From the Touchstone Breath, 20th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Deneb): One of my favorite previous dandelions, the 18-year-old me, was a fan of the English rock group Pink Floyd. Not the Dark-Side-of-the-Moon Pink Floyd, that album didn't come out until a year after my 18-year-old dandelion, but the earlier, gnarlier, less harmonious Pink Floyd. Later dandelions would divide the Floyd discography into two categories, pre-Dark Side and post-Dark Side, and much preferred the earlier division, as it was the music of our formative teenage years. 

Anyway, this isn't a post about Pink Floyd, just a roundabout way of introducing the lyrics from their song Free Four (from Obscured by Clouds, 1972), "The memories of a man in his old age are the deeds of a man in his prime." Not many rock songs from that era were about aging or old people, and before you say, "What about Old Man by Neil Young?," I said "not many," not "none," and besides, Young was using the old man to assert his own relative youth, not identifying with the old man like in the Pink Floyd song.

But anyway, those lines have stayed with me for years - the whole song, really - and this old dandelion of today can vouch for the truthfulness of those lyrics. "You shuffle in the gloom of the sickroom, and talk to yourself as you die." I'm not in the sickroom, at least not yet, but I do talk to myself and like everything living, I'm also dying, as in, "he who is not busy being born is busy dying" (Bob Dylan).

There are so many memories crowding my head, and like all old people, I'm virtually bursting with stories that no one else wants to hear. The decades-old tales of old people's lives are as irrelevant to younger people today as stories about dreams. Nothing turns off a listener more than the words "So, I had this dream . . ., " which translates to most people as "let me tell you about a bunch of shit that didn't actually happen" (save it for your shrink). An old person saying "I remember back when . . ." has about the same effect on listeners. 

Anyway, this isn't a post about a dream or the song Free Four - that was all just a roundabout way of introducing this old man's memories of deeds from his prime. Further - surprise! - the deeds weren't committed by my 18-year-old dandelion, either. That was all just a set-up to introduce the words of Free Four, a set-up to the set-up, as it were, and I better get on with the story before I start endlessly circling the drain.

The story involves my 30-year-old dandelion, not my favorite incarnation and one that I don't associate with all that much any more. Too materialistic and too self-centered, although not without some redeeming qualities, IMHO. But if you asked me for the most interesting, as in the most entertaining, story in my life, this would probably be my pick. The story involves medieval dynasties, third-world politics, tropical paradises, groundwater geology, skinny-dipping with supermodels, and runways infested by goats, with appearances by Morley Safer and Rossano Brazzi (if you're old enough to know who they are). Also, warning: this might be a long story and could take a couple of posts to complete.

Historical background and context: The Kingdom of Aragon is located in what is now eastern Spain, adjacent to coastal Catalonia. The area was part of the Western Roman Empire until the Romans were displaced by the Visigoths, who were displaced by the Moors, who established a vast Crown of Aragon all along the Mediterranean coast. The Moors were eventually expelled from the territory by the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella of Christopher Columbus fame, and Aragon is now an autonomous region of Spain. 

That's the short version. European history is crazy, with countless monarchs and rulers rising and falling over the millennia, and city- and nation-states appearing and disappearing. Suffice it to say for our purposes that Aragon was once a big deal, among many other big deals, but no longer exists.

Anyway, sometime in the early 1980s, a group emerged from within the jet set of Europe who claimed they were displaced princes and princesses of Aragon, royalty who no longer had a Kingdom. They weren't asking to be given Aragon back - they weren't crazy - but they were looking for a sovereign land somewhere over which they could rule. They probably had in mind some little enclave like Liechtenstein or Andorra (which itself borders Aragon), or if anyone had an island somewhere for sale, they'd consider that. 

Meanwhile, Great Britain had just conceded independence to the Caribbean island of Antigua in 1981, and one of the conditions for independence was that Antigua also had to take the adjacent island of Barbuda off its hands. Barbuda was still relatively undeveloped, just a couple of sustenance-level fishing communities and one remote, ultra-exclusive and ultra-private resort for the ultra-wealthy out by itself on a peninsula. The resort was tiny, but the kind of place that, say, Jackie Onassis might visit to get away from paparazzi and everyone else, while still having her every whim satisfied in luxury. But the rest of island was still wild, just a rugged landscape of limestone cliffs covered by yucca and cacti and the occasional gravel road. In other words, a perfect candidate to be developed into a New Order of Aragon.

