and now, a tree

I blew off today's aikido seminar, for reasons already discussed. (Plus sleeping late, and blueberry buttermilk pancakes...)

Instead, we picked out our Christmas tree at the local (20 miles away) cut-your-own tree farm. You can pick out a tree, and pay for it, as early as...well, yesterday, and come back and cut it sometime after Thanksgiving. Since we got there 30 hours after tagging began, all the Good Trees were already claimed (pout), leaving hundreds of...other good trees. Really, they have a good product, as the marketing folk say.

This year, we picked out a Noble Fir, not a variety we've dealt with before, just because it was different and kind of funky. It's very full, but in layers, leaving a lot of room for dangly ornaments. It should be fun to decorate, but we may have to be more careful and deliberative than usual.

On the way home, we stopped at Dover Saddlery, formerly State Line Tack. I got a pair of half-chaps to replace the 20 year old ones that are starting to fall apart. But then I didn't have time to ride by the time we got home. Oh, the irony!

Closeup of a Fraser Fir, under harsh late-afternoon sunlight.


Closer-up of another Fraser Fir. Lovely coloration. Both of these will wind up on texture at some point.


Not an evergreen at all.

let's get small

Last Monday, we had a consultation with an endocrinologist at Children's Hospital, to make sure nothing was medically wrong with Kylie's growth. She's always been at the 3rd percentile in height and weight - always growing, but never catching up to her peers.

We got there at 2:00 for a 2:30 appointment, and got the paperwork finished just in time for her appointment. ...And waited...and waited...and watched Spongebob with the sound mercifully turned off...and waited some more. And it was 4:30 before they actually saw us. The small upside is that, even though they were running way behind, they didn't try to catch up at our expense. We had a nice long consult with the doctor, and Kylie got poked and prodded (inspected, detected, neglected, and selected), and asked all manner of (to her) bizarre questions ("Has your sense of smell changed recently?). Then they sent us down the hall to X-ray her wrist (to check the state of the growth plates, and estimate bone age [11]), and take about two dozen blood samples. And so it was 7:00 before we were out of there.

So the upshot is, it took five hours and a week to determine that Kylie is just small. Based on the results of a three-month followup visit, we may be considering growth hormones. Or she may just grow on her own.