end of day report...

Today was Grayson's 9th birthday.

Although the real party is on Friday, we celebrated with a trip to the Rainforest Cafe this evening. If you've never been there, the Rainforest is sort of Animal Planet meets Chuck E. Cheese. He loved it.

As mentioned earlier, I had lunch today with Dr. Mettanando Bhikku, a Thai Buddhist monk who is visiting IHOP. At first I wasn't sure what to call him...Metta sounds cool, although maybe it should be 'Nando. I finally took the high road and alternatingly referred to him as Doctor and Sir. He is a world traveler, Harvard educated and well versed in world religions. He is here for a week to discover what IHOP has to offer. I pray he finds it for real.

Dr. Bhikku told me of a healthcare proposal that he has put before the Thai government. They are going to fund a number of centers based on his ideas and if the ideas work well, they will implement the plan in 5,000 healthcare centers nationwide. Not quite socialism, not quite capitalism, his plan provides essential baseline healthcare and end-of-life care at an affordable rate for pools of people ranging from a few hundred to 5,000. It's sort of a self-insurance program. He suggested that we could do something very similar with the IHOP community. I pointed out that our litigatious society may have a heyday with such a plan. He was unconvinced.

My voice is shot and I'm beginning to wonder if I don't have a touch of what afflicted the whole team in Boston. I just took a shot of Nyquil - aka The Insomniac's Buddy. The 'quil has an unusual affect on me...I don't go to sleep immediately, but when I finally do, I fall into a deeper and deeper and deeper sleep that seems to reach the total depths when the alarm goes off. By that time, I'm sleeping a sleep described by Native Americans as "The Sleep of He Who Wakes Not Up." If you don't see me in the morning, send up a smoke signal.