To make up for our uncharacteristically dry winter, the weather gods decided to send all the rain and snow for the entire season all at once. The past few days have been all kinds of exciting for us here in Northern California. Snow in the north; rain in the Sacramento valley; all pouring from the sky with wild abandon. I am actually rather enjoying the return of the lake in the backyard, though. It’s kind of comforting to know that some things never change.

Speaking of other things are are exciting, we decided to get a second opinion on the iminent infesting of the undersides of our house with termites, because I still was very uncomfortable with how the first inspection came down and no matter which way I looked at it, it just kept feeling wrong. Turns out I was justified. The second inspector found no termites. None. Nada. Zilch. No termitey nibbles in the teensy bits of wood sliver under the house; no tubes being constructed by nasty critters determined to chow down on our raised foundation, no sign of them anywhere. Gee.

Of course, now we are pondering calling out one more inspector, just to see if we can get some kind of consensus (best two out of three), but I am feeling far less guilty about my failings as a home owner when it comes to crawling around in the dusty, musty space below the floor. And I am thinking that just to be on the safe side, we might take those termite stakes and plant them around the exterior of the house anyway, because one should never miss out on an opportunity to wipe out a colony of house-ravaging insects when one gets the chance.

And because I knew you all were dying to know, here is an update on my latest bout of happy sinus fun. Two weeks of decongestants and OTC nasal sprays has done very little to improve the situation, although I have now decided that I should stop fighting the pressure and the nerve spasms and become one with the feeling of impending head-explosion.  This little attempt at Zen is not going as well as one might expect, but I figure if this keeps up, eventually I’ll have no choice but to reach a level of pressure-induced enlightenment. Either that or one of these days when I stand up and the pressure smacks me upside the head, I will keel over and crack my skull open on a conveniently placed sharp edge, and none of this will matter anyway.

However, lest you think that this is the end of the fun, do not fear. The doctor sent me off for x-rays of my sinuses, and I must admit that there was part of me hoping that they’d find *something* – something easily fixable, of course, but *something* that would at least indicate just why my sinuses have been doing their best to make me miserable . Alas, the x-rays showed nothing, which means that since my sinuses have now successfully stumped my regular doctor, I have now been foisted off onto someone else. I’ve got an appointment with an EN&T specialist next week, which means, if past history is anything to go by, my sinuses will continue to torment until the morning of my scheduled appointment, at which time they will miraculously resume something approximating normal behavior, thereby making me look like a neurotic hypochondriac, should I still choose to keep my appointment.

In other news, today I sent away for level I of the Master Knitter program. My goal is to get through all three levels by the time I am 40, which gives me just a bit over two years to accomplish this. The fact that one of the driving factors for doing this is because the thought of then being able to introduce myself as a Master Knitter makes me giggle is probably not something I should be admitting to, is it. Hmm.