The Great Learning of 2016: Part 2: Do I, Or Don't I?

  Y   ou come to a point in your life—you'll know it when it happens—where you basically have a decision to make. Do I want to live to be 90? Or do I just want to resign myself to just let Nature takes its course, get the usual diseases like heart problems or diabetes or COPD or, gods forbid, The Big C?

It's basically at that point where you either change your ways, or you don't. There really are only the two choices, but you have to make them now; you can't wait until those diseases have actually gotten you in a stranglehold, because there will be a point where nothing you belatedly do matters any more—it won't work because it's too late.

The hospital bed is too late.

Look at us. We're actually the first generation of human beings who've lived most of our lives with the Western Diet: in 1940 there were no McDonald's, there was no Swanson Frozen Dinners—hell, there were hardly any freezers!

In 1963 there were no M&Ms or Lay's BBQ potato chips or Häagen-Dazs Country Road or Denny's Double Bacon 'n' Beef or Maison India or salads in a bag. There was no instant ramen, for fuck's sake.

There were no discussions about obesity in America or hypoglycaemia except by obscure physicians running obscure clinical trials for soon-to-be multinational beverage corporations.

Sugar was good. Smoking was better. Mad Men was real; have three martinis at lunch and watch Richard Burton slur his words hilariously on the Jack Paar Show.

We—you me, and pretty much everyone who was born before 1980—have been guinea pigs in the greatest diet experiment in the history of human civilization, and the results are just coming in.

They're not good.

The chemicals that preserve, enhance, brighten, stiffen, soften and fatten have now been in the dietary food chain for nigh-on half a century. These are chemicals that our gut microbes have never encountered, have no strategies to deal with and are basically completely defenseless against.

But there's more: exotic mixtures of bizarre concoctions of sugars and starches, like Krispy Kreme or Eskimo Pie that are held together with emulsifiers, flavor enhancers and coloring agents.

We've been raised to think so many different ways about food: fat is bad. Fat is good. Eat your pasta. Pasta kills. Sugar's bad, sugar isn't bad, it's calories that are bad.

We swallow all this bullshit whole and choose Diet Coke instead or regular Coke, thinking somehow that that's healthy.

Think about that for a second: there are actually people who drink Diet Coke instead of regular Coke and they think they're being healthy.

Human beings were never designed to drink ANY Coke and it's only in the last half century that Coca-Cola has become the most recognized two words in the planet after "OK."

Coca-Cola is the most recognized two words on the planet after OK.

I know, I know: so the fuck what?

Well, consider your microbiome.

Consider the utter confusion that reigns inside your digestive system, day in, day out, as you feed it with bizarre food after bizarre food, shovelling in sugars and lard and chemicals that completely overwhelm any semblance of a healthy ecosystem—just like clear-cutting your digestive tract and planting vast fields of corn and palm oil trees, then burning down the rest of it to build condos and amusement parks.

You know deep inside yourself that all this is not going to end well.

Okay okay, you get it, you get it, but what are you gonna do about it?

You're at a crossroads.

Like I told you, you have the decision: do I want to live till I'm 90, or do I just say Fuck it, I'll take my chances and keep eating and drinking the stuff I've always eaten and always loved.

It's up to you. Are you going to put that bullet in the gun and spin the chamber, or are you going to put the gun away in a place no one will ever find it and forget it ever existed?

I just received an email from a good friend who's been following this project. Here's what he says:

Je remarque que dans les dernières semaines, tu as énormément travaillé sur ton corps et ça semble donner d'excellents résultats, et que ta santé s'améliore. Tu devrais penser t'ouvrir une école de santé, avec participants "sérieux" seulement !  

J'ai toujours trouvé bizarre que les gens, en général, n'hésitent pas à dépenser de grosses sommes et beaucoup de temps pour s'occuper de leur voiture. Mais quand c'est pour leur corps et santé, ils sont hésitants à prendre du temps et à dépenser... Ça n'a pas de sens !

Thanks for that, Mario.

NEXT TIME: Getting Your Shit Together

The Great Learning of 2016: Part I

  T   his past thirty days has taught me a lot—I told you from the outset that I was doing this so you didn't have to—so now you can just pass Go and go straight to the Gold.
So what is my advice to you? What are the conclusions that I have come to after cogitating 200% every single day of the past thirty days—recording, I'll remind you, every single relevant thing that happened to my body: what I ate, when I ate it, what I drank. My blood sugar levels, sometimes six times a day, how I napped and how I slept.

