Doha - Day 2

 Jay woke up a little earlier than I did and went down and got breakfast and brought me back a croissant.  
We booked an athlete package through the World Aquatics program and so we have 3 meals daily at the restaurant - he said that the breakfast buffet was amazing, so that's good news.  We also get free shuttles to the Asprire Dome, 3 pc of laundry daily each (which we are NOT used to travelling in hotels, we always rent a house or condo and have our own laundry to having laundry, even 6 pc daily is a huge bonus) and entry into events.  

We're staying at the Marriott Marquis City Centre Doha - we were originally booked at the JW Marriott Marquis City Centre Doha (right? I mean FFS).  But, as Maria was reading about the hotel about 2 weeks ago she realized that for the duration of our stay the pool area was going to be closed, and it was a nice pool area, one of the main reasons we chose the hotel.  So she decided that she and Jim would switch hotels regardless and that made me look up my reservation and realize instead of booking the JW Marriott Marquis City Centre Doha I had booked the Marriott Marquis City Centre Doha..not sure how on earth that might have happened - who names two hotels side by side the same fucking thing?  Anyway, I realized and then realized that it actually worked out in our favour since the pool isn't open at the JW - so proceeded to let Grey and Ashley know I screwed up but that we would move to the JW if they wanted - they preferred to have a pool so they moved to the regular Marriott and Jay's Dad decided to switch to the Four Seasons Doha to be at the beach (and also because they wouldn't charge him for early check in and late check out because he stays with that brand a lot) - so it all worked out in the end.

Once Jay was done breakfast he and Grey took off to go to the event space to do their accreditation, Jay had to pay for our hotel (I had arranged to pay on arrival so we could do it by credit card and get points and insurance rather than paying by wire transfer in advance) and then they went for a practice swim.

While Jay's gone I text back and forth with Maria making plans for a food tour in The Pearl district and with Chrissy Henderson, who I went to high school with, about getting together because she lives here and will take us to a Souq and we'll grab lunch on the 28th before Jay swims later in the day - he won't come likely because of the timing but it will be nice to see her and I read my book.  We have a nice room overlooking the pool area, it's a corner with floor to ceiling windows ( I just took a pic and I'll insert it here) all the curtains close so it's nice and dark at night but nice and bright during the day.

I'm a pretty confident, independent traveller but two things I hate: 1) paying taxi drivers (don't know why) and 2) going to eat by myself.  So while the croissant this morning was delicious by the time Jay got home from his sign in and swim I was starving (as evidenced by the text exchange below).

It's now 3:30ish and we decided to go to the Four Seasons to see Bob (Jay's Dad), it's about a 20 minute walk and this is not a city that is designed for walking - there is really not a sidewalk that's consistent.  I still haven't eaten since the croissant at 9am this morning and I'm cranky.

The Four Seasons is beautiful but very over the top, like you would expect.  Lunch is delicious - I ordered the tuna poke bowl and Jay and I shared a tempura shrimp roll.  He loves me most because when the roll comes out and there are 8 pieces I let him have 5 and only take 3, lol, it's the little things.

We get back to the hotel and Jay starts to fall asleep at about 6:45pm..I asked him if he's out for the night or if he's just napping and he says to wake him up in 45 mins because it's too early to go to sleep so I read and then wake him up at 7:30pm.  He's just sleepily closing his eyes again when I ask if he really wants to get up or if he wants to sleep..so we get up and go down to the restaurant to grab a snack.  The dinner is really good too - we both just get a bit of salad and hummus to eat because we aren't starving after having 'lunch' so late but it's good to get up and move about and have something not too heavy. 

We put our 6 laundry items in the bag and sent them for cleaning, they'll be back tomorrow.  You can't accumulate your wash and do it all at once so we'll be doing 6 items daily until we leave on the 1st so hopefully we have mostly clean clothes when we leave.  The second part of our trip is 6 nights in the Maldives where I really only need bathing suits and pjs so we should be fine.

I'm up reading a book until about 2am (partially because my time is still a bit off and partially because it's a good travel read) before I turn off my Kindle and go to sleep.

World Masters in Doha

 Jay completed an Iron Man last year and unlike most Ironmen he decided it's the only one he will ever do!  But, he'd put in so much training that he wanted to capitalize on that on the best segment of the triathlon for him, the swim.

He's been training with the Aurora Ducks Masters and the Uxbridge Swim Club elite swimmers, competed in a bunch of swim meets and now we're off to Doha for the World Masters Aquatic Championships.

Maria and Jim are meeting us in Doha, as is Jay's Dad (not really sure how that happened but he's working in London, UK so he's making the trip over) and Grey, who Jay has been training with, and his girlfriend Ashley will be there as well.

