I've been having a very busy summer. First with summer school, both teaching and taking classes, and then visiting my Dad in Dresden (Germany) where he's on his penultimate assignment with FIFA before retirement.

Beautiful city, Dresden is. It has rebuilt itself from the ashes of total destruction in WWII and subsequent Soviet occupation to become an elegant, vibrant city with a very high quality of life. This was my second time visiting my Dad there and the first with my husband. Lots of walking, visits to churches, museums, galleries, a FAB opera house and sitting in cafes chatting and people watching. Happily I was able to sample the delicious Saxon cuisine without going overboard, which I am really really pleased about.

At my last weigh in I had dropped a further 2.5kgs (around 5lbs) to bring my weight to 71.5kgs/158lbs.

In other news I have started a vegetable and herb gardening venture on my patio. I got a bunch of seeds and am attempting to grow lettuce, tomatoes, sweet peppers, dill, basil, parsley, etc. I think I've started a little late in the season, but we'll see how things go.

I see from my comments, I've won a few awards during my absence. Thank you to everyone who has given me an award. I will be around to your blogs today to thank you personally and will honour the suggested guidelines in my next post. Meanwhile, I was tagged by Journey Beyond Survival a while ago and the question was:

What are 5 things you would do if you were a billionaire?
First this is a ridiculous amount of money, more in my opinion than any one human being needs or should have, so I would have to give most of it away.

1. Bank 100 million and plan to live off the interest
2. Give 5 million to each family member, 2.5 million each to my friends and 1 - 1/2 million to random people who I know are having a hard time = 100 million approximately
3. Select 10 - 20 issues I feel strongly about and finance their improvement = 800 million approximately.
4. That's it.
5. Ditto
   

What 5 things would you do if you were a billionaire?

It 4:44am. A new day has begun and I haven't gone to bed yet. I've been up trying to complete my end of term paperwork for all my classes. Finally it's all done and I can go to bed if only for two and a half hours. I need to be at work by 10am and I have to leave enough time to get in my exercise and food prep and to walk to the tube.

Before I go to bed though, I just wanted to jump on here and say a great big thanks to all of you who read and/or comment here. Your comments really brighten my day and make this very difficult journey easier. I especially want to thank Journey Beyond Survival for tagging me. I'll leave answering your question: What are 5 things you would do if you were a billionaire? for my next post.

I'd also like to thank Lynda at Taking Less Space for selecting me for her first ever Taking Less Space giveaway. What a lovely lovely surprise!!! All this love makes up for my not having lost any weight this week ... as a matter of fact not only did I not lose any weight but, quite bizarrely the scale read exactly the same as it did last week. How odd is that??? I did get some really fantastic news on another front though. I went to the doctor to have my blood pressure checked and it has come way down from the high readings I got before I started losing weight. I'm now high normal, which means I still have a ways to go to get it back to normal, but I'm so happy it's moving in the right direction.

Well, I'm off to bed. Will catch up with everyone tomorrow ... ummmm ... later today that is!!! Definitely looking forward to reading what you've all been up to.