The princes were intrigued and discussions were started to negotiate a purchase of the island from Antigua. I don't know how seriously Antigua took the proposition, but a public-relations campaign was started with Italian actor Rossano Brazzi of South Pacific fame selected as the handsome face of the campaign for some reason. The architecture firm of John Portman & Associates was approached with the intriguing, once-n-a-lifetime concept of designing an entire nation from the ground up, including an airport, a capitol district, hotels, beachfront, roads and a power grid to connect it all, and so on. The goal was to transform Barbuda from possibly the last undeveloped Caribbean island into an independent Kingdom of Aragon, with an economy, like many other islands, based on tourism, gambling, and off-shore banking.

Before the development and negotiations got very far, however, some journalists discovered that the "princes" weren't really royals, had no money to speak of, and no claim to any sovereignty. The whole thing, in short, was a con job intended to fleece European jet setters. 60 Minutes even ran a segment covering the scam, having great fun mocking the "princes" along with amusing clips liberally edited in of Brazzi singing Bali H'ai from South Pacific. Hilarious stuff. 

That would have been the end of it all, but an Atlanta developer got wind of the idea, probably from Atlanta-based Portman, and thought that with or without the New Order of Aragon, developing a Caribbean island from the ground up was still a pretty good - which is to say, profitable - idea. He went about rounding up investors and planners and generally promoting the idea of Barbuda as the next big Caribbean hotspot.

Much of the planning centered around a golf course. The beaches were there all around the island, but you can't have a vacation destination without a golf course, and a golf course requires green grass, and green grass requires irrigation water.  A course in that climate needs a lot of irrigation water to first establish a grassy ground cover, and only slightly lesser amounts of water after that to maintain the cover. The problem is that Barbuda is a Leeward Island with most of its rain falling during hurricane season in September and November, with recurrent droughts in between. Further, the irrigation water has to be good-quality fresh water without salt or a lot of chlorides, which is hard to find on a small island surrounded by the salt-water sea. The groundwater resources of Barbuda were not well established, and it was not at all apparent if there were sufficient reserves of suitable water on the island to support a golf course, and if there wasn't the whole idea of a new Caribbean paradise was doomed.

In 1984, while all of this was going on, I was a groundwater hydrogeologist who had just taken a new job with an Atlanta-based engineering consulting firm. My firm won the contract to make an initial evaluation of the fresh-water resources of the island and in only my first or second week on the job, I was chosen to go to Barbuda to perform that evaluation. 

I warned you that this was a long story, and I've reached the limit of what I want to say today. Now that I've intersected with the narrative and am now myself finally a part of the tale, I'll pick the story back up again tomorrow to continue.

 

Laws of the Dark Trance, 19th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Castor): Consider the dandelion. 

No, no, no, seriously, consider, for a moment, a dandelion. Picture it in your mind. The immediate image that comes to my mind is a bright yellow, multi-petal flower on a soft green stem.  But that's only a part of a dandelion's life. Most of the year, it's a green, broad-leafed, deep-rooted weed, the bane of many a lawn. Later in its life, the yellow petals are replaced by a whitish puffball, and when the wind blows, feathery, parachute-like spores sail through the air, each of which are individual dandelions in and of themselves looking for a place to take root.

We can all probably agree that a dandelion is more than just a yellow flower. It's a continuum, really, from spore to weed to flower to puffball and back to spore again. We might be tempted to think of the dandelion as more of a process, a verb, than a thing, a noun. It's life "dandelion-ing" through existence, following a script written by millions of years of evolution. For all I know, it might even be consciousness dandelion-ing through existence, if you can accept the premise that plants have some low form of consciousness.

So it is with animals and so it is with people. Everyone you know, everyone you meet, even everyone you imagine, is in one stage or another of "people-ing" through life. Every old person was once an infant, dependent on its parents for its immediate survival, was once a child wanting simply wanting to please those parents, and was once an adolescent, perhaps (or not) rebelling against those parents as it sought to establish it's own independence. This old man carries memories and awareness of the various stages he's been, and sometimes I can even image what 15-year-old me, or 21-yar-old me (apparently two of my favorite previous incarnations for some reason) would have thought of one thing or another.

