Good morning or good evening, wherever you may be. It is just past 3:30 a.m. in "The City."

I was blissfully sleeping when I was once again awakened by a small licking, licking, licking on my elbow. Guess who? At 3:00 a.m. Ginger was asking to go out and three-peat. Down we went and out she went, and she was satisfied. I did the few dinner dishes in the sink and at the same time, disappointed the fur-children.

By the time I was done with those dishes, STWD had joined us, not to go out, but to see if a treat was happening. It wasn't. We came back up to my office where I pulled treats out of my desk drawer and they were sated and off to bed themselves.

We have a current temperature of 27° as we drop to the overnight low of 26° under cloudy-skies. Today's high will reach 34° under sunny-skies once the sun rises @ 7:36 and sometime before it sets @ 5:21 p.m. The Small Craft Advisory that had been in effect is now over.

Yesterday, we made my orthopedist appointment with minutes to spare, although the doctor was behind by about 45 minutes. Before we had the chance to meet and greet, so to speak, I first had another set of X-rays on my knees, something that I have every year. In came the doctor to tell me what I already knew, that I have a tear in my rotator cuff that can be surgically repaired. I don't have a need for a full shoulder replacement, yet.

Unlike knee replacement, a shoulder replacement is more complicated and requires a lot more recovery time, whereas a repair to rotator cuff tears and a scraping of the bones, requires only three to four months for recovery. I know from my own experience that full recovery actually takes about one-year.

Based on those aforementioned X-rays, the doctor decided that it was OK to have the first of five injections for my gimpy knees. At this time, the injections are working and he sees no need to go the replacement route, yet.

We almost had lunch at the hospital salad-bar, but the raw kale that dominated the greens mix wasn't our cup of tea. So we did the next best thing, we had lunch at "The Bell." Then it was off to the car-dealer to drop off the title to our trade-in and a few parts that we had in the garage. We learned how to program the radio and then set out to go north to check out the discount grocery near the mall and buy some sample items. We don't see a real benefit of shopping there regularly at this time. Then it was off to the big-box store with the bulls-eye logo to buy some towels. Mary decided that it was time to replace the old purple ones with a new blue set.

Finally, we worked our way to the big-box home-center and bought some sundry holiday decorations. We finished our day in Spring Lake and then picked up Ginger from daycare before heading home. Mary had planned ahead and had the pizza dough ready to go and made another tasty pizzza for dinner. I headed upstairs for some TV viewing after dinner and fell asleep in my chair after watching NCIS. I decided bedtime was in order where I was blissfully sleeping until I was jarred from my slumber by Ginger. Thus, it was also blog time.

Today is a red-letter day for us. We have nothing pressing on the agenda. We'll walk the fur-children and then settle in to do nothing except some indoor chores. Ciao.