I Got Nothing

I don't feel like writing much. Maybe because I'm all tapped out. When I've got a lot of writing at work, I get my fix that way. Short of sharing what it's like to compose witty and clever pieces while sipping juice and hot chocolate at Starbuck's, there's not much going on. I get my current extracurricular thrills from grocery shopping and watching Hulu and Netflix. So I guess that means it's time to reach into the way back machine. 
          Wa-a-a-ay back when he was a senior at Dartmouth, my first boyfriend told me the CIA had been on campus. Apparently he was a prime target for their recruitment affection. If you look at the history of the intelligence services, they started out as part of an extensive old boy network throughout the Ivy League schools, Harvard and Yale in particular. Apparently anyone else was too plebian. Of course, this was back in the old days when US spies were all white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant men. But times change and these days they're all white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant men. Okay, except for Valerie Plume, or Plame, whatever her name is. 
          I'm sure the attraction was because he was fluent in Spanish and English. Back then, people who spoke symptom-free Spanish and English were as rare as people who can double up on Farsi and English now. [Remember those pathetic requests for Farsi speakers scrolling across the bottom of our TV screens after 9/11? Please call 1-800-FBI-HELP] Plus, when my bf was recruited, Castro had only recently overthrown Cuba, so plans to take him out with Spanish speaking commandos were no doubt at the top of the CIA's list of to-do's.   
          Ironically, his Spanish skills didn't matter in the end, because after his tour of Vietnam, he settled in Paris, speaking froggy. His business in Paris had a name that sounded like one of those black ops groups, so when I heard about it much later, I figured he had joined The Company and that was his cover. Plus I heard he was often traipsing off to the interior of Africa. Unfortunately, after contracting the most virulent form of malaria in the jungle, while on some covert mission no doubt, he died of a massive seizure when he was only 42. 
          The only reason I'm tripping so far down memory lane is that I discovered yet another British series on Netflix -- MI-5. Which pretty much sums up the excitement in my life. MI-5 is the English version of the FBI. Everything that blows up within the confines of the islands is under MI-5's jurisdiction. Everything that blows up off the island, i.e., the rest of the world, is under MI-6 jurisdiction, or their version of the CIA. 
          Discovering the wealth of British cop/spy/murder mysteries I have never seen has been like finding Cadbury Chocolate Easter Eggs tucked under the sofa cushions until Labor Day. So, that's what I'll be doing for the next couple of hours. Watching MI-5, not eating Cadbury Easter Eggs, although. . .