I often get frustrated, even peevish, when people seem to perceive me only in my current phase. Yes, an old man is asking you for directions or doesn't understand how something works, but damn it, I wasn't always this old man. I'm more than just this old man. At least to me. 

I assume other people often feel the same way - mothers and grandmothers resentful that people no longer recognize the attractive young woman of years before, fathers who don't understand why they're suddenly "invisible" to teenage girls. 

I know this, but I fall into that same trap of not seeing people as processes, only as their current appearance. All the time. I forget my neighbor, a mother of three, was once an eight-year-old playing Simon Says, and that she still carries that eight-year-old with her in her mind. I forget that the teenager taking my coffee order is still in touch with the nervous schoolboy hoping the teacher doesn't pick on him for an answer. I forget the guy putting new tires on my car once operated a jeep in Afghanistan. 

We're all processes, verbs not nouns, we all have multiple personalities, and we've all inhabited different bodies in this lifetime.

Today is Castor, a sitting day, and I got my usual 90 minutes in today. But I bagged my attempt to sit cross legged after 10 minutes today. It was just too uncomfortable, and I found that I was sitting there simply agonizing through discomfort, my mind preoccupied with how much time had passed and how much remained, and not at all doing anything I would call "meditating." I used to be able to sit cross-legged quite comfortably for 90 minutes and longer, but that "me" was one of those previous phases I've dandelion-ed through. This current me doesn't have the flexibility of the me of even a decade ago, even though I have much the same tastes and preferences, and even wear a lot of the same clothes. 

That middle-aged man sitting cross-legged in the Zen Center is now this self-described "urban monk" who has to kneel (seiza) to get through 90 minutes of zazen. He's also that 21-year-old who probably could have sat for hours on his head if he got a mind to try that. 

But I need to work on seeing others as life processes and not just as their current appearance, because it's a process that's presenting itself to me, not the static impression my mind creates of them.

 

Council of the Million Visitation, 15th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Sometime around 7:30 last night, after the HVAC guy had left, I had completed my sitting, posted to this blog, and finished my dinner, my power went out. Boom! A transformer somewhere down the road blew and I was in the not-quite-yet dark.

I thought for a moment that it might have had something to do with my AC - the power drain more than the transformer could handle? Of course, it wasn't, but the mind always looks at the most obvious recent event as it tries to establish cause and effect. The power was back on by 9:00 pm.

It's primary day here in Georgia. I early voted on Thursday, but I feel like American democracy in 2026 is a fucking joke - Tweedle-Dee versus Tweedle-Dum while this whole shithouse of a country burns to the ground. Circus clowns masquerading as politicians while dividing up the remnants of the wealth like scurvy dogs fighting over table scraps. All this under the bleary, bloodshot eyes of the Stable Genius, that cancerous polyp on the undescended testicle of the American body politic. 

The corruption, the racism, the intolerance, and the greed are more than we as a nation should have to endure. At this point, if I could, I would vote for a blood clot to end this long national nightmare. 

Let's hear it for Blood Clot 2026!

 

Signature of Light, 17th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): I've previously spoken here about Saint Willis of Carrier, the patron saint of the American South - the man who invented air conditioning, without which life here in Georgia would be, if not impossible, at least very uncomfortable.  

We're most aware of Saint Willis when his invention is absent, as in yesterday afternoon when I realized my AC was just blowing warm air, and the temperature was slowly rising in the house. I called the service company and they scheduled a technician to come fix it today, which he did.

This happens every year. Since 2021, I've had a maintenance contract on my HVAC, and every year they come here, usually in March or April, for annual maintenance. No charge - it's a part of the annual service fee. But every year, after their annual maintenance and the weather begins to warm up, I have to call them and make a second appointment because the air won't start, and then after that it works fine for the rest of the summer. 

This happens every year. Every year. There's no cost for the second visit either, so it doesn't seem to be some sort of scam.

In any event, after a warm but not too uncomfortable 24 hours, I can once again feel the spirit of Saint Willis in my house.

