Oh what a wasted three weeks!  First I had the flu, then Tom, so between the last blog and now, we've been sick and taking care of each other to the point where there was only a minor holiday celebration.

Tom's sinuses were so plugged last Thursday that he brought himself to our local Hospital emergency room and got a prescription for painkillers and antibiotics.  His blood pressure taken from his right and left arms was significantly different, so they did a cat scan, just to be on the cautious side.  His diagnosis was (no surprise) a sinus infection.

I ran only once in the last 3 weeks.  December 22nd we said "hey, wasn't yesterday Solstice?"  Christmas morning I made Turkish breakfast and then we opened cards and letters.  We had 2 packages under the tree:  one was some yummy prickly pear syrup from Mike and Deb, the other was a book, _The_Natural_History_of_Everything_ from Tom's parents.

We were housebound and we took the opportunity to do some cooking, cleaning; Tom made a little progress with our hot tub privacy barrier and also designed and created a headboard for our bed which is really a shelf for the cats.  I tried to catch up on some phone calls to friends and family.

That bonus that I thought I would spend making a major dent in our debt, I spent on a new bed instead.  We had been sleeping in our own guest bedroom for the past 6 months because the 9 year old waterbed was no longer comfortable for either of us.  Once I had my bonus in hand, it occurred to me that sometime soon my Mom or Inlaws, or someone is going to visit us overnight, and that this was our best opportunity to make a quick purchase while the sales were on, so we did.  We like our new bed and haven't slept in the guest bed since.

One last extravagance this year is that I have been getting facials.  They are silly, expensive things.  They use LED light to stimulate connective tissue growth - whoever heard of anything so hokey?  But the weird thing is that they are noticeably working.  They cost less than laser facials, they are safer, and require less maintenance.

The split pea soup recipe is new.  The Kwanzaa list on my index page is new.

I'm trying to install RedHat 9.0 on our new Gateway server for our accounting department.  So far I've reinstalled 4 times and broke in in single user mode about 7 times.  Logins are just not working.  I've found the Web less than helpful.  I'm checking the logs.

I STILL haven't gotten Majordomo working properly on my server for SeattleLinuxChix.  I phoned my ISP and they are supposedly sending my messages through, but it isn't working the way it should and I'll need to look deeper into it.

I'm going to join the local gym for the Winter months so I don't lose ground on my running.  My left heel is starting to twinge first thing in the morning and I'm a little worried that I could be redoing my old injury.

We are continuing to enjoy the hot tub.  It has increased our together conversation time and decreased our television time.  Both good things.

The last 3 weeks have been unseasonably warm.  In fact we had a record high 56 degrees on one of those last few days.  It has been rainy and overcast, with a few rare sunbreaks.  When I felt well enough, I pruned away last years herb growth to make room for next year's.

A Bewick's wren is visiting our shade garden feeder regularly.