Morning all:

Last night it was an evening with the neighbors, first at a local wine tasting, where I overdosed on cheese. Then it was conversation, coffee, and appetizers at a nearby bistro. The net result was that later on as evening became night, Marcia and I took turns feverishly working the remote flipping between Letterman and Leno. This morning came early and I found myself injecting extra caffeine into every one of the coffee beans I used for my morning brew. OK, so now I am a little “abuzz” –bear with me.

What is it with the youngsters these days? Adrianne posted that last weekend she went diving and was viewing sea life at a depth of nearly 90 feet. Yesterday I opened up the paper and discovered that some 13-year old won $30,000 for spelling “Appoggiatura”. With 18 years of schooling I don’t even have a clue what it means let alone spell it. Somewhere I read that depression, or just a melancholy (funky) state is sometimes due to a lack of goals or purpose. Seeing all this early on success about me caused a bit of that “funk” to cloak about me.

Now for the answer! On a NPR podcast called Brain Brew an author who had her class establish each student’s individual goals through an exercise where they wrote out their own obituary was featured. Now this made great sense to me since I was in this mood which could have been caused by a lack of goals. See where this is all going? Wrong! In my case, before I even had my obituary fully written out in my mind, I started to choke up. So now here I am in a choked up, clueless, goalless, melancholy state. Good thing that I am posting as an outlet. By the way, a local contestant in the same National Spelling Bee bombed out on the word “synechthran” referring to an insect living in a hostile world. I didn’t know that one either.

My first week in the home-office went without a hitch. Shang is in heaven and lays under my desk as long as I am sitting at it. Whenever I am about he is a step behind me. I think he is on Marcia’s payroll to make sure I keep my “nose to the grindstone”. Last weekend it was off to the newly redone Findlay Market for veggie shopping and an outdoor lunch. The next day we jostled with the crowds at Taste of Cincinnati where indeed, once again, Marcia found that one stand that has the six inch Cream Puffs. This weekend it’s Summer Fair on the Old Coney grounds. You can sure tell that summer is in full swing.

The sun is coming up brightly and the funk is lifting. I promised Shang that this morning we’d make it a long walk since yesterday’s sauntering was strictly to get the business done. I best get started.

Make it a great week.
Cheers,
Dirk