Good morning all:

Finally I am off the morning, stiff upper lip and all, tea bit, and back to some solid coffee—I’ll explain. First though, I made a discovery this week. Last Sunday I left our crocus blossoming land for the frozen tundra’s of Montreal. I arrived around dinner time, got settled, and stepped out for a bite to eat. That is when I realized that I was seeing an inordinately high number of mullet haircuts. Seeing them to the point that I started taking note—I understand that when you do that you always see more of something than really exists, so I might be overstating a wee bit. A vision of, say, 98% of the population walking about with a mullet would not be accurate. Anyway, I had always viewed the mullet as the “doo” that signifies “short in the front, party in the rear” and not much else. Sunday I made a kind of serendipitous discovery. Since being outside meant I was exposed to a -14 wind-chill it occurred to me that all these folk wore it only to warm their necks. Brilliant revelation don’t you think?

Now the coffee. Monday I had meetings, then a small cocktail hour, then by six a getting ready for dinner moment, followed by a 7 PM crawl into bed moment—there I stayed for thirty-four hours straight. In an upscale hotel. In a city with great restaurants. In a hotel with a heated outdoor rooftop pool. While by the hour I lay about shaking under every blanket I could find. Yuck.

Calling home I expected waves of sympathy. But noooo! What I did get was a stern lecture dealing with the idiocy of buying a used pair of shoes on e-bay. It started by Marcia asking if I had left my shoes at airport security since a package containing used shoes had arrived from New Jersey. I then explained the e-bay thing and you know the rest. Feel free to click on the mail button at left and send me a YES or NO vote: “Yes” – meaning “Dirk, superb, you always manage to get a great deal”, or “No” – meaning “Marcia is dead right and your feet will fall off”.

Some of you who might be reading this might also be aiming for the “silver” years. I am not afraid to admit that I am, and now for the first time I formally switched from an “Advanced Multivitamin” regimen to a more silvery “Mature multi”. What do these chemists know that I do not? I feel and act no different yet what they have filled my tabs with is amazingly different. This new stuff has NO Iron! And now each has only ½ to ? of the previous amount of Thiamin, Riboflavin, Niacin, Vitamin B6, Selenium, Copper, Magnesium, and Molybdenum. I might have skipped over another thirty or sixty or so critical items. Hugely critically important items such as Lutein Extremely Complex, Grape Seed Extract Oil Z94, and even something like Siberian Root Extract protein; so please forgive me. I guess that this is their way of saying that I now need to be taking two or three tabs at a time to compensate for this loss—as one ages there is probably a swallowing reflex something that starts to deteriorate.

“Marcia, could you hand me a straw or sippy cup so I can slurp my coffee?”

Have a great week.
Cheers,
Dirk

PS. I spotted a great ad from Citroën on the Canadian Discovery Channel and managed to find it on line. Click on “Week’s Best” button near the bottom of the blog, and when the ad opens click on the bottom button of it. I recommend that you have Broadband.