Rapp is wired indeed this fair summer's day. Your creative powers exceed even your solipsism!

Caffeine--who can doubt it is a gift from The Divine to make our struggling glimmer of existence tolerable on this dark and mortal coil? Who, I ask? It is a plain truth.

My niece, a China scholar and teacher of Mandarin nearby, tells me the Chinese custom is to drink hot water in the morning. Straight up, hot water. Can you believe that?

Inscrutable, that's what I say.

Today, indeed, sir Gnu, is the very anniversary of my desperate crowning into the world, measly, wet, and barely able to cling to physical existence. It took them days to talk me into staying once I realized what I had walked into. But I did, and at least I am no longer wet.

Thank you for the kind remembrance.

It is another hot, leafy-green and summery day in Bethesda, and I shall spend the time profitably by catching up my travel memoirs, as all good travelers must do.