We've decided we're going to go climbing again over Thanksgiving. This time we'll go up to Tennessee, and camp here. It looks beautiful. I need to get outdoors again. It'll be primitive camping, like last time - no showers and so forth - but I think the solitude and peace will make up for those discomforts. We might be cold, though. Living in Florida has robbed us of the ability to deal with even mildly chilly weather, so wintery mountains may come as a bit of a shock to our systems.

Of course, with camping comes the question of what to do about Em's medicine, which has to stay refrigerated. We bought one of those little fridges that runs off a car battery during the weeks we were without power after the hurricanes, but it didn't work well enough : its temperature control mechanism was wildly erratic. Fine for chilling beers but definitely not good enough for expensive medicine.

I learned, from my GHD email list, that one can get single-dose syringes that, miraculously, don't have to be refrigerated. So I called the endo yesterday to find out whether we could get a prescription for those to use while we're camping. When the nurse called back today, she assured me that those meds most definitely did need refrigeration, and so would be no use to us. However, a visit to the website and a call to the manufacturer proved that she's totally wrong. So more phone calls lie ahead for me. In order to get this medicine, I have to convince the nurse that it is a viable option, get the doctor to prescribe it, and clear it with our insurance. All of which would be perfectly easy and straightforward if all the people I dealt with were rational human beings with the normal quota of brain cells. If. Pfft.

I would like to go to bed. It's been a long day. A bike ride, a 4-H group meeting, and then climbing this evening ... but first I need to clear up the kitchen (soup spills and bread crumbs) or it'll be horribly depressing tomorrow morning. Sigh.