Making Progress

What a strange and interesting week this has been, so far. Research, purchase, postponement, and lots of confusion and doctor's appointments.

Monday I set off for the two dive shops in town. One is near mid-town and turned out to be a hard-to-find bungalow on a side street. But the man there was very enthusiastic and showed me all kinds of things. The only problem was the price tags. My pipe-dream of coming in under $100 went out the window as he described the fins, mask, booties, snorkel, plus gloves, wetsuit and dive certification (because this is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, even though I think snorkeling will be sufficient for my needs) which added up to several hundreds of dollars. Just the basic gear would run about $200, without a wetsuit or lessons. My biggest chuckle came from his estimation of my size for the wetsuit - "you look about my size, so I would say an extra-large." For the record, I have never been estimated to be an extra-large in ANYTHING, so I am still laughing. But will be looking for an extra-large on eBay.

The second shop was more like a polished department store. Lots of floor space, standing racks of women's swimsuits, wall displays of different dive packages. Lessons were more expensive than at the bungalow, with an extra price (equal to the lessons) for the free-dive portion of the certification. The man there (a retired police officer from Mississippi) explained about the physics of dive fins and snorkels. Very educational as well.

Once I got home, back to eBay, and found a package with the premium fins suggested by polished man, plus booties, gloves, mask, snorkel and a carry bag for less than the items would have cost at either place. Tuesday, eBay sent me a nice email notifying me of a 10% coupon if I paid with PayPal, so I nabbed the buy-it-now option (with FREE shipping) and am waiting for delivery. Yay.

Tuesday also had a visit to the U of T medical labs for the pre-diabetes study. No, they aren't waiting for me to get it, but they are studying adults of black and white families whose parent or parent has diabetes. They drew some blood, injected me with a nice jelly (glucose tolerance test) which made me get all hot, then drew more blood. Like at the dive shop, I got a big chuckle out of one of the nurses measuring my waist. They find the hipbones, then the end of the short ribs. Trying to find my ribs, she commented that I was "dense"...I guess I am a bit more muscular than the usual patient.

From there, on to the accountant, where we finished off our taxes for last year. Yay again...a month early. Eventually we will get a refund, which won't stimulate the economy because it will go to pay of a portion of our HELOC, which we use to pay our property taxes. Go figure.

Now I am peeking around on eBay for a shortie wetsuit...short sleeves and legs. Plus the waterproof jacket/pants. I saw a nice one at Dick's Sporting Goods, which has a lot of hunting supplies, but also keeping my eyes out online to save some money.