If you had a friend moving to Michigan from a warm place, how would you prepare them for a Michigan winter? Oh, man. When I was in high school we had an exchange student from Brazil. She was about half a year or a year older than me. She had never seen snow before. So we bought her a nice winter jacket. You know, they seem expensive at first, you know, two or three hundred bucks if you buy them new. That's an investment, that's – that’s keeping you warm. And of course gloves and hat, scarf, boots, the boots is another potentially pricey item, you know, it's up to your discretion how much you want to invest in that. But my, what did my exchange sister, I'm trying to remember what we called her. She called me and my sister host brother, host sister. We're the host family. I can't remember what we called her. Mostly just called her Carla. Exchange sister I guess is a good name. But yeah, she’d never seen or touched snow before she was really amused that when you breathe you can see the steam come out. She was very amused by that and I'm very amused by that. She didn't know that snow was cold. She touched the snow and she goes, "it's cold" and me and my sister just laugh. And you know, how would you know, there’s probably tons of stuff about Brazil that I’m clueless about. That's kind of the idea, you know.

What was the last time I pulled a prank? Who did you pull it in? What did you do? Me and my brother are really big at doing stupid stuff to each other, and doing stupid stuff to our sister. I don't know. I like to laugh. I like to make jokes. I like to be stupid. I don't know, we've done a lot of silly things in times. I remember my favorite -- one of my favorites honestly, this was years and years and years ago, but my mom is such a big lottery ticket haw-- I mean just fiend about these lottery tickets. She buys lottery tickets and scratch card, you know scratches. And we bought the fake lottery ticket for her, the one that said she won $10,000 and we gave it to her for her birthday. Oh my gosh, it was so funny, but it's almost so funny, it was mean. Cause she -- she was like jumping all over and she’s like “Oh my gosh. I can't believe it! I can't believe it!” She's like yelling at my step dad, telling my step dad. My step dad's not getting excited, he knew. And she was so excited and she yelling --  and finally she just stopped, she looked at my step dad and she’s like, “What's wrong with you? Why are you not like,” -- and she goes, “uh it's not real, right?” Cause if you turn it over it actually says something like where to collect and it'll say like in your dreams or something, but that was really funny, but it was really really mean I would never do that again. Because I mean right now with money everybody is so like tied so tightly about money that just to do something like that would be just right, down right cruel, but it was quite a funny thing that we did. It was very funny. So yeah.

The other thing around Nine Eleven that is pretty seared into my memory is you know the whole country shut down, but particularly New York City, the city that never sleeps, you know was pretty much brought to silence as people regrouped and try to figure out next steps and how to rebuild and what -- what they needed to do and as it happened my you know tourism pretty much stopped. But I found some flights that actually were discounted and hotel rates were discounted and they were encouraging people continue to come to New York City. So I convinced my mother-in-law and two sister-in-law’s to take a trip to New York City with me, in the middle of November. So this would have been about eight weeks, after 9/11, it was before Thanksgiving. So yeah, it was right in the middle of November. So eight weeks and we of course, when we were there the town came back to life and bounced back pretty quickly.  We saw a Broadway show Les Mis and we had tickets to Radio City Music Hall to see the Rockettes Holiday Spectacular, which was indeed very very spectacular. And dinner out, Times Square, you know some museums the things that you would typically do.  But as we traveled around the city, which was hindered because there were some subway spots that were still closed due to damage from the buildings’ collapse. As we traveled around the city in cabs, you know, we talked to people or waitress at a restaurant and you know, what was your experience that day and everyone had a story about how they couldn't get home and the bridges were closed and transportation came to a halt and whether they were near the actual collapse of the Twin Towers or not. They -- they all had stories or stories of friends who were impacted or how or -- or even a life lost. The city had a, it had a, I don't know if it's right to say a cloud hanging over it. Certainly there was a Melancholy you felt with people as -- as you talked to them. And one of the things we did do was go to ground zero and of course it was hard to get there because the subway stations were closed, but we got as close as we could and -- and there…

I am a hobby gardener and I'm taking advantage of the fact that my yard here at my winter home in Central Georgia, is full of camellia bushes. Every southern garden needs at least one camellia bush. Unfortunately, camellia bushes do not grow in Michigan, the climate up there is much too cold for the buds to ever survive. I have twenty one camellia bushes in my yard and they represent a variety of different cultivars that vary from one that blooms now in October and is now in bloom, all the way up to others that start blooming in December and bloom from December through March.

I guess today I would just like to talk about some things that I'm seeing on television and public, out in public. There are billboards. I was driving in the southwest part of the state recently, and noticed that there were some billboards to build awareness around safety with the virus. So one of them showed some young people huddled around a campfire and the headline was "Bonfire? Don't get burned by Rona." At first, I thought who's Rona? And then "Oh coronavirus!" I suppose maybe that's what young people call the virus, is Rona. I'm not really affiliated with college-age students. So, that was, that was a little new to me, it did really catch my attention. And then immediately following that was another billboard that said something like "Going for a brew?" and it showed a guy like leaning on a bar or sitting on a stool at a bar. So, "Going for a brew? Don't bring Rona too." Or something to that effect, so that it rhymed and again quite eye-catching and appealing especially if you're a younger person who calls the virus Rona.