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Writing Has Resumed

I am apalled at myself for my lax writing this past week. However, I think I needed most of the time to recover from the whirlwind of going to and presenting at national meeting all in one day and having had to take care of the plethora of very sick relatives.

I have not been doing much of interest anyhow. Simply trying to recover. Fortunately (KNOCK ON TRUE, STRAIGHT GRAINED WOOD), everyone in my family seems to be in pretty decent health at the moment and I feel focused myself! So, here is to a grand, good, and prosperous week in which I accomplish things I have been meaning to and things I hope to for the coming future.

As a method of relaxing on Friday, I picked up my elderly father-in-law and "coaxed" him (he jumped at the chance) to make an afternoon trip to the tobacconist and to pick up a bottle of good spirits (we picked Glenlivets this time around). As a special, silly treat, we also bought a small (10 g) tin of GH Kendall Brown snuff. Snuff is a strange-as-hell manner to ingest lovely tobacco. True snuff (note, the moist "snuff" that is common here is NOT the same.... moist snuff is actually a form of chewing tobacco) is a very dry powdered form of tobacco that is "snuffed" (a more dignified way of saying "snorted" which seems very coarse) up the nostril where it will cover the nasal passages with the ground up tobacco and give a pleasant tingle of nicotine that courses through the body.

Neither my elderly father-in-law or I indulge in snuff very regularly. At most, I may purchase one or two tins of snuff a year. But it can be fun if you are in the right mood. We created that mood on Friday. He was exhausted from a several hour dental proceedure the day before, and I was still feeling pretty damn exhaused from the strife of the last two weeks. The tiredness we both felt, the ample shots of strong liquor we had, the multiple pipes we had all lead to having a fun time with the snuff.... as is usual, snuff makes people who do not indulge in it often sneeze like hell.... and both of us did.

Every time one of us (by this time we were half tipsy of course) would sneeze, we would both start to laugh big, deep belly laughs. Then the other of us would take another sample of snuff and sneeze like hell again.... again more belly laughter from both of us. The added nicotine from the snuff added to that we already were ingesting from our pipes added a bit of extra fun as well. By late afternoon, we were both pretty sloshed, and had each fallen asleep each in a Lazy-Boy recliner. By the time my wife and her elderly mother returned from window shopping, we must have been asleep for at least an hour or two as it was close to dusk. I wobbled out to her car, she drove me home where we had a wonderful dinner befitting a (vegetarian) king... it is Friday during Lent, afterall. I will try to write about the dinner tommorrow.

PipeTobacco