Chocolate Day.

It's been a dry day that began grey but turned sunny by the afternoon.

Both of us left the house before 9.00, Peter to go off on a row and I had an appointment to see the doctor. Unfortunately  it wasn't with the 'main' doctor but with the junior doctor and confusingly they both look very similar. The upshot of the appointment was that he would talk to the main guy and send a prescription for an alternative beta blocker to the pharmacy for me to collect in the morning. However the main doctor phoned me in the afternoon and after repeated assurances that the palpitations were only a nuisance to me and would not have any detrimental medical effect I decided to try not taking the beta blockers at all and then if it does cause too much of a problem either go back on a lower dose or an alternative beta blocker. Wish me luck. I've also been suffering from jabby-itis ie a sore arm and feeling quite rough after yesterday's shingles vaccination. A good thing I have a store of pain killers.

 

One lovely thing this morning was to see a pod of three dolphins hunting fish by the reef. I haven't had many dolphin sightings at all this year which made it even more special.

Once I got back from the surgery I spent the day working with chocolate, tempering it first though I'm not sure if that's worth the effort, coating all the truffles and decorating them, making some marzipan filled chocolates and decorating biscuits with dark or white chocolate. At least these were all things I've done before and I was able to avoid making too much mess with the chocolate. It is awkward stuff to wash up and as well as the silicone baking sheets I found baking parchment handy for laying the biscuits on before drizzling chocolate across with wild abandon. Any chocolate left at the end was poured out and topped with sprinkles. Those may or may not last until our Christmas visitors arrive. (I'd already packed the truffles that will be posted before taking the photo below.)

The hardest part of today's efforts was packing up a parcel of biscuits and truffles and a felted decoration to post off to Romas and Laura. I thought I had it all organised but having carefully filled and weighed the gift box the cardboard box I had hoped to use turned out to be the wrong size. I had to make do with several smaller sheets of brown wrapping paper secured with plenty of duct tape. I've just had one last weight check and it comes in at 1,929 gms. (The limit is 2kg.)

When I finally sat down to have a tv break my choice of 'The Bad Skin Clinic' began with a young lady who had lost all her hair. Not very reassuring for me but her case was different as she had alopecia and the latest medication worked for her.

There's no choir tonight due to a family emergency for our choir teacher and we didn't have Pilates last night as the school were having their Christmas concert in the Hall. I don't think I'd have the energy to go out anyway.