First, thank you Denise for letting everyone know about the delay. I apologize for keeping you all waiting.
Also, Happy Belated Birthday Caroline! Hold the door for me, I'm right behind you.
And a Happy Belated Birthday to Blaine (and Elvis).

It's Saturday morning, it's snowing, and the blog is back in business. Let me start by saying the coffee here is great, and as you can see in the picture, the view from my room is spectacular. You've all seen pictures of Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, so I won't bore you with photos of the room itself. The facility is a combination of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", without the elevator music, and "The Road To Wellville", without the yogurt enemas.

I can hear the day nurse in the hall delivering the lunch trays. Meal time is always an adventure here as I discovered on my first day. After filling out the official paperwork, I was given a menu and asked to tick off what I thought were my dinner choices for the week ahead. It turned out that what I was selecting was lunch. When my dinner arrived on the first night, it consisted of, and I am not exaggerating, butter, one slice of bread, one slice of cheese, and one slice of wurst or baloney. That's it. When the nurse asked if I would I like her to put me down for an extra slice of bread the next night, I told her she better put me down for an extra slice of everything the next night!

Food is a precious commodity here. Since that first night, while the nursing staff is having their dinner, I've taken to scavenging the halls for unopened packets of meat products and cheese spread from other peoples trays after they've been returned to the cart. I can't speak for the rest of the "guests", but my roommate and I both have stashes of food under lock and key in our closets. I carry the key on a chain around my neck. I've considered hiding it in a capsule up my ass Papillon style.

Adolphus Busch, co-founder of Anheuser-Busch, died of dropsy while on vacation in Bad Schwalbach. Born in Kastel, not far from Wiesbaden, Busch built a mansion here, named it Villa Lilly after his wife (the daughter of his partner Eberhard Anheuser), and used it as a holiday home until his death in 1913. He is buried in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St.Louis, Missouri. It's nice to know that should I die of dropsy while I'm here, I'll be in good company.