I made charts of every single day; I will post them on this blog in due course, in addition to the test results from uBiome and my blood tests.

If you have the logical mind and the discerning eye, you might be able to make sense of the patterns on my charts, especially the hours that I slept and the duration of the sleep, because I regard the quality of sleep to be the defining marker of your overall health. (After all, if your sleep is fucked up, *you* are liable to be fucked up. It is, after all, a third of your healthy lifetime, and, I think, a kind of dark matter to your life: unseen, unappreciated, but absolutely crucial to existence.)

I didn't record my exercise, but that's because it should be such an innate part of your lifestyle, like sleep, that you should somehow work it into your daily existence and *leave it there.* Don't think of it as a drag that your "diet doctor" is admonishing you to do; think of it as . . . well, all that in a minute.

So here goes. Here is the Wisdom that I will impart from the "Great Learning of 2016."

Be Smart.

EDUCATE YOURSELF. The Internet is the biggest library every created. At your fingertips is almost every speck of human knowledge ever accumulated. Want to know what Louis XIV ate for breakfast? No problem. (Beef madrilène with gold leaf spangles?!)

Avoid obviously spurious websites. There are a LOT of people out there spouting nonsense that almost sounds credible. These people work hard to spread their dangerous gibberish-ideas that are often based on conspiracy theories and other typical lunatic-fringe hysteria.

You will learn to spot these places; usually, but not always, they will be flogging some book or "system" that will be based on science, but then will veer wildly into nonsense territory, the better to differentiate themselves from the other charlatans who infest the cybersphere like Emerald Ash Borers.

Avoid obvious pseudo-science hucksters who call themselves anything like "Chiropractor" "Reflexologist" "Integrative medicine doctor""homeopath/naturopath/insert fraudulent pseudo-science here" and just *use your common sense.* How do you spot them? *They usually want your money in some manner.*

It's not hard, d'oh: USE YOUR BRAIN!!! It's not rocket science.

A great place to start that tries its best to expose these quacks and the bizarre and sometimes dangerous theories they espouse is right here. Type your keyword in the search box and get ready to see the chicanery massacred.

DON'T FEEL PERSECUTED. This is not something someone is forcing you to do because you've been a naughty, idiot loser who's been stuffing your face all your life with complete and utter junk, even if you ARE a naughty, idiot loser who's been stuffing your face all your life with complete and utter junk.

For an analogy, just think of your car. You love your car, right? You want your car to run the best it can; it may be old, but it works, and you want it to work really well. You don't want to put the lowest-priced-lowest-grade Chinese oil into its engine so it sputters and coughs clouds of Beijing smoke.

You don't want to ignore that clattering sound until it finally quits and you have to have it towed to a mechanic who tells you it's blown its fraximillik and will now cost you your paycheck-and-a-half.

*You wouldn't do that to your car, so why would you do it to yourself?*

YOU ARE LOVING THE BIOME. You don't seriously think that there is some magic life process going on in the background that enables you to eat, sleep and, err, use the toilet in a comfortable, pain-free and happy manner, do you?

*This is not magic.*

There are very real, very living creatures inside your gut that are *totally dependent* upon you to feed them right so they can do the essential jobs that evolution has spent millions of years crafting in order to enable walking, talking, two-legged biological machines of the highest order of superiority in the entire observable universe that we know of.

Be mindful of everything that you put into yourself; there are consequences. You may not pay much attention to that bag of M&Ms but believe me, your gut bacteria are paying attention.

In all likelihood, entire genomes of bacteria that are specifically attracted to all the sugar and chemicals inside those M&Ms are racing to the scene, like Crips and Bloods and Mexican drug cartels, to wipe out all the normal bacteria who are there, patiently trying to clean you up and make you efficient, these bad guys wreaking havoc as they usually do, not caring whom they kill and what the consequences will be to the Biome.

That's what these vermin do; it's their jobs. And you're enabling them.

Next time you get the urge to stuff your face with that Costco hot dog and french fries, just imagine the consequences to all your little friends, and by extension, to yourself. That one hot dog may not seem like a big deal—you work hard, you're on the go, you need food, you deserve it—but that one hot dog turns into ten hot dogs and all the garbage accumulates, poisoning every working organ in your body with the utter shit, the dregs of leavings from the slaughterhouse floor that is cursorily inspected by bored meat inspectors and handled by unhappy carcass slingers. THAT'S what that hot dog is. You just don't want to admit it.

