hardly wait. I have to think that the U.S. cigar smoker was hurt much more than we ever hurt Cuba by placing an embargo on this product. Would we ever have placed this limitation on Cuba if they had been the world's only producer of zinc, or oranges, or computer chips? Of course not.
But cigar smoking is all about enjoyment. If I get all wrapped up in a political discussion about Cuban cigars, I get tense, and I drool more, and the tip of the cigar I am smoking gets all soggy. That ruins the smoke, because a wet head on a cigar then absorbs more of the chemicals in the tobacco resulting in an acrid flavor. I end up throwing the thing away at that point, and that makes me drool even more. Then the scotch is affected, and the result is dilution. Therefore, avoid politics when smoking a cigar.
So I am studying Mike's email ad of today over and over again, because it is better than usual. To buy or not to buy? To delete or not to delete? The stock market is boring in August, so I have more time than normal to think. I never had time to fret like this when I worked at the university. Whoops! The head of my cigar just got a little soggy. So let me check that ad one more time.
My own cigars now intimidate me
Last evening, I entered the realm of the cigar review. Mike's Cigars, where I buy cigars online, saw my blog a week ago about cigars and liked it. They asked me if I would try my hand at writing reviews of cigars they would send me for their website. The other day I received eight cigars of three different brands, and so now the ball is in my court. Over the years, I have read many cigar reviews in the mags, so I thought this would be fun.
But last night I realized how intimidating this can be. I first read some reviews already written for Mike's website to sample the possibilities: "notes of wheat and oats, lightly sweet, fresh and surprising"; "of wood and ginger, with coffee and cocoa; toasted nut undertones and a little tang on the finish"; "sweetness steeps up and blends with the current flavors to give a cocoa or coffee flavor"; or "begins to build in flavor and I can taste what I believe is wood and earth, possibly with a little leather on the back of my tongue". Are you kidding me? What the hell? Are they describing the taste of a cigar or a creme brulee? Forget that I already told you these were descriptions of cigars. Just read them, and then ask yourself what you think they might be describing.
I have been smoking cigars for about eight years now, and I have never tasted any of those flavors. Have I been smoking the wrong cigars? Is my palette not sophisticated enough to detect the flavors that are really there? Am I just too boring or pessimistic a person to see the world the way others do? Do you need to imagine you are sucking on a Hershey's bar while you smoke one of these sticks? Or, should I just pretend that I am Hemingway or Dickens and write a flowery vignette (minus the sex) from a previous century, then send it to Mike's and just tell them, "oh yea, that is my review of a Licenciados 5x50 Wavell". Would anyone know the difference?
So I smoked last night's assignment, took some notes, and thought about the damn thing all night in bed. Most of the time, I felt like I was describing a California Cabernet rather than a rolled up hunk of tobacco leaves that caught fire. But I noticed one very important thing from last evening's experience. With every single puff, I was studying the cigar, thinking about the flavor, examining the ash and the burn of the tobacco, and watching the billowing smoke intently. It was a wonderful, sensuous hour, and the most enjoyable smoke I have had in weeks. It was not the best cigar I have ever smoked, but the experience was extremely memorable. Maybe when you have to concentrate (and I mean focus like a laser) on something you are doing in life that you find pleasurable or important, you enjoy it even more.
This was an epiphany for me. The moral: Take more time to savor every well-prepared meal as if you were going to have to put it to words, every sip of good wine, every beautiful vista, every moment spent with a good friend, every moment spent reading to your child in bed. Maybe if we approached these events in this more "rigorous" way, rather than let them pass almost unnoticed, we would respect life more, need less, and live better.
Sleep talking, the fun I have after dark
I have always been able to find ways to entertain myself. When I was a kid, I collected things: baseball cards, soda bottle caps, coins, stamps. I played baseball, cowboys and Indians, and pretended I was Peter Pan saving Elaine, the cute little girl next door, from something bad.
More recently, with the children grown and gone, I play hide 'n seek with our black lab in the house, kibitz with people I don't know on Facebook, read a couple of books a week, and stroll through the forest around my house as though I were a Cayuga Indian stalking a deer with a bow. I've never actually met a Cayuga Indian, if any still exist, but I pretend that I'm walking stealthily around on dry leaves as I assume they must have done in this very location.
Mostly, I love to tease my wife and play my own brand of games with her, something which she often sees coming, but which she understands is a part of our relationship. For example, she always wants to read in bed at night, and I don't. So before she gets to bed, I often hide her book somewhere in the room, and pretend that I am asleep. But she knows that one too well. "Tom, where did you hide my book? I know you are not asleep." Or, I will unscrew the light bulb in the bedside lamp so that when she tries to turn it on to read---well, you get the picture. Or, when she is ready to go to sleep, she insists that I turn over and face the wall nearest my side of the bed so she can cuddle for a while. But instead of turning 180 degrees to establish the position she wants, I actually turn 360 degrees to end up in exactly the position I was in originally. So, in pitch black dark, I'm excited with anticipation when she discovers that her face is not near the back of my head, but it is actually touching my face. I get giddy just before she lets out a little scream of surprise when she realizes her nose is unexpectedly touching another nose. I love that one.
But on occasion, I also have another opportunity for entertainment because my wife has this interesting ability to talk in her sleep. In the middle of the night, she will utter a perfectly coherent, complete sentence that wakes me from sleep. I awake quickly enough that I hear and understand every word she says. I wish I had written all these down over the years, because by now I would have enough material for a book titled "A Sleep Talker's Guide to the Universe".
It is also obvious that her utterances are a direct manifestation of what she is dreaming or thinking about. Last week, our 2-year old grandson had tubes put in his ears to reduce the incidence of ear infections to which he is prone. Two nights ago, Management spouted off the following sentence: "There should be a shine off the tympanic membrane." Realize that my wife used to be a Registered Nurse, so she must have been dreaming about ear anatomy and its characteristics, although I don't know if the tympanum ever shines.
But the best utterance was years ago when my wife still worked as a R.N. in the Emergency Department at the local hospital. She was always bringing the stories of her work home with her---the amputated arm of the day, the broken bone protruding through the leg, and the usual heart attacks, kidney failures, and drug overdoses. After 20 years of that, I felt I had learned so much about the medical profession that I almost went into private practice to treat trauma patients. Follow that up with watching the tv series ER for about five years, and I could have taught medicine at a university. One night while we were sleeping, the sleep talker went into action. "Give him .5 of epi (meaning 0.5cc of epinephrine), STAT!", I heard her say with obvious panic in her voice. This time, I thought I would try to talk back to her to see if she registered my response. So I said, "No, make that 10cc of epinephrine, STAT!". She definitely heard me. She became immediately agitated, started moving her arms and legs like she was trying to stop the lethal injection about to be given by this new doc in the ER who looked a little like her husband, and she repeatedly said "No. No." It was great.
I realized then that I had unleashed the power. So for many years since then, when my wife starts her monologue, I whisper into her ear something like "Cheese omelette with mushrooms", and the next morning she asks me if I would
