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Time to fuse some vertebrae

 Did the doctor’s appointment today.  Looked at the X-ray and MRI.  No sign of arthritis anywhere else in my body, but my neck is a mess.  Vertebrae out of alignment.  Bone spurs.  Cartilage totally gone between 4 and 5, 5 and 6, and almost gone between 6 and 7.  The sheath around my spinal cord is compressed.  The nerves to my biceps and triceps are getting pinched off.  No damage to the spinal cord yet, but that’s next if we don’t deal with this now. The doctor said I was unusual (if you can imagine that).  Most people with this much degeneration (did he just call me a degenerate?) would have come to see him for narcotics for the pain.  Me, I just notice a drop-off in strength.  For some reason it doesn’t really hurt much. We still need to get Judy’s knee taken care of (so she’ll be able to run around and take care of me when I get my neck done).  We’ve got her knee surgery scheduled for early January.  We’ll schedule my neck surgery for early February.  My recovery will take a couple months.  Ultimately though, I should regain most of the neck range of motion I have now.  
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Should I tell the story about the room key?

 You know they have these fancy digital room keys now.  They are like credit cards.  You stick them in the reader at the door and the door unlocks.  They’re really cool.  When they work. Room 426.  The key worked the first time we used it, but it was a little iffy.  It took several tries.  Later though, we couldn’t get back into our room because I’d put my room key in a pocket that had a magnet in it so we had to go back downstairs and get the card coded again.  (I don’t usually have a magnet in my pocket, this was a special situation.)  Then later, we couldn’t find Judy’s room key so we had to go get a new one.  It only worked intermittently.  The next day, we walked up to our door, tried the room key over and over and it wouldn’t work.  My key wouldn’t work.  Judy’s key wouldn’t work.  Judy went back downstairs to the front desk to get the key fixed again.  She was a little frustrated that their room keys didn’t work any better than this and went off to tell them so.  I waited by the door. It took Judy a while to accomplish her mission.  I was stuck outside the door on an indoor balcony though, so I could watch her progress below at the front desk.  I passed the time by counting the floors I could see from the indoor atrium.  One, two,  three, …..ten, eleven,  twelve, thirteen.  Thirteen.  I wonder if that floor is numbered thirteen or did they skip to fourteen so nobody would have to stay on the thirteenth floor?  Did I get that right?  One, two, three, …wait a minute.  Why am I looking straight across the atrium at the third floor?  Our room is on the fourth floor.  Oh shit.  The room number our key doesn’t work for is 326.  Well, duh.  Maybe the key would have worked better if we had been on the correct floor and were trying to unlock room 426. Meanwhile, Judy got on the elevator to the fourth floor, got to the door to room 426, and I was nowhere to be found.  She was confused.  Where was her husband and all that stuff we had dropped in front of the door we couldn’t get in?  I was trying to get myself and all that stuff from the third floor to the fourth floor before she went off to look for me.  The Keystone Cops come to mind.  We avoided making eye-contact with the people at the front desk for the rest of *that* day.  Well, anyway, we survived the hotel in Dallas; it was actually very nice.  We’ve moved on.  We’re back in Corpus.  We got to take Texas Highway 130 with its 85mph speed limit for a hundred miles section of the trip; from North of Austin to south of San Antonio.  That was like driving at warp speed.  It went by really fast. 2014 Dallas Trip Map  A doctor’s appointment tomorrow afternoon, then we get to go home. 
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Brown Creeper

 A morning walk nets a Brown Creeper. …a little bird that runs up and down tree trunks like a mouse. Year Bird!  Number 398.  …and a Winter Wren.  399.  …and Harris’s Sparrows.  400.  Yeaaa!  Made it to 400 species for the year!  …and as a bonus; the last bird of the day;  Fox Sparrow.  Lifer!  Our visit with Matt and the boys is over.  We had to take them back to the airport tonight.  It was a fun visit; always good to spend time with them; miss them already.