EVERY TIME you choose the junk option instead of the easily obtainable, healthy option, you're poisoning your little friends who are trying to take care of you. Trust me, they don't want to be fed that shit. So what do they do? They just GIVE UP AND DIE. The bad guys move in.

Cluster of fucking carrots

DRESS IT UP. Who the fuck wants to chew on a fucking carrot stick? I sure don't. Yet that's what all these advice sites basically tell you to do. "For a noontime snack how about a nice healthy serving of carrots sticks with a fat-free yogurt dip!" Fuck you.

They put a nice happy photograph of a cluster of carrots in a Martha Stewart bowl. Hey! It's not legumes de conteneur en porcelaine fusée à la Chine. It's a cluster of fucking carrots!

And we're supposed to space out our meals to five times a day, chopping little carrots sticks or celery sticks, only to have to eat them with some bland Dr. Weil-approved fat-free-gluten-free-fair-trade-probiotic yogurt that just happens to be available to order on his website?! Recurring subscription for a monthly $39.95!



I knew that I would never be able to survive on a regimen like that. So I changed it. You like shrimp? You can buy them, already cooked, at the grocery store, or you can sauté a batch one lazy day and put them in the refrigerator for snacks. They're very healthy, contrary to the fallacious claims by health mavens in the 80s that they had too much cholesterol.

I just made my noontime and 6 o'clock snack a few shrimp, cold and dipped in a homemade soy-ginger-garlic sauce (recipe on request).

It was delicious, super-fast, pretty healthy (beats chips and a fucking Coke; if I see you drinking one of those, I'll never speak to you again) and it fills you up nicely. If you're extra-hungry, just add extra shrimp.

MORE IDEAS and conclusions coming up in The Great Learning of 2016: Part II

That's Crazy

  T  he young blonde Asian woman behind the counter at the health food store flashed me a smile as I set my glass bottle of 2% goat's milk and an empty from last week down in front of her.

I was feeling expansive. "Who did your hair? Stevie Wonder? Looks 'Wonder-ful,'" I babbled chirpily. She giggled.

"I get two bucks back on this empty, right?" I asked, reaching into my pocket for my cash.

"Yes, I give you two dollars for the bottle after."

She rang me up. "That'll be $6.34," she smiled, and I looked at the bill in my hand: $5.

"Uh, but I get two dollars, right?" I said, not understanding.

"Two dollars back, yes, after!" she said happily.

I gave up and pulled out my credit card. "Credit?" I said, blinking my eyes rapidly in a nonsensical gesture of joy.

"Sure!" she said, and I rang in my card.

She pulled out the receipt, opened the drawer and gave me a two-dollar coin.

I looked at the coin and looked at the five dollar bill in my hand.

I put my credit card back in my pocket.

"Hey, thanks!" I said, in genuine pleasure. I now had $7 in my pocket to blow; off to Dollorama!

This could be a parable for what is wrong with this world; in which a functioning human being is so confused that she can't put one step mentally ahead of another step unless it makes sense to her oddly ordered mind, which does not jibe with the real-life workings of the observable universe and its billion trillion galaxies.

It somehow made more sense to her to force me to use my credit card, just because that magic two-dollar deposit had to come after the whole transaction; gods forbid the eternal rhythm of the Register Gods be disturbed.

So this is my new life? I thought, ponderously. Goat's milk and sprouts for dinner?

I thought about this on the way home. Is this what the goal of this whole thing was all about—to change my diet so radically that I need access to a health food store just for my basic dietetic necessities?

That's crazy, I thought.

But then I thought, what's crazy? Is chowing down on a mouthful of Lecithin, artificial flavor, emulsifier, corn syrup, sugar, palm oil, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, salt, artificial flavour (2) smart? (Snickers bar)

How about Lactose, Sodium Diacetate, Maltodextrin, Salt, Malic Acid, Sodium Citrate and Sunflower Oil? (Lay's potato chips)

Or Sugar, milkfat, salt, artificial flavour, cornstarch, dextrin, artificial colouring (Blue 1 Lake, Red 40 Lake, Yellow 6, Yellow 5, Red 40, Blue 1, Blue 2 Lake, Yellow 6 Lake, Blue 2) gum acacia, lactose (M&Ms)

This could be someone's lunchtime snack regimen. There are actually people who eat this, day in, day out, for years, decades, every single day.

