December First. The Holiday Season is half over! We've survived Halloween and Thanksgiving, and have Christmas and New Years to weather yet. I can't tell you how thrilled I am to not be working retail during this time of year. My stress levels have plummeted, although I do miss seeing all the fun new stuff and having extra money to spend.

Haven't gotten out with either of the meetup groups lately, although our family did go to Sedona on Black Friday for a Pink Jeep Outing. (See the flickr badge on the left there for new photos.) It was my brilliant idea to take mom and dad up to Sedona the day after Thanksgiving and avoid the hordes of people out shopping here in Phoenix. It was a great plan, in theory. Unfortunately, aproximately 90% of Phoenecians had the same idea. The main street where the tour met up was packed with shoppers and tourists--we had to park blocks and blocks away. And it was COLD! Hats and gloves weather. And hot chocolate. It really was an amazing trip, though; I wish we could have spent more time *in* Sedona, but we were all frozen to the core by the time we got back from the Tour. It was all we could do to haul ourselves to a soup and sandwich shop before hightailing it back to the warmth of the car heaters.

The folks got here on Tuesday before Thanksgiving and left the Tuesday afterwards, and I mean it when I say it was too short of a trip. I'm not sure why, but it seemed to pass very quickly and I wish they'd have stayed longer.

We had another houseguest over the weekend as well, a friend of ours who is in the military and is temporarily stationed down by Tucson for some classes. Now that he and my folks are gone, and R is back to work it's very very quiet in the house. I spend a lot of time talking to the dogs, and the oblige me by responding in whines and wookie noises. It's not the same as human interaction though, so I may just have to spend some more time (window) shopping over the next few weeks, just to get my human interaction fix.

And OH! Look:
I just took this photo out of the loft window here at the house!

It rained yesterday for no less than 7 hours--practically non-stop! It was glorious. It was all dark clouds and gloom and flooding in the streets, and although we are supposed to have showers all day today, the wall of blackness is breaking up, and we're getting wonderfully fluffy cumulus clouds. I'm not sure if I've ever seen these here before. It is still raining off and on, which is just fine with us. We rarely get to experience *weather* here, so it's a nice change. Break out the hot cocoa and chili--this is about as winter as it gets!