After running around to three libraries in the freezing cold all last week your Kmareka correspondent has been struck down with a sinus infection.

I’m stuck in bed, reading a lot of Agatha Christie– mistress of distraction, storyteller extraordinaire. Her mysteries don’t actually make any sense, but who cares? I’m not up to anything that requires mental effort.

This week’s New Yorker has a short profile on Crystal Harris, the 24 year old almost college graduate who is engaged to the 84 year old Hugh Hefner. She gave up everything to be with him…

“I was a psychology major, and I didn’t want to be a psychologist,” she said. “I thought it would be cool to come up here and just, you know, hang with Hef. School will always be there, I guess.” Read more

Agatha Christie could have made this stuff up, and she’s a genre writer.

I wish Crystal Harris every happiness, and I want to give her some words of encouragement. Men are living longer these days.

I only see the old people who are sick, so you can extrapolate that there are more well people I never meet. It’s not so unusual to encounter a dude over 90 who still has his marbles.

Any man or woman who makes it past 80 in decent shape has a strong constitution and a good shot at making it to 100. The oldest man I ever took care of was 105, and feisty enough to demand that the items on his bureau be rearranged every ten minutes. How lucky that Hef is loved by a woman with the youth and energy to take care of such needs. And how lucky that his wealth can provide for the many necessities that consume the savings of a lifetime. Hef will even be able to try expensive and experimental cutting edge treatments for longevity. Dick Cheney, I have heard, is bionic. With any luck, it will all come out even and Crystal will not begin her middle age in debt.

If she survives her husband, Crystal will still be young enough to finish school. She’ll have learned so much about psychology by then.

I wish them a long and happy union.

Any more celebrity debris I can find to take my mind off phlegm and congestion will go into updates here.

IN RELATED NEWS: Sr. Cecilia Adorni celebrated her 103rd birthday by dancing a polka. She’s still working. They have her picture and she doesn’t look a day over 90.