How about you? Do you eat this? Why not just hang out in a chemistry lab all day and munch on the pickings?

What's crazy?

Yes, it's an extra effort to go to the health food store, and frankly, quite silly to think that goat's milk is any better for me than cow's milk (it's not).

But it makes me feel good about myself; it makes my bacteria feel good about ME.

I imagine that down there they're thanking their lucky stars that they've found a human who managed to turn the page from the Western Diet to something sane, something they could actually live on, instead of constantly swimming in a chemical and grease-gob-filled swill of crap that their owner somehow confused with food.

That's crazy. Right?

In my next post, I'll tell you what this thirty days of discovery and deprivation has taught me; and I can tell you, it's not crazy.

Miracles

  I  don't have much to say.

But what I say is important. I want to you to listen carefully: miracles can happen. Except they can only happen according to Einstein: Energy equals mass times the speed of light. I know that's a bit hard to understand, but in the real world, it means that to achieve something, you have to put in a lot of effort.

Sometimes, a lot of effort.



Oscar Peterson wasn't a genius pianist because he was born a genius, and uh, just sat down at the piano and, well, watch the video.

The fact is that he put thousands of hours in  at the keyboard before he played a note in public. That usually means eight hours a day for months—probably years.

For anyone to get good at anything, they have to put in huge amounts of effort. Just like the Atlas rocket engine expended enough energy to get Apollo 11 into space—a HUGE amount of energy just for that tiny three-man capsule—we have to expend mental and physical energy to achieve good things.

And sometimes, results take a long time to see.

And many, many many times, we're just too impatient and we give up in disgust because nothing seems to be happening.

It's why people give up their diets, for one.

Today, I looked again at my hands.

You don't know how insidious psoriasis can be. If you're cursed enough to have it—even a mild version, in my case—it can run your life; govern everything you do.

I hated doing anything in the kitchen that involved water, because I was wearing so many bandaids on my right hand. And the water would soak into them and galvanize the sores beneath them. It would hurt.

So I often refused to help Brigitte, say, chopping vegetables or filling the dishwasher.

Small things, maybe, but it still controls your life. And I HATE anything controlling my life.

So I looked at my hand today, and I noticed—again—that my psoriasis has gone. I mean, gone. It's like I had taken some miracle drug; I just keep looking at my hand in total disbelief because for the past five years or so, every time I looked at my hand I either had every finger bandaged or red, angry and about to be bandaged.

Day in, day out, for five years. And that was after a five-year remission (before that remission, when I was living in Japan, it was even worse).

And in less than one month, because I have switched my diet—to tell you the truth I have no idea what part of switching my diet did this—my psoriasis has gone completely into remission.

To me, folks, this is nothing short of a miracle.

For the past five years, let me tell you, I've tried everything. Every cream. Dovonex. Protopic. Maximum Strength Hydrocortisone. I've tried UV lamps. Occlusion with rubber gloves. Sunlight.

Nothing worked.

Until now.

The psoriasis is almost gone.

To me, folks, and pardon me if I keep repeating it, this is a fucking miracle (not just a regular goddamn miracle). I'm usually a skeptic about any naturopsycopathic homeo-integrated-gluten-free nonsense about diet, but this is undeniable; it's right in front of my face and on my hand.

I can't deny it.

But my point is, I went through a huge effort for this. It didn't happen overnight. I did things that for me, are just plain odd.

I pretty much gave up sugar, wheat, dairy and fat for seven days.  (Look at me exaggerating. Seven days goes by in a flash!)

But what I got for that seven days of "deprivation"—really, just an extreme effort on my part not to yield to numerous temptations—was complete remission of a years-long disease that controlled and altered my life.

Seven days of effort for a huge reward.

Just imagine what otter autoimmune disorders this could help. Obesity? Migraines? Fatigue? Insomnia?

(Did I mention that I'm sleeping every night in solid blocks of five to six hours? Another miracle.)

I can't explain what happened, but I also can't deny it.

I've reintroduced sugar, in the form of honey, and dairy in the form of goat's milk and kefir, but no more ice cream . . . no more whipped cream . . . no more cheese . . . (no more pizzas!)