It's Aldebaran, a sitting day, and a year ago, almost to the date, I missed my alternating-day sit waiting for the technician for the second maintenance appointment of 2025. I made sure that didn't happen again this year and after I settled down following the tech's departure, I did my sitting. I noticed the incense burned faster in the moving air from the overhead AC vent. Instead of a stately column of smoke trailing straight up from the stick, and smoke eddied and swirled in the chaotic air currents, and a stick that normally lasts well over an hour had already burned out by 60 minutes.

I'm still working on my cross-legged posture. I was able to sit through the first half hour cross-legged, but I started fidgeting during the second half hour. The trouble with fidgeting is that once you adjust the body to alleviate some ache or pain, you've told your mind that you can control the physical sensations and then the adjustments don't stop. Moving this leg out a little relieves the tightness in the calf, but now the left heel is digging into the right shin. Fix that and then the lower back starts calling for some attention. Then the neck. Et cet., et cet. Halfway through the second half hour, I quit with the criss-cross bullshit and went back to seiza.

It was about the same for the third and final half hour, although I think I made it well past halfway and certainly longer than the second period before I abandoned cross-legged sitting and returned again to the kneeling posture.

The body is like clay - stiff clay to be sure, but with time and patience I believe it can be molded and stretched as desired, even for old men. But believing is one thing and seeing another, and I'll believe it when I see it as I keep working toward my ideal posture.

 

Spectre of the Lapse, 16th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Helios): Everything's impermanent and nothing lasts forever, even - maybe especially - the epic run of gorgeous weather we've been having here in Georgia. Today was notably hotter (upper 80s) and more humid, with occasional light rain. I'm under a severe thunderstorm warning right now, but I think it will pass without major incident, other than a little rain and the rumble of distant thunder.

The long-term forecast shows rain and thunderstorms for eight of the next ten days, and overcast, cloudy (and probably humid) conditions for the other two days. Might do something for the drought, however.

It's Helios, a walking day, and I got a Madisonian 4.4 miles in before the sound of approaching thunder made me call it a day. The heat and humidity made it a bit uncomfortable to be out walking, but what I would give for a day like today when the Dog Days come rolling in later this year.

I read that after Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act in 1965, a Democratic Presidential candidate has never won a majority of the White vote. I thought that had to be bullshit - surely we're not that racist, are we? - but I looked it up and it's true. The closest a Democrat came was Jimmy Carter in 1976 (48%). Bill Clinton got only 39% of the white vote in 1992 but improved to 44% in '96. In 2008, Obama also got 44% of the White vote but fell to only 39% in 2012. Biden got only 41% in 2020.

I'm still not sure there's a direct and singular causal correlation between the Voting Rights Act and the electoral demographics. I mean, ever since man landed on the moon, a Democrat hasn't won the majority of White vote, right? Ever since The Beatles disbanded, a Democrat hasn't won the White vote. Ever since women were allowed to apply for a credit card without a male co-signer. Et cet. But the data doesn't put White Americans in a very flattering light, does it?    

If it's any consolation, Kamala Harris got a higher percentage of the White vote (42%) than Hilary Clinton (37%). Must have been the emails.

 

Dream in the Rock, 15th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Electra): I have a confession to make - ever since August 2024, when I began in earnest my current practice of alternating walking and sitting days, I wasn't literally sitting every other day. I was instead using what's called the seiza posture, a form of kneeling, with the zafu (meditation cushion) under my butt for support. I have a seiza bench but rarely use it - it's more for the convenience of guests although I admit I used it once or twice during last December's Rohastsu intensive practice period.

Traditionally, there's nothing wrong with seiza - it's still zazen, but just kneeling instead of sitting. Everybody's different and every body is different, and for this old man who's sacrificed some or most of his flexibility by sitting behind a desk for some 30 years, and then loafing in retirement for the past seven, cross-legged sitting is difficult. 

Difficult, but not impossible, and today I decided to sacrifice some comfort and sat cross-legged, not in the lotus style with each foot on the opposite thigh (now that's impossible for me) but relaxed, with each foot on the floor near, but not on, the opposite knee. For the record, I used to sit that way regularly from like 2003 to at least 2013. 