Our flight is at 9:10pm - Lindsay is taking us to the airport.  Because my parents are away for the winter in Florida and South Carolina someone has to stay with the girls.  Lindsay has dog/house sat for us before and I was like "how do you feel about teenagers?"  She's super sweet, just graduated University last year and has been working with us (The Cindy Wood Team).  She really wants the girls to like her and hang out with her so she's likely going to be a total sucker!

It's a pretty decent trek to Doha - it was significantly less expensive to fly Air Canada and do a stopover in Frankfurt (where we currently are while I write this) than to fly Qatar Airways with just a stop in Montreal and then the rest direct.

Our first flight is an 'overnight' where we're hoping to sleep for 4-5 hours and then stay up for the duration until we get to Qatar because it's 8 hours ahead and we arrive at 11:30pm their time which is 3:30pm home time but with only having had 4 hours sleep and travelled and it's dark we're hoping we can just get to the hotel and go straight to sleep and be somewhat on 'time' tomorrow.  We got on the plane and our seats are pods so they're all facing every which way and even though Jay and I are both in row 6 he's behind me and on the same angle as me so I can't really see him.  I told him it probably wasn't a bad thing because I won't use my CPAP while I try to sleep on the plane and he got this really thankful/wistful look on his face and said "there isn't enough magnesium in the world"...(we've been taking a magnesium supplement to help us sleep and it's great and now that I have the CPAP I don't snore so we're both sleeping well!)

Jay's first event isn't until Tuesday (today is Saturday, we left on Friday) and his big event that he wants to do well at is on Thursday.  Jim and Maria arrive on Monday, Jay's Dad there was a miscommunication in timing and so he arrived 2 days ago and leaves before Jay's final event, Grey and Ashley left yesterday but they might be there already because their layover was short in Montreal and ours is 4 hrs here in Frankfurt.

Travel has been awesome (not really) because I have cramps (of course, hello vacation) and fucking hot flashes.  Worst.  These are new (like in the last week) and I'm not happy about it.  The lounge we're in has showers though so I just went and had a cold shower to try to cool off but then got all hot again getting dressed in the tiny shower room. FFS.

I expect there will be a lot of down time on this trip because Jay's going to want to rest up for his events so I figured it was a good time to pull out the blog again!  I haven't blogged in a LONG time...not since the height of Covid.  Obviously we're travelling again.  But I haven't written about it - we've been back to Costa Rica (twice), to Florida, to Curacao and to California I think since the last time I wrote - but not a big trip like this, that I'd like to remember, thus the writing.  I did have a couple of half started posts - one about Jay's Ironman in Maryland just about the drive down there and one I have no idea where we were but Maria was in it and so was Juls - might have been a trip to Arizona (oh, we also went to Arizona for a girls weekend and to Vancouver last summer to see Matt and Stephanie get married).  This is a big trip though, and a great accomplishment for Jay so I want to remember it - there is nothing I love more than going back through some of the travel blogs (I just read a few from out last trip to Italy and so many awesome memories).

The second leg of our trip we flew Qatar Airways and holy shit is it nice.  Our pods had doors on them..doors!  sliding doors where you could close yourself off from the world - I didn't close myself off but I could if I wanted to!

I didn't sleep the second leg so I just got the 4 hours of crappy sleep on Air Canada on our first leg.  We arrived in Doha, went through security and immigration - they took fingerprint scans and had to scan your face and eyes - she had to ask me to open my eyes (they're very squinty) and so I can just imagine anyone reviewing footage later coming across my photo with my eyes bug out which naturally makes me extend my neck and chin out like a turtle.  WTF.

We took a taxi to the hotel, checked in, got to our room - it's big, a corner room, two double beds instead of a King but whatever.  It's almost 1am here - we're 8 hours ahead so it's 5pm at home.  The time difference is going to be a doozie with working and communicating with the girls.

I didn't take any photos - I really got out of the habit - can't wait until Maria gets here with her snap happy outlook and shares all her pics with me - haha.

Physical Distancing - Day 67 (Day 81)

Its Saturday!

Myah came over today and the girls rode around the yard on their bikes.  They’ve been riding two bikes between them so when I was out today picking up my grocery pick up I stopped at Julia and Steve’s to pick up Myah’s bike.

I went to the LCBO to pick up some stuff to make Sangria and ran into someone who had done some work on our first renovation of Cemetery Rd.  He asked if I had seen Kerry and Derek’s pool yet, our neighbours two doors down - I haven’t so I texted Carrie and asked if we could come by.  Jay and I were out heading to the LCBO in Port Perry to grab a bottle of Ron Zacapa for Steve-o for his birthday and wanted to stop by on the way back.  We did and their pool is stunning, its ICF built with a marbelite finish.  The contractor, who is local, did a great job.  So I asked Kerry for his information and he’s coming to give us a quote on Monday morning.

I got home from there and made the Sangria, I made a double batch and I’ll take some back over to Kerry and take the rest to the Faust’s.  

