There but for fortune�

Hubby and I just spent a half-hour poring over websites looking for a package deal for our Carribbean holiday come March break. We both got bitten badly by the bug last year when we went to Trinidad & Tobago, and since the magnificent j-leem no longer resides in that tropical paradise, we�ve decided to find a more convenient and less costly place to get sunburnt this time around. Cuba looks like the island of choice. The deals are amazing, all-inclusive packages for one week comprising airfare, hotel, meals, drinks, activities of all kinds and all the sun and R&R we can imagine for approximately $1,000 apiece. What a deal! We�re also considering Turks & Caicos, since they love Canadians so, but we shall also keep our eyes peeled for specials advertised in the travel section of the paper. I�m imagining it already. Ah�

My house is clean (I love you, Mandy!), I have spent many hours actually working productively copying marimba music, and I went through our Christmas card labels adding and subtracting, changing addresses and printed out what I have written of our end-of-year letter so Hubby can go over it and add to it. We got a season�s greetings letter today from a friend of ours, a rather famous baritone-turned-tenor with whom I sang in the Ontari0 Y0uth Ch0ir many, many years ago, attended Western with, and who suffered a serious accident one Christmas vacation which turned him into a paraplegic. His marriage of 22 years ended last year because his wife preferred one of his best friends to him, and his father died. What a kicker. He referred to it as his annis horribilis.

Marriage is hard. That they lasted 22 years is laudable in this day and age. I guess she felt, as I often do, that her youth was fleeing and she wanted to have some fun before it was too late. Luckily, I�m still having fun with my first husband, quite a bit of fun, actually. Well, I�m sure our friend will have no trouble finding female companionship. He�s still extremely good-looking, very famous in the classical music scene, and even though his legs aren�t what a normal person�s would be, they still take him from A to B.

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