From a Holiday splashed ‘Nati, good morning all:

Wisdom of the Week:

“It’s a mad world. Mad as Bedlam, boy!” — Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

Our trip into Michigan was about as good a bit of travel as one could imagine. With all the ‘vigorous’ Christmas week weather that spread across the nation, Marcia and I threaded “the needle.” The smell of Dia’s fresh pot of Tim Horton coffee guiding us the whole way; which reminds me, I need to pour my morning mug before I can get started. It also reminds me that coffee, women, and chocolate are all better when rich.

The morning “wisdom of the Week” is a small attempt at paying homage to all the hard work, done with absolute transparency, put forth by our US Senate this past week. Our drive north occurred during the final frenetic hours of the push to move an amazing boondoggle piece of cra. legislation forward. I had never seen anything like it.

Now I best switch topics before Marcia catches wind of my beginning rant and starts with making her famous “slash-across-the-throat” gestures. These gestures come complete with bulging eyes and drawn mouth; this is all quite intimidating.

As you might be able to tell, there has been a huge time gap between this and the previous section of this post. This gap of time allowed for me to drive home midway through this post. The reason we barged out the door at Paul and Dia’s only to jump into a vehicle that had turned into an ice-igloo was due to a vision I had. My vision revolved around Vinnie the cat.

Vinnie is about as independent a cuss as you can find. Yet, at the same time he’s had periods of neediness. From past experience I knew that for three days of total independence he’s just fine—assuming food and water are available. Day four and a cat-sitter willing to endure the shredding of jeans and sweaters must be hired. The shredding behavior is not something done in anger, its part of the normal behavior of cats in preparing their meal into bite-sized strips.

Since no sitter was hired I felt that not heading home in the allotted span of three days would incur the anger of Vinnie. But, being hundreds of miles away, reflecting on the “anger of Vinnie” is not really something dwelt on excessively, except for one thing. This week the news began to be splattered with stories about a very angry Nigerian guy on a Delta flight heading into Detroit.

When I read about what a small combination of powder and water can do in the ‘tidy-whities’ of an angry Nigerian, I realized that Vinnie was alone in a house filled with a wide variety of powders and a huge amount of water. Concern mounted. The race home was begun—forgoing any and all pit stops in the process.

Walking into the house found Vinnie slinking out of some dark corner. He looked guilty, but all appeared fine.

I hope that this year’s Christmas was as good for you and yours as was our celebration. Having family and friends about made ours. Marcia made out ‘like a bandit’ in the gift exchange. She emerged with the cardboard Poker Table top. Since she plays no card games, or any table games for that matter, she spent the whole trip home discussing and thinking about alternative uses for her gift. To assist with finding ideas to put the Table top into use she applied a deep thinking technique. Eyes closed, deep rhythmic breathing, slack jaw, I just knew that a solution would be forthcoming shortly. It would have had she not startled herself with an extremely loud snort. This week she’ll try again.

It was great seeing everyone. Paul and Dia, thanks for several wonderful days!

Make it a great week everyone. Now a Sunday morning walk with Shang.

Cheers,

Dirk

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