Kerry didn’t get a full bottle. I told her she could drink it straight but I wouldn’t recommend it..so I brought her a cider too. 



We went to Steve and Julia’s house for dinner for Steve’s birthday dinner.  I brought salad and the Willowtree black garlic jelly and cream cheese with crackers.  Steve BBQ’ed flank steak and Juls baked cupcakes and made a double stuffed potato from M&Ms that was really good.

We decided that for Super Tock we’ll play to 8 games and then switch the partners up - so we kept our current partners for now and Juls and I won the first 3 and then lost 2 in a row so we stopped for the night.  It could have been the sangria!

Today’s numbers:

Physical Distancing - Day 66 (Day 80)

My new beer came in today!  I ordered online and it was delivered the next day.
What day is today...no idea.  I’m thinking today is Friday.  HAHA. (Now its Sunday, the blog might be pretty much done now).

Today’s numbers - unfortunately 12 new cased at Reachview - 11 residents and 1 staff.

Physical Distancing - Day 65 (Day 79)

We went to Century Home and Garden Greenhouses today to get some succulents for making some pots for my Mom, Maria and our Adopt-a-Grad.

I sat outside this afternoon drinking a beer..wish I had taken the towel off of the chair!



Today’s numbers - I’m waiting too long between blogs and now I can’t remember what we did that day other than the photos I have!

Physical Distancing - Day 64 (Day 78)

I got up and cut the grass today, after we had Anthony from Main St Pools out to give us a quote on a new pool. We have 4 quotes coming this week.  We were hoping to use our friend Pete but his pool company is way out of our price point when he gave Jay the quote today.  Beautiful pools but not in our budget unfortunately.

Jay takes the blue car in tomorrow to the city so hopefully its sold!

I cut the grass again today, the girls wanted some jobs to earn some money so they cut the grass for a bit and also raked up the grass clippings.  Dave is coming to cut the grass every two weeks but it needs cut in between.  I don’t mind cutting it, I put my music on and go out with sunblock.  Today was a little crazy though I had a mortgage client call me at noon that his daughter needed a mortgage approved by Friday - I talked to her, I talked to her boyfriend, I talked to my client again about co-signing and finally sent it all in after they sent me all the required documents.  My clients accountant sent me 2018 T1 General, 22 pages, in 22 separate .jpg files...ugh, I asked her to send 2019 as one PDF and explained where she would find that on the scanner so that she could combine it to one document as a PDF and she sent 2019 as 25 individual .jpg files and said “I’m not very techy”.  Good lord, I’m not sure I would want her being MY accountant!  She says she prints off the return and sends it to CRA - I think she MAILS it!  Anyway, between that and a few other calls today it took me about 6 hours to cut the grass. Lol.  Paige made $35 and Sophie made $10.  Paige did a really good job today both cutting the grass and raking up piles.  Jay didn’t think that the grass needed to be but but it looks so much better now and there was a lot of loose grass cuttings.  I’m hoping that because we fertilized it is why its so thick and growing so quickly now and that we can get away with cutting it only once between Dave’s cuts because this time we cut it twice between his cuts and it will need it again when he comes on Monday.

The library opened for pick ups so I called and got set up with an online account and Sophie reserved two books that we can pick up tomorrow.

Jay took the girls for a mountain bike ride at the Countryside Preserve, I think they just needed to get out of the house - plus they used up a lot of screen time today somehow and have to read!

We had a bench staff zoom call, Jim wants to have a zoom in order to give the year end awards out.  He had ordered them prior to the shut down. And who knows what’s going to happen in September or in the summer.  I think it will be chaos with 16 girls on a zoom call!

Today’s numbers, Reachview went up again but today was a staff member:

Physical Distancing - Day 63 (Day 77)

There’s not much to say today, my sangria recipe came up in my memories and after that the only pictures I took was the one below.

Its #blackouttuesday a way to show solidarity, respect and understanding for black people. There are riots all through the US right now, triggered by the death of George Floyd who was in police custody, handcuffed and on the ground and was still being subdued by an officer who was kneeling on his neck until he died.  It was taped by someone and multiple photos on social media and all media to show the way that some police treat black suspects.  In this case he was suspected of trying to kite a $20 cheque but in reality it was a good cheque and he was killed for nothing - less than nothing, he shouldn’t have been killed at all even if the cheque was bad.  There is looting and several police officers have been shot and killed.  There are protests and riots and its just crazy in the States right now.

Today the girls read for a bit, it was kinda rainy out.  They used up their screen time and in order to get their phones back they have to read for the amount of time they want the phones back as an incentive.  They get 90 minutes a day “free” and anything they go over uses up their screen time for the following day unless they read to make up for it.

Today’s numbers:
Uxbridge was up again, another LTC resident at Reachview.