Bret

You seemed to have recovered well. Are you looking at another Big City Marathon?

Next Saturday I'm off to watch 'The Great Gatsby' - the wife's dragging. I saw your comment earlier. Will I fall asleep or will the lavishness keep me awake?

Yes - the recovery has been fine - have to be patient of course, but glimmers of renewal are there...

NYC - is on the books for November - since they cancelled due to the storm last year, we were given the option to get a refund or to register for this year's race. So that's the first one.

Then...wait for it...Tokyo in February 2014. A bit of a whim - the same tour agent that got us to London - the owner of which enjoyed our celebration afterwards...emailed us about a chance to run in the newest addition to the "marathon majors" - and a bit of peer pressure from Richie - before I knew it we were signed up and booked. Should be fun.

Great Gatsby - - I would give the film a B- as far as my experience was concerned. It falls somewhere between a bit of a fantasy/dreamlike world and reality - I expected and perhaps may have preferred a grittier more realistic interpretation of the work - but it wasn't bad either. Absent the development of Jordan's character and story-line (which I assume had to do with keeping the length of the picture more acceptable), it was generally true to Fitzgerald's writing. Each of my daughters had to read the book in recent years for school and were quite excited about the movie's debut. They were generally pleased with it too.

Tokyo. Wow. That should be fun. Just be careful not to eat anything that glows in the dark:)

I heard an interview by the guy that wrote Chinatown and he was asked to do a version of Gatsby but he turned it down. Said it was impossible to do it well. This weekend I'll read the book again.

Sounds like it might be worth the effort of putting on some smart clothes etc - got to do the whole dinner thing too. I'll give you my verdict...