Monday, December 29, 2008

Update on travels to date

No pictures on this one. I'm using the hotel computer in Phoenix, Arizona.
Fran and I drove to Los Alamos the weekend before Christmas. Then our daughter drove us, our granddaughter, grandson and three of his friends to Telluride, Colorado. Granddaughter was in an ice hockey tournament there and grandson with friends was going snowboarding.
Granddaughter is on the New Mexico state U18 girl's hockey team. They played teams from Telluride and Durango in the tournament. They played very well, but both the other teams were stronger. Ah, but it snowed every day we were there. The boys had terrific snowboarding. We had a couple of fine meals in the town restaurants,then drove back to Los Alamos on Christmas eve.
The day after Christmas, we loaded in the car again, just the family this time. Grandson is on the New Mexico U16 team and was playing in a tournament in Phoenix. His team played teams from Arizona, Alaska and Colorado. They won one, lost one and tied two. We'll see tomorrow if they made the finals.
The drive here was exciting. Interstate 40 runs all the way to Phoenix, but it is shorter to cut off early and follow US and state roads south. Remember I said it had been snowing in Colorado? All that moisture came up fromthe south. It left snow and ice on many of the roads. We made it to Payson, AZ without trouble, stopped there for a really excellent meal at Fargo's Steak House. About 20 miles out of town, we were stopped and toldthat there was black ice on the road ahead. We were steered east about 40 miles, then were able to turn back toward Phoenix. Hunddreds of cars had been steered in the same direction. It made for a traffic jam hours long. We found our hotel about 2 in the morning and collapsed.
The first game was that afternoon and the boys played very well. But they fell apart the next morning before they pulled themselves together.
I just wanted to fill faithful readers in on our adventures since from here to the end of our trip, there won't be Internet available.
Hope your Christmas was merry and that hou have a wonderful 2009.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

General catching up

I haven't been writing much in the past month. Summer turning to fall, then to winter has depressed me. The dim, gray light of overcast days makes me sleepy and then I don't sleep well at night. All part of getting older, I suppose. But I don't have to like it!

Tomorrow, I'll be in surgery again for a short procedure. The battery on my pacemaker is getting low and needs to be replaced. Actually, Nurse Holly told me that they will just pull the old thing (pacemaker, defibrillator and generator) out and replace it with a brand new one. They leave the leads in place since they have scarred into the tissue around my heart. I get to keep the old one so I can look at it and know what that thing in my chest looks like. Another nugget of knowledge from Nurse Holly was that if one of the leads (wires connecting the device to the heart) goes bad, they don't pull it. Instead, the surgeon runs another lead. Pulling the bad lead out might damage the heart.






Sammi, our neighborhood cat, has returned. He jumped into the drive this morning as I was leaving. I tried to coax him into the garage so I could dry and feed him. But he preferred to run around in the rain. His owner has finally put a collar around his neck. There is no ID or rabies tag on the collar, but all the neighbors know and feed that cat. He is affectionate and very "Helpful" when Fran and I are gardening in summer. Alas, he is also an excellent hunter, He has caught and eaten two birds that I know of and has chased the lizards all over our rocky slope garden. Last summer, he caught a ground squirrel but let it go after playing with it for a few seconds. I suspect that he has taken a toll on the local rabbits as well.

Fran and I are about to depart for Christmas. Our grandchildren live in New Mexico. We'll go there next week, then drive up to Telluride, Colorado to watch a hockey game played by both kids. It will be the first time we have visited Telluride in winter. We'll have Christmas in New Mexico, then head down to Phoenix, Arizona to watch hockey tournaments that the kids will play. These "holiday hockey tournaments" have become a staple in our family. I'm not sure how we'll spend the holidays when both have grown too old for the leagues that sponsor them. I suspect we'll find something to do. There lots of jigsaw puzzles around our daughter's and, of course, there is always televised football and hockey.

So here's wishing all of you a wonderful set of holidays and hoping for the best new year that can be.