“I forgot to pick up the mail yesterday so I stopped before I came in for coffee this morning,” George Mackenzie said as he sat down at the table at Mabel’s Grill.
    “Anything interesting?” asked  Dave Winston idly as he opened his menu.
    “Six letters from charities wanting my money,” George grumbled. “My wife gives money to one charity and they seem to give the message to a whole bunch of other charities that there’s a sucker out there.”
    “And about half the charities send along mailing labels,” Cliff Murray added. “As if I ever mailed anything these days because all the people I owe money to, like Hydro One, don’t want to open the mail so they’ve bugged me into having them take the money over the phone.”
    “So what can I get you fellas this cloudy, grey morning,” wondered Molly Whiteside when she came to the table. 
    “Yeh, cloudy and grey, the same as yesterday – and most of the days this winter,” grumbled George.
    “Holy mackerel, look at all those tattoos,” Dave gasped as a guy two tables over took off his jacket and showed sleeves of tattoos on both arms and edging out at the collar of his shirt, giving the impression that his body was likely covered as well.
    “Think of all the hours he had to spend patiently sitting while somebody put all those tattoos on,” chuckled Cliff. “All the time he could have spent doing something better.”
    “Like coming in here for hours every morning to get coffee,” said Molly dryly.
    “I just keep thinking about how he’s going to be stuck with those images for life, even if he changes his mind,” said Dave.
    “Yeah, I got one small tattoo with my husband’s name on it, down on an ankle,” Molly sighed, “And then my husband took off with another waitress he met at a diner on his truck route and now all I’ve got left is his name on my ankle – like a brand – and two kids.”
    “You could always get it removed,” offered George.
    “I hate needles!” Molly said. “I can’t bear the idea of sitting for a couple of hours getting more needles to remove it.”
    “That’s what gets me,” said Dave. “It’s so permanent. I mean that guy’s going to be old, someday, and the tattoo is going to be wrinkly, along with the rest of his skin!”
    “Not to mention all the scars in the middle of the tattoo from the operations he’ll likely need as he gets older,” sighed George.
    “All right, enough of that,” said Molly. “Time for me to get your orders to Mabel before she has to go to bed.”
    She collected the orders and hurried back to Mabel in the kitchen.
    “I know Molly was kidding, but I was hearing on the TV the other night that people are going to bed earlier, even teenagers,” said George. “Did you see the average teenager is going to bed at 10 p.m.?”
    “To bed or to sleep?” wondered Dave. “My kids go to bed but then spend time reading and sending messages on their phones.”
    “Speaking of the latest news,”  Cliff broke in, “did you see that the climate has been changing enough – the storms have become so fierce and such – that the weather forecasters are suggesting they may have to come up with a new category of hurricane: category six! A category five hurricane doesn’t describe high enough wind speeds.”
    “Oh those weather guys just like to make news,” George grumbled.
    “Well on the bright side, looking ahead to spring, I saw way back at the beginning of February that they were already making maple syrup up at Sault Ste. Marie,” Dave said.
    “Good news! That’s more like it,” said George.
    “Yeah, but they also said that if this keeps happening, in the future they may not be able to make syrup at all,” Dave said.
    “You always know how to take the fun out of anything!” George growled. ◊