<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:BookmanOldStyle">Home and comfy now. Carrying around a quart bottle of antibiotic set up for continuous infusion (it's under pressure, and releases the drug all day through the PICC line in my upper arm).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:BookmanOldStyle">We put off Christmas till this morning; Lore, Tim and Barbara came over at 8:30 for opening presents. Not quite as much of a consumer orgy as usual, since I was indisposed and couldn't even go shopping on the web. I got some nice fountain pens. Gay got me a chrome yellow extra-fine Lamy Safari, to replace the one I got last Xmas and lost, and a wonderful Pelikan, which used to be the standard for italic handwriting, and is newly back on the market. Barbara gave me the Pelikano Junior, the European schoolkids' version, which I'll keep in my purse.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:BookmanOldStyle">Gay also got me a lovely large (#14) watercolor brush, a Kolinski sable from Daniel Smith. Many books from divers sources. Billy Collins and Elmore Leonard, to go from the poetic to the prosaic.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:BookmanOldStyle">A replacement chamois shirt from LL Bean -- my old one is going on thirty years old, and decided not to last forever.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:BookmanOldStyle">Just went out and walked a few blocks with Gay. Brr -- it's in the thirties out there, and may drop below 20 tonight. Hope the alligators are okay down under the mud. Don't come knockin'!<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination:none;mso-layout-grid-align:none; text-autospace:none"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:BookmanOldStyle">Gay got a new couch that incorporates two recliners with built-in massagers.
Decadent. You have to feed them three times a day, but they're pretty small.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:16.0pt;font-family:BookmanOldStyle">Joe</span><o:p></o:p></div> <!--EndFragment-->
</body></html>