It was a bit intense, especially at first, but I could feel the tendons and muscles or whatever stretching back out. Strangely, the meditation periods seemed to go by faster as my mind was focused more on my body than in idle daydreams.

There's no "right" or "wrong" posture for meditation - whatever works for you is fine. In my case, I want to take charge of my body and reorient myself to sit cross-legged while I still can, before the triple threat of sickness, old age, and death dictate that I can't sit at all anymore. Besides, it's good to have goals and something tangible and physical to work on as I practice my zazen.         

       

 

Separation of the First Stage, 14th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Deneb): At the risk of sounding repetitive, another beautiful day today. High in the mid 70s, low humidity, perfectly clear, +25-mile visibility.

I walked a 6.2-mile Quincy in the afternoon. I did take a shortcut this time, and even though I shaved off 1.5 miles, my phone recorded only 0.7 miles less than it did on Wednesday, when I avoided that shortcut. There are mileposts along the route, so I'm fairly confident I actually walked at least eight miles on Wednesday and 6.5 miles today.

Regardless, my walking hours are also my podcast listening time and today I listened to a very good conversation between Buddhist scholar and author Pema Chödrön and podcaster/journalist Ezra Klein. No great quotes to repeat and no new revelations for this old Zen student as it was fairly familiar ground to me, but it was still nice hearing them talk. Klein didn't quite come out as a Buddhist himself, but talked about his own meditation practice and techniques. Okay, one quote (from Ezra!): "Meditation is not a vacation from irritation."

It was one week ago today that I buried Eliot. I still half expect to see him whenever I walk into my den/tv room (his favorite hangout). I still am not quite sure what to do with myself at 7:00 pm (his routine feeding time). I'm more surprised than not that I don't hear his meows after the clock radio starts in the morning but I'm still laying in bed. There's no one to remind me when I've spent too much at the computer.

I miss him.   

  

 

Day of Fallacies, 13th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Castor): Yet another beautiful, picture-perfect day, continuing the long string of lovely weather we've been enjoying here in the South. I voted today, the penultimate day of early voting for the Georgia primary. I wonder how many more years I'll be able to freely vote, or at least vote in meaningful elections  

For some reason, the New York Times ran a long think piece today about Buddhism in Nepal, the first of a three-part "travel series" about the spread of Buddhism across Asia. The series, titled The Prince's Journey, is written by Aatish Taseer of Delhi, India, and future installments will cover Buddhism in Thailand and in Taiwan. Long on history and providing a broad overview of Buddhist teachings, it as informative and well written, although I'd hardly call it "travel" journalism. 

I found it amusing that when the author asked a teacher of Newar Buddhism, the indigenous variant of Buddhism practiced in the Kathmandu Valley, about the tension between the different branches of Buddhism, he was told, “When you look at a tree, you don’t concentrate on its different branches. You try and see the tree as a whole.” And then readers responded in the comments section with complaints that the author had overlooked this movement or that school or some other specific teacher or writer, all focused on the branches and not the tree. To his credit, Taseer personally replied to a great many of the complaints with grace and in a dignified manner.  

Separately, I saw a post on Facebook today by jazz trumpeter Steven Bernstein (Lounge Lizards, Sexmob), who I saw at Big Ears last March playing the music of Sly Stone with his Millennial Territory Orchestra. He was announcing, in a roundabout way, his new project, the ResoNation Trio, and noted, "I love blowing into a piece of metal and creating a sound, and using that sound to interact with other musicians/artists and making something new."

"My trumpet teacher, Jimmie Maxwell, was a Buddhist," he wrote. "We would talk about trumpet satori." 

I hadn't heard of Jimmie Maxwell, but a quick peek at his Wikipedia page tells me Maxwell (1917 – 2002) was an swing trumpeter who played with Benny Goodman's band from 1939 to 1943, later performing on Goodman's tour of the Soviet Union in 1962. He played on hundreds of recordings and commercials from 1950 to 1980 and worked as a sideman for, among others, Duke Ellington, Oliver Nelson, Gerry Mulligan, Maynard Ferguson, and Quincy Jones. He worked as a studio musician for NBC, playing on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show (1963–73), contributed the solo trumpet theme on the soundtrack of The Godfather, and taught from the late 1970s onwards.

