It's been a weird couple of weeks even by G's standards.
Three young relatives of immediate friends have died, including a five-year-old girl taken by dengue. The Grinchlettes came down with the chicken pox - passed along by an elder hatchling owned by the couple who keep our den tidy and the larder stocked - which was unpleasant but not as unpleasant as I'd imagined.
After six agonizing months of hand-wringing the nameless, incompetent and risk-averse government agency that funds my work has gotten off the pot, found the money and wants to plow ahead NOW-NOW-NOW-NOW-NOW (meaning another 15-months of employment), at the very moment that a private sector suitor has come knocking, all pimped out and offering an obscenely large amount of money for yer Grinch to jump ship in exchange for a further four year commitment to Indonesia.

... and then there's this: Wolf Boy on YouTube
Written and performed by an old, old friend in Montreal, and filmed on a mobile phone last weekend in some dodgy Plateau dive (I'm guessing), this dirge Wolf Boy was apparently inspired by yer G's mutterings 15 years ago about wanting to be a foreign correspondent (and then going out and doing it).
Now, Kurt's a lovely fellow, a Cohen-esque Boulevardier, the owner or many black-sweater-and-black-jean combinations, a retired Christmas tree vendor, 4am bagel aficionado and cunning linguist, or at least was when I last spoke to him, like, 100 years ago. So I have a lot of questions, chief among them being: where's the royalties at, homeboy?