Good morning, Netizens...

There have been a few times, and I stress the word FEW when I simply could not attend to my appointed rounds with Marty and various other dignitaries at our occasional breakfasts. I was looking forward to this morning, as the Deities all know I certainly need to step off the escalator for a few hours for some friendly faces, but this morning simply isn't it. I had originally scheduled breakfast this morning, perhaps with Steve Thompson, Ron Wright but definitely Marty, but last evening I received a phone call which changed all that. I've got to head out the door on business this morning, EARLY.

Even my saintly wife seems to understand. She also has come to live with that nefarious phone ringing at odd hours of the day and night, because that is my day job, answering distressed or angry people on the phone with various computer network issues and calming their technical eccentricities down to a dull roar because I fix things.

Things like that happen in my day job.

I truly apologize if I made a mess out of someone else's schedule, but I still have this larcenous relationship with income you see.

Peering ahead, I do have Friday morning available, if anyone is interested if Marty can schedule me in. That is, barring any further emergency calls.

This isn't like the Phoenix Gatherings of old we once held, when we raucously filled up one end of the Pancake House on Francis with a band of miscreants, wags and poets, but simply a pair of old friends sitting down and talking about our observations, what we have read, politics of all flavors and various technical observations on life. Our breakfast meetings are like a pair of old, comfortable shoes that sit in the closet most of the time, until we truly need them for a walk, take them down, slip them on and eagerly go strolling down familiar pathways and occasionally commenting on how quickly the leaves are changing just as the bumper tomato and cucumber crop is in.

<sigh> Oh how I wish I could go to breakfast this morning. Marty is one of very few to whom I ascribe the tentative title of being my compass, and right now my compass is spinning in all directions. But perhaps Friday morning.

Dave

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