What's in borsht? Beet's me!

I had the opportunity to travel to Leningrad this month, but I declined. I don't typically get the privilege of doing so, therefore I make sure I have sufficient grounds when asking for a postponement of duties. The truth is, Walter is simply not up to the travel. We've been to the land of nesting dolls and vodka before and we've been real sports in the Rusky region. But Walter is mired in the doldrums. I swear, my cherry blossoms, I thought it was we, the fairer sex, that were the harbigers of the moody blues. But give me a maiden in her menses any day over a man in the muck. First Miles, then Walter. I think Walter is coming off the end of his midlife crisis and since he wasn't able to buy a sportscar or take up with dainty Scandinavian tennis coach, I fear that he's realizing his moment to indulge within the excuse of a cliche is passing him by. I'm considering sending a masseuse up to his room, if only to give him some guilt to distract him from his own self-imposed misery. Do I sound cold, unfeeling and...oh dear, I hate to use the caustic and overused term...bitchy? Perhaps. But when you've spent evenings dodging shards of Waterford crytal, snipers hiding in the stormdrains along your footpath (shooting up, no less--try being surprised by an updraft of hot lead, bunnies) and stitching your own six inch knife wound, courtesy of a stupid and clumsy (and, subsequently expired) rookie agent of the Persian guard, then you try and drum up sympathy for a man who sits like a loaf of rising bread dough in the library, lamenting over the loss of a few more strands of hair. Oh well, such is the lot in the Delacourt palace.

Speaking of Miles, he is for the better, thank the gods of gaydom. Upon the completion of the Dim Sum mission, we'd pulled into a shipping warehouse at the docks, to await our contact and transport down the coast. Who should slide open the doors with such brutish grace but Agent 76, aka, "The Silver Wolf." A man's man, if I ever saw one and it didn't take long for me to figure out which of us he'd be helping into his boat first. "A stunning accent of ocelot, Madame Delacourt," he noted. "I have a smoking jacket made from the same cat." Purrr.... And Miles sprung into action. I captained the boat all the way to Norfolk, while the men...took a catnap in the cabin.

I do so love the sailing life, don't you?