This stuff is delicious... but WOW is it ever sweet. I'm having one as I type this... which means I'll be asleep in about an hour.

Christmas time my wife always makes one batch of a 'family recipe' Tom Collins. Again, delicious. Again, sleep inducing.

The above are traditional for me... but the one thing also traditional that I no longer indulge in is a bowl of pipe weed... no, no grass for me.... A good pipe and some fresh pipe tobacco. It's actually amazing that as much as I love pipe tobacco I never acquired the habit of smoking a pipe.... but I did indulge every Christmas for most of my life. Sometime two bowls, sometime only one... but until recently always at least one. I suppose my last bowl was 10 years ago.... but maybe longer.

So why am I posting this? Well... because I love pipe smoking, it's the best smell in the world, it WAS a tradition for me for most of my life... it 'looks' elegant, (to me anyway), it looks 'intelligent', (to me anyway)... but I have a sinister reason as well:

I have to admit I like, at least a little, antagonizing the younger generation... to a point, that is.... and this, without doubt, will cause some of you to reply with warnings and admonitions more dire than if I posted that I was thinking about playing russian roulette. Some of you won't see any difference between smoking a good bowl of pipe tobacco and playing russian roulette.

So here's my fantasy.... me in a comfy 'outdoor' chair, sipping a spiced eggnog and puffing away on a bowl of sweet and sumptuous pipe tobacco while reading your hysterical admonitions about how I'm bringing down civilization as we know it. OH... and while listening to classical music and pondering the holes in the theory of relativity. - JamesJM