And apparently was a Buddhist.

 

Day of the Rainhouses, 12th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): It's happening. Cheating Brian Kemp, who first got elected Governor of Georgia by suppressing minority votes as Secretary of State, had said that he would not redraw the State's electoral boundaries for this year’s elections (the primaries are on Tuesday). But today he called for a special session of the State Congress to redraw electoral maps for the 2028 election. Georgia is but the latest southern state to initiate new electoral maps after the Supreme Court’s dismantling of the Voting Rights Act.

Kemp said the session will focus on “enacting, revising, repealing, or amending” district lines for both the state legislature and congressional districts. Among other things, the Republicans may seek to eliminate the district of Democratic representative Sanford Bishop, a Black member of Congress who has served since 1993. 

The Supreme Court ruled last month that the districts Louisiana drew in accordance with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prevents racial discrimination in voting, were an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Effectively, the court’s decision dilutes Black and minority voting power, reversing years of civil-rights law.

My Arya Sansa list goes "John Roberts. Brett Kavanaugh. Clarence Thomas. Joseph Alito. Neil Gorsuch. Amy Boney Carrot. The Stable Genius. Mitch McConnell. And Aaron Judge," because the Yankees suck.  Also, not to forget the ladies: "Erica Kirk. Candace Owens. Kari Lake. Megyn Kelly. Lindsey Graham."

Meanwhile, another beautiful day today as the gorgeous weather here in Georgia continues. No rain, which is a drag, but day after day of temps in the 70s to very low 80s, low humidity, and clear skies, with pleasantly cool nights in the high 50s (good sleeping weather). I walked my usual 8½-mile Van Buren today, but for some reason the pedometer app on my iPhone only credited me with a 6½-mile Quincy. I swear I didn't take any shortcuts!    

 

The Wooden Works, 11th Day of Midsommer, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): You can't hurry love. 

    

 

Day of the Creaking Aftermath, 10th of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Helios): Firefighters have finally extinguished the Hwy. 82 wildfire in South Georgia, but the Pineland Road fire still covers 32,575 acres and is 87% contained. The drought continues and we're now 6.58 inches of rainfall below normal for this time of year. All indications still suggest that we're heading for a Super El Nino and the warming oceans will result in less mixing between the surface and deep waters, creating a phosphate shortage close to the surface, which creates favorable conditions for methane-producing microbes. Most of the methane produced through this process escapes to the atmosphere, and could almost double in the future under an aggressive global warming scenario. The Stable Genius, the twice-impeached, multiply-convicted felon and adjudicated rapist, is brazenly grifting off his presidency, and his crimes are woefully underreported in the press, ignored by the political left, and denied by the political right.    

All this, and the numb, empty feeling of life without Eliot in the house still lingers. It's like an extracted tooth, when the tongue can't stop probing the new void left behind.  

 

The Divine Versions, 9th Day of Midsommar, 526 M.E. (Electra): I track my meditation with the health app on my phone. Every second day, when I'm finished  with my sitting, I enter the start and finish times as "Mindfulness Minutes." Not that practice requires an app, but keeping a record adds to my motivation - if I miss a day, there will be a visible gap in the record (the app records the minutes as a bar graph on a time scale).

I could lie and add minutes on a day I didn't actually sit, but what would be the point of that? Then I wouldn't be able to trust the app and wouldn't have a record of my effort. 

Anyway, to get to the point, I sat today (3:14 to 4:44 pm), but I missed last Friday, the day I had Eliot euthanized. Last Friday was the first day I missed, other than when I was at Big Ears, since October 13, 2025. Since April 20, 2025, I've only missed three days (other than Big Ears) - May 16, when I was waiting all day for an AC repairman to arrive, October 13, when the young man who would have been my stepson if life had gone differently was in town, and last Friday, May 8, when Eliot left this realm of existence.

Of course, it certainly wasn't zazen (sitting meditation), but a day spent digging a grave for your pet while he's still alive but asleep in the house, and being present at the veterinarian as he receives the fatal injection that ends his life, and then putting that pet in the ground and filling the grave with earth, is an exercise in mindfulness and a profound contemplation of life-and-death. It's certainly a better alibi for missing 90 minutes of sitting that waiting for the repairman.