But you know what? It's okay. I can do it. I will do it.

I'm sorry; I should be talking about The Biome.

But today, I can only talk about The Miracle.

Transformed

Thinner?

  "S  alut, Jean!" I said cheerily to the chubby middle-aged Mediterranean man standing in front of my building's elevators.

He was the delivery guy from the pharmacy; he knew me well because I always give him a $2 tip.

His grey beard twitched as he looked at me blankly.

"C'est moi, Jean! Huit-cent-sept!"

His expression began to change somewhat comically as a look of recognition slowly crept across his rumpled features, and I stifled an urge to laugh.

"Monsieur Nicolas?" he stammered, confused. His moustache trembled on his upper lip like a grey caterpillar.

"Jean! It's me! The guy in 807!"

"Mais—mais, vous avez jeunissé!"

I wasn't sure about the French, but I thought he'd said "You've gotten younger!"

And the strange comment wasn't the first time that day; I had just returned from my visit to the hospital, where I had gone into Brigitte's room to find that one of her old friends had come to visit.

"You lost weight"" said Rachel, not even bothering to say hello.

Well, I'm not too sure about getting younger and losing weight. The scale says that I lost around ten pounds over the week or so that I "deprived" myself of wheat, dairy, sugar and meat, but other than having an unfamiliar surge of energy, I look in the mirror and just see same old me . . . but obviously they don't.

Besides, can such a transformation take place within only a few days?

Well, let's see.

Last Sunday, if you recall, was the start of Phase III: The Renewal, or whatever you want to call my process of hitting my microbiome with everything I've got, after pretty much depriving it of everything for a week in Phase II.

I wake up every morning with a coffee and eucalyptus honey—I read somewhere that contrary to what I once thought honey is a lot different to the Biome than sugar, because it actually contains dozens of compounds that white sugar does not, and these compounds are apparently beneficial to the gut bacteria.

I add a dash of organic goat's milk, because, well, no antibiotics.

My "breakfast" is 50 billion bacteria, about 20 different vitamins and minerals, and then a chaser of kefir bolstered with a scoop of Prebiotin and baobab powder. And then . . . well, let "Monsieur Nicolas" tell it:

The result of all this, on Day Five of my "Renew" phase, in which I carefully try to build up the bacterial populations in my gut microbiome while watching carefully my intake of dairy, wheat, glucose, carbohydrates and fats, is that I'm sleeping up to six undisturbed hours per night, I'm walking to and from the hospital every day with a spring in my step and no fatigue whatsoever, and I'm still raring to go in the evenings.

That figures to probably a 150% boost of energy levels, much, much better sleep every night, a calm, untroubled stomach and digestive system, and all around, so far this week, a smashing success!

I am, of course, documenting all this on charts, which I will post as soon as they're completed.

This phase will continue for a week from next Sunday to make two weeks altogether, at which point I will take samples and send them in to uBiome, and then sit back and assess assess assess!

See you in ten pounds.

You Carry Oats

  E   ukaryotes.

A eukaryote is any organism whose cells contain a nucleus and other organelles enclosed within membranes.

We are made of eukaryotes. Bacteria are eukaryotes. Therefore, we're bacteria.

It's easy to reach that conclusion, which isn't quite correct (I got a ciliae cut at the Shear Path-o-gen salon last week) but to tell the truth,  these past three weeks have made me see the world around me in a completely new way.

For example, I've come to the conclusion that bacteria are our friends. They're working their flagella off  to make us healthy. But they're not just sitting around in tiny kaffeeklatsches toasting each other with helminths and lime, they're out on the beat, watching out for rogue groups of thug-teria who want to make us sick.

We're walking war zones—it's always World War III for our Enterococcus, Prevotella and Firmicutes.

And disturbingly, some of them can change sides.

But what I discovered most was a sense of just how prevalent they are; now, when I'm standing in the kitchen, I don't just see a kitchen counter, I see a kitchen counter covered, with every square millimeter, with bacteria. Trillions of them.

But that thought doesn't scare me—it reassures me. Because most—I'd say 99.9%—mean us no harm at all; they're just going about their daily business.

And a lot are not just our best friends, they're our essential best friends—like I said, they're going to war everywhere on out behalf.

So when I look at a carrot that I'm about to scrub as clean as I can get it, I say, no. Let's just wash it off and let the little guys who were making it home—most of them our firm allies—just stay there and take the ride down my gullet to join their firm and cute pals.

