Automaton

 

I cannot use "cyborg" each and every day, so I will spice up my writings during this state of being grafted onto a machine perpetually with a variety of other synonymous terms.  Today, I am going to go with being an automaton.  

In the state of being an automaton, I find that I have even fewer dreams that I recall than usual.  I attribute this to my perpetual state of dead-dog tiredness.  My wife even notes that she has on several occasions awoken worried about me as I have not moved at all during sleep and she sometimes cannot even say for certain that I am breathing until she nudges me and I grumble (I am not cognizant of any of this).  Typically I move around while sleeping quite abundantly, so this suggests to me that I am fully "tode mude" (German, for "dead tired").

Today actually is the birthday of my sadly deceased father-in-law.  He was an  incredibly important friend and a second father to me as well.  This is the third birthday we have reached since his passing.  I miss greatly our discussions, I miss his advice, I miss his being my drinking and pipe smoking buddy.  

In a little bit more than a month, it will be my deceased father's birthday as well.  This year he would have been 97 years old.   I greatly miss him as well.  I have one of his pipes in the rack in front of me as I speak.  I miss him for his great wisdom and guidance and advice.  I miss his being my pipe smoking buddy too, even though it has 26 years now since he has passed. 

This pipe is beautifully shinny and polished, as I recently (on Sunday) rotated into this rack all freshly shined up pipes I had not had out in my racks for a while. I have so many beautiful pipes, and eventually they all get their turn to be on display in my racks.  When not on display (or in my pocket), I have most of them in a storage box, and I have always regularly rotated through them on what is approximately  a month-or-so basis.  My three pipe racks that are the pipes I keep "out-and-about" in a given cycle are a) the one in my home office, b) the one in my U office, and c) the one in my garage. It is always pleasant to see all the old friends who had been in hiding for a bit, come back out during a rotation.  I liken each transition to being akin to a new art exhibit just for me to view each time I swap them out.   

 PipeTobacco