Here's Roy, our first butterfly koi. He's blowing bubbles at me, maybe he thinks that will convince me to give him treats.

I have a bit of culture shock. We spend a lot of time here in the Palm Springs area and I know where all the stores are and have my routes to everything, it's just getting it all to come back to me when I first get here. It all seems a bit weird too, I was in Lowe's for an hour today looking for garden stuff and I found myself greeting all the employees when I passed them, they probably think I'm nuts.

When will we learn? For years, our first stop after crossing the border was a fast food place for a burger. Finally we noticed that we always got sick afterwards so last year we skipped it and didn't get sick. Memory fades, this year we were hungry after sitting in line for an hour to cross the border and stopped at a Burger King in Yuma. About 12 hours later, I was nauseated and threw up. Mimi had indigestion and a headache. I have to remember this next year.

Plus, my allergies are killing me. This has been true since we left the Yucatan, I sneezed the whole time we were in Patzcuaro and Ajijic and I sneezed all the way across the Sonora desert. I'm still sneezing. I also opened a new bottle of hand lotion on Sunday, put it on my face and by the next day I had a rash like a raccoon mask around my eyes and mouth. Hopefully, life in the USA will get a little better soon, right now I'm not feeling too great.

I got a little energy this afternoon as it finally warmed up. I played around outside the pond and replanted a few pots that died in the freeze. I need to get in the pond and pull out some dead plant stuff and repot the water lilies but it is just too cold for me now. Hopefully when we come back in a few weeks it will be warmer.

This is Angel, the butterfly koi we got last fall just before we left. She's still the same beautiful golden color and she's grown quite a bit.

This is Pumpkin surrounded by Wakin goldfish, we got him on Halloween last year.

The spearmint I planted in the waterfall has gone crazy so I made myself some Mojitos tonight. Fresh spearmint, fresh lime juice, good dark rum, splenda and soda water. I think it even made my allergies better.