal. Go Arizona! And any other state that will follow their lead.
Gay marriage? Can’t support it. Won’t support it! Won’t vote for a President that supports it. I hope the 61% of North Carolinians that voted for the Marriage Amendment will vote for Mitt Romney (or whomever is the Republican candidate).
I went down to visit Mary Ann & Jim (Sharpe) in Hubert, NC on Friday night. I stayed over Friday and Saturday night.
On Saturday morning, I got up showered and got out of the house a little after 7 am. I went to Jacksonville and stopped at Helen’s Kitchen for breakfast. I had country ham, scrambled eggs, grits and whole wheat toast, with coffee. *Although “you’re” inside, there were flies (about 3 flitting about my table and food) worrying me during breakfast.
Here is one of the walls at Helen’s Kitchen (Mary Ann later told me that the cafe had been sold and was no longer owned by Helen.).
A Wall at Helen’s Kitchen
After breakfast, I headed up Hwy. 17 toward Maysville, and then on to New Bern. I was listening to some of the short audio podcasts from “Italianpod 101”, which are various lessons to learn Italian. It was a sunny, beautiful spring, Saturday morning. “Non c’è male!”
I think it was a little after 9 am when I got onto Hwy. 70 East, in New Bern, which heads to either Havelock/Morehead City, or up to Washington, NC. A short distance on Hwy. 70 and I turned around to go to a tobacco shop that I’ve visited several times through the past several years. They have a cheap “Ramrod” cigar that I like (although I do not smoke one often). I say cheap because the first pair (they are sold in pairs, and are long and thin, and have a gentle corkscrew shape) that I bought were $2 and some change. They are now $6 and some change, but that is still a cheap cigar. *They have a bourbon (I thought it was rum.) flavored tip. The “Ramrod” cigars are on the second row, second from the right, shown in the picture below:
Ramrod Cigars at Tobacco Shop in New Bern
I bought 4 incense sticks (25 cents each) on a whim, and put these along with the cigars in my car pocket, which is where they still are located.
As I left the tobacco shop, I took the ramp to cross the new bridge (Hwy. 17 going North to “Little Washington”. Somewhere near here, I realized that I had forgotten to take my Metformin tablet after breakfast. After crossing the bridge, I turned left into Bridgeton, drove around a neat little “round” house, and stopped at Hardees to buy unsweetened iced tea (They have a $1 special for drink/tea.). *I walked inside, because I prefer that to ordering at the drive-thru. They had packets of Splenda (or was that Equal?), so I got several of those for my tea.
I walked back to my car, got a tablet from the rear seat, and sat down to fix my tea. I had saved a little country ham from breakfast, and put it between two half-slices of wheat toast. I hadn’t planned on eating it so soon, but needed to eat something before taking the Metformin. Metformin will “tear you up” (upset your stomach), if you eat it without food. I ate the ham sandwich, and downed the pill with some sweetened tea.
I headed back across the new bridge, turning to go across the draw bridge into old downtown New Bern. I didn’t think I had time to go into downtown so I headed to old 17, around the circle, and headed back toward Jacksonville.
Mary Ann had told me she had a 10 am “beauty shop” appointment, and I wanted to get back to her house before she did. It ended up that her appointment had been postponed until 1 pm, and she was still at home when I arrived a little after 10 am.
Mary Ann went to her beauty appointment, and when she came back around 3 pm, we drove down to Morehead City to go to Belks to shop. I wasn’t actually thinking about shopping, but after getting there and roaming over to the Men’s section, I bought 4 new, brightly colored Saddlebred shirts (2X size), a 40 inches reversible (brown/black) belt, and later bought two pairs of shoes. I bought a pair of brown, leather Hush Puppy sandals (earth shoe type with no heel) and a brown pair of Rockport loafers. These are probably the first shoes in years that I have bought that didn’t have shoe laces. Both have been comfortable to wear, and I wore the Rockports out of the store.
Belks in Morehead City
After we left Belks, we headed back toward home on Hwy. 24. I had seen a used
pontoon boat for sale on our way to Morehead City, and when we came to it on
our return trip, I asked Mary Ann to drive up to it. I hopped out of her SUV and took a few pictures.
We stopped at the Bogue House Restaurant for dinner. Mary Ann had oysters, I think, and I had a barbecue plate, with slaw, Brunswick stew, hush puppies and water to drink. I had only been here once before with Mary Ann, and did not especially like their seafood. *I think they had the tomato based clam chowder, which I don’t especially like. But, everything was exceptionally good this time. The barbecue was delicious. The slaw sweet (maybe too much so for a diabetic.), the stew good, and the hush puppies (yes, I ate all 4) hot and well flavored.
Bogue House is a small “hole in the wall” diner which may seat 45 people uncomfortably. Everything filled up quickly while Mary Ann and I were there.
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I forgot to take my Metformin after dinner (mainly because I hadn’t thought to bring one with me on our excursion). *Sunday morning is one of the two days that I test my blood sugar level. 123, which is the highest I’ve tested at since getting my Accu-Check Aviva meter. **Surprisingly, when I weighed this morning, I was 253.6 lbs., which is the least I have been in probably 8 years. It is also the first time I have broken the 254 lbs. mark that I set, when starting my second 5 weeks session for losing 10 lbs. This weight loss session started the Thursday that I had my colonoscopy, and that was the day that I ate so much that I gained 5 or 6 lbs. by the next day.
Bill Gibson, II 