Christmas time

We've seen a couple of these guys in the neighborhood recently:


Coyotes! I saw one in front of our house across the street this evening, just trotting along ver casually. B and I both saw two walking through our back yard, not at the same time, and we saw another one about a block away from us when we were out taking a walk a few weeks ago. Pretty neat.

It seems like every time I make an entry here, it's about some doctor's appointment, so...this one will be, too. I didn't go to the appointment with the general practitioner because they called me the day before my appointment and said they'd have to reschedule AGAIN because the doctor wouldn't be in that day. This is the same place that cancelled on me because I wasn't exactly 15 minutes early, so I'm done with them. I gave them two chances and I'm through trying to get in to see a doctor there. I haven't found another doctor to see yet, and I'm feeling pretty discouraged about the whole thing right now, so I haven't really looked for anyone else.

Today was my monthly visit to the pain management doctor and I had to wait almost an hour to see the doctor. Usually they aren't that slow and I've only had to wait a maximum of a half hour. I don't know what was going on today. I had kind of a psychic moment after finally being taken back to the exam room. B was waiting in the car for me and I knew he must be wondering what was taking so long, and I imagined he might come in looking for me. Just a minute later, I heard B at the check-in desk asking about me, so I poked my head out to show him I was back in the exam room. I felt really bad about taking so long because he had to adjust his work schedule to take me to this appointment, but really there was nothing I could do about it except sit there and wait. Then as usual, I saw the doctor for all of 20 seconds; he gave me my prescription refills and I left.

My hand has been feeling better, but I haven't been getting a lot of work the past couple weeks because this is typically a slow time of year. Course, I have plenty of other aches and pains to make up for that. Seems like when the weather changes, I feel worse. We were having lots of sunny, mild days here until last week when it suddenly got cloudy and we actually had some rain during the past few days. Isn't this supposed to be the desert? There's some snow on the highest mountain peaks in the area too, but there was no snowfall here in the valley. I wouldn't mind seeing a little snow.

Next Sunday is when we're going up to Vegas for a couple days and we're going to open our Christmas presents from each other the night before. B actually talked me into opening one present each early, last weekend. He wanted to give me some coffee that he ordered from my favorite coffee place back in NC, so now I have 6 pounds of fresh new coffee flavors. I really need to freeze some of it now so it stays fresh. The box the coffee was in smelled so good when I opened it up. My favorite is probably Sumatra Mandheling, but he also got a bunch of flavored coffees for me like Hazelnut, Chocolate Fudge, etc. And Mel, if you read this, my tried-and-true method for making coffee is one ounce of ground coffee to 6 ounces of water. I'm a fan of General Foods International Coffee, too. They make some instant chai tea that's very good in addition to the coffee flavors.

B and I enjoy watching The Dog Whisperer, even though we don't have any dogs, and last night we saw an episode where Cesar went to Vegas and helped various members of Cirque du Soleil with their dog issues. That was pretty cool because one of the people he helped was one of the main characters in Ka, which we saw back in 2005. That was our favorite Vegas show out of all the ones we've seen, I think. We've talked about going to see it again, in fact. Maybe one of these days my dad will come out to visit, like he keeps saying he wants to, and we could take him and his wife to see Ka.

We got the last of our Christmas stuff taken care of yesterday by going to the mail store and mailing our Christmas cards and also a box of presents to the store B used to co-own back in NC. I guess technically he still does own part of it, but only a small percentage. Anyway, we filled a small box with little presents, like a Route 66 mug, some Arizona keychains, candies, chocolates and toys, and then put a card inside telling them to divide up the stuff however they want. I think they'll enjoy getting a box of treats from us and hopefully won't feel guilty or obligated to send us anything. I ordered a set of nice-smelling body butters from Sephora for B's mom and I ordered gift certificates for my mom and her husband and my dad and his wife, and I've been finished with B's shopping for a couple weeks now, though I do plan to get him something else when we're in Vegas.

My mom's birthday was earlier this month and I sent her some things from Sephora and she sent me a nice email thanking me for the present. She invited us to come visit next summer and stay with them for a couple weeks, and I appreciate the invitation, but it is just so misguided. Several years ago, she and her husband were going to come visit us, but her husband was really rude to B on the phone and has never apologized or tried to make amends for it at all, so there's no way we're going to go stay at their house with the possibility of more hostility from him. This is something I know mom must understand, yet she still thinks we can come visit like nothing ever happened?? I don't think so. So when I answered her email, I simply thanked her for the invitation and conversely invited her to visit us, too. Frankly, I don't think either visit will ever happen, but I guess we have to be polite and ask.

I added a new Ayumi gif on the right side of the layout today using some more recent pics of her that I thought were especially pretty. I keep waiting for her to put out a cool video that I can use for a new gif, but none of her videos lately have been that great...just sort of average. I know she went to Shanghai to film one that was very expensive recently, but I just thought it was okay. Here it is, if you'd like to make an assessment for yourself: