The party's over.  The food is gone, the candles have been blown out.  My son has reached a milestone age.  Sixteen.  That's right, 16 years old.  Tomorrow he goes to get his driver's permit…  Is he getting old, or am I?  (heavy sigh)

We had a party tonight for his birthday…  His grandparents (my parents) were in town visiting from Newfoundland so they, my brother and his wife, and our next door neighbours all got together and made pigs of ourselves on wings, ribs, rice, chow mein, and chocolate cake.  It was GOOOOD! 

Well, Happy Birthday Garrett, my son.  Your mother and I are very proud of you.  Hope your day is great. 

…Or because of them. Mussels. I always liked them. These tasty little seafood treats, freshly steamed and dipped in melted garlic butter, washed down with an ice cold beer….mmm-mm! That was then. This is now. I've developed an increasing intolerance for these yummy little water filters. I discovered one morning several years ago after I had eaten some that I wasn't feeling very well. I decided that maybe it had something to do with the number of ice cold beer I used to wash the scrumptious mollusks down with. So… the next time I had mussels, I only had a couple of brown bottled barley beverages in an attempt to narrow down the cause of my ill feelings. But, yet again, I felt a little "off" the next day. Insistent and persistent, I needed to assure myself that I wasn't judging the yummy clams too harshly, I attempted another batch a while later and teetotaled completely. Nope… no luck… sick again, the next day. So, I resolved myself. No longer would I partake in the ritual of stripping, dipping and lipping these clamshell delights. Occasionally I would attend a social event, a party, a barbecue, where others would binge on these bivalves while I sat in the corner nibbling on potato chips averting my eyes from the gluttonous affray before me. Occasionally, I would attempt one little treat. I wouldn't suffer, yet I wouldn't dare push my luck… until yesterday. I was at an off-site meeting for work at a local seafood restaurant. We rented a room off to the side of the restaurant and ordered lunch from the menu. I ordered some sort of Cajun seafood pasta dish… angel hair pasta with scallops, clams, lobster, shrimp etc mixed in with a kind of Louisiana spiced white sauce. Mmmm-mm. Couldn't wait. When the meals came in, the dish was garnished with, you guessed it, mussels. There were four or five mussels on the rim of my plate. It had been years since I tasted one. I thought… there's only a few here, what harm could they do? I'll risk a little discomfort tomorrow and partake in this culinary pleasure today. I'll chance the seafood hangover. I gobbled it all up, lickety split. That was one o'clock. By two-thirty, I started feeling a little wooozy. Snacks came out at three… cookies and coffee. I was feeling worse now, but I had a couple of cookies and a cup of coffee anyway. I can often ease nausea (when caused by the brown bottle flu) with something for my stomach to do… carbs and sweets are most effective. Yet, I continued to feel awful… worse as each minute passed. I found myself sprinting for the mens room, crashing into a stall, and literally tossing my cookies. After four more visits to the same stall, driving the porcelain bus, saying hi to Ralph on the big white phone, doing the technicolor yawn, offering oral sacrifice to the porcelain flush gods… I decided to call it a day and left the meetings early. I went home and laid on the couch for the rest of the evening, successfully attempting keep toast down at around 8:30 or so. Speaking of toast. Mussels are toast for me now. I'll never knowingly try them again.

I went on a business trip to Warsaw last week. That’s right Poland. I’d never been overseas, so I figured I’d share some ramblings of my trip.

First, I flew from Toronto to Frankfurt, Germany. The first thing I noticed in Frankfurt airport was that people smoke everywhere. I was inside the secure area, behind customs, and there was a smoking station off to one side. This room was about 60 feet by 40 feet and full of smoke. Employees were constantly over there. I took out my camera, trying to be subtle, and snap a pic, when one of the employees looked over at me wagging his finger. No, no. I managed a blurry pic, but nothing that would stand up in court…

Then off to Poland. My colleague picked me up at the airport. Man, the driving is crazy in Warsaw. The cars whip through the streets like stampeding cattle. It’s nuts.

The first night, we went to a Polish pub in town. Every Polish dish is pork. I started with Polish sausage. Then we got this stuff, I forget the name, that was a mixture of sausage and pig fat. Sounds gross, but it was delicious! Really. Then, the meal… a pork knuckle. Two pounds of meat, with a layer of fat around it, grilled to perfection. Wash this all down with a beer in a glass the size of your head and you’ve just created a witches brew guaranteed to curdle methane out every natural opening in your body for two days.

Next day… Pizza. True Italian thin-crust pizza at an authentic Italian restaurant. Best pizza I ever had. Really. Really!

On Thursday, my cab ride home from work rivaled anything I’ve ever seen on TV with regards to driving in Europe. Traffic was heavy and this cab driver changed lanes inches from other cars, over sidewalks, blocking streetcars, zipping down side streets trying to shortcut traffic. Wild and crazy. Scary and fun!

Then supper Friday night. We went to the Westin hotel restaurant, Fusions. Tried this thing called tartar. It’s ground fillet mignon, raw. On the side were finely chopped celery, onion, and mushrooms. Then there’s a little cup with a single, raw egg yoke. Mash all this together and spread it on a little piece of toast. Sounds gross. Tastes yummy. Really. Really!

While at supper, I noticed that the coffee cup I was drinking from had a chip in it. I pointed it out to the waiter and he offered the table a round. I declined, stating that I only wanted to point it out to him so he could throw the cup away. He thanked me, left and returned with a bottle of red wine and asked me to accept it, compliments of the hotel. Cool!

All in all, a successful business trip.

Sorry folks, but I’ve been a little delinquent in my posting duties as of late. I’ve been on a business trip to Warsaw, Poland. I have plenty of little tidbits to share, but I’m not quite ready to put it down. However, I did get a request from one of my faithful readers, Cindy, who got tired of looking at Lorne’s vertical smile. She sent me an email:

First how are things going? Is your weather better than ours…today is not to bad and then it is rain for the rest of the week……..so we are having a bbq for supper

now for the important thing…..

Can you please add a new post to your blog? I can’t look at that ass anymore.

So, Cindy, here you go. Your 15 minutes of fame is forever linked to getting the bottom off the top!

Enjoy your BBQ. I’ll try to post something more substantial soon…

Sorry man, but this was the best picture I had of you! It's the only one with you smiling.

Huntington's Disease, is a rare neurological inherited disease affecting 1 in 20,000 people of Western European descent. It is passed on from generation to generation, needing only one affected parent to pass on the affected gene causing the disease. There is a 50/50 chance that any child of an affected parent will inherit the disease. Pretty good odds, if you were a betting person, that you won't know someone with Huntington's disease, much less actually have it affect you personally. Not so in my family. My mother is one of five children born to my grandparents. My mother was the only one of the five who was not affected with the disease. This morning, the last of my mother's siblings, Aunt Patricia, succumbed to Huntington's. I've posted about this disease before, when my Aunt Rosie (Catherine) died.

My mom's family, in the picture above, are (clockwise from top left) my mother Mildred, Patricia, Patrick, Susan, and Catherine. I thank God often that my mother was not affected and that I am lucky enough to have avoided this disease. (I have one cousin, Bill, that has the disease. It affected him roughly ten years earlier than it commonly affects most. He is 2 months younger than I am.) I miss my aunts and uncle dearly. They were all very good people who had hardships in their lives to overcome and were not deserving of their suffering. They were taken from us way to soon. God bless them all.