And when I look around me these days, i don't just see scenery—trees and grass and furniture and food—I see a living carpet of out little friends, going to work on our behalf to keep us healthy, happy, and typing these words, because that's what they're making me do.

But enough about them (I just fired their propaganda minister with a swipe of Purell); here is what I just received in the E-mailome:

UBIOME

We just received your sample.

Hello,

Thank you so much for being part of uBiome. We have received your samples for kit id 573056491, and they are now safely awaiting processing in our lab. In the meantime, you might like to have a look around our blog (ubiomeblog.com). Also, we’d love to have you join our fun and insightful microbiome discussions on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and follow us onInstagram and Pinterest too. Once your sample is ready, we will tell you what's in there and how you compare to our other community members. Thanks!

Jennifer and the uBiome Team support@ubiome.com

Oh, what fun!

Meanwhile, on Day Three of Phase III—the Reset, I'm finding that I have more energy, and sleeping very well, but most of all, take a look at this:

Psoriasis on my right hand, Day One of Phase I, May 1st, 2016

Psoriasis on my right hand today, three weeks and two days later: May 24th, 2016

Now, I don't honestly know what's going on; whether it's my eliminating totally for a week and now reducing dairy, sugar, meat and wheat to a bare minimum, or whether it's walking to the hospital every day, but MY PSORIASIS IS IN REMISSION FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THREE YEARS.

There is the proof; you can't deny the photographs.

You carry oats, indeed!

Details and full report at 11.

Survey Says . . !

  R   emember that goofy game show Family Feud with that British guy who used to be on Hogan's Heroes? You don't? Lucky you! You still have time to repent, reset and renew!

Results from Day One: Phase III:

Not much. On the scale, I lost nine pounds in one week. I went from 160.7 lbs. To 151.0 lbs.

That's more than one pound a day. I don't know quite what to make of it, but Brigitte says it's unhealthy. "You look sick!" she said. "I don't like you when you lose weight!"

Well, as you all know, I'm not in this to lose weight; it's obviously what The Biome wants, for whatever reasons best left to them, now that a new regime is in town.

Here is roughly how my day went (remember, this is the day that I quit quitting sugar, dairy and wheat, while downing 50-billion-strong bacteria pills and strong foods for all of them):

---

I MADE MY COFFEE with a teaspoon of unpasteurized eucalyptus honey and a couple of tablespoons of fresh goat's milk from a glass bottle. It was unexpectedly delicious.

My biome cheered.

For my midmorning snack, I piled two shrimp into a tiny bowl and heaped some self-invented ginger-soy-habanero dressing on it. I chased it with chilled San Pellegrino water garnished with lemon and strawberries. But before all that, I ingested 50 billion bacteria in a probiotic pill.

My biome cheered.

I then downed all the vitamins for the day, and then mixed up in a small vessel a half-scoop of Prebiotin powder with a couple of tablespoons of fresh Kefir. It was oddly sugarsour, but not unpleasant. I could feel the bacteria squirming on my tongue as they happily vanished down the Magic Slide to their chums in the Biome.

My biome cheered! There were hearty back—err, flagellumslaps all round as they welcomed their strange-looking but happy countrymen into the fold. I can almost see them all, having an immense celebration at the beginning of Phase III! Let's hope they let the viruses, parasites and helminths in to the dance hall. ("Ciliae stamps, please, gentlemen! No crowding, there's good fellows.")

And then I sat back and waited.

Nothing. Nothing happened; my stomach did not explode. My stomach did . . . nothing.

Perhaps everyone is so stunned by their abrupt change in fortune that they've temporarily declared a National Holiday, in imitation of tomorrow's Victoria Day here in Canadica.

But not so fast; this afternoon I went down to the hospital with a thermos of goat's milk latte for Brigitte to sample. "It really smells like goat's milk!" she said, curling her lip. Frankly, I can't smell anything, and the coffee, which I ended up drinking by myself, was spectacular.

But still nothing from the Biome . . . a deafening silence, despite the sudden injection of lactose.

I walked back on a perfect day and stopped off at the Arab grill place to buy some brochettes of chicken for my dinner tonight: whole wheat pita with chicken, red pepper, red onion, garlic, cole slaw cabbage, cilantro and Spring Mix lettuce.

That should give them something to shout about!