One morning this past week, my body decided to remind me that I have left my youth behind me for good. Since daylight savings time, we've enjoyed nice sunny mornings here in the north of England. (It's getting on towards the time of year when the sun doesn't really fully set here until nearly 11pm, which is pretty, but a right pain in the ass when trying to put a three year old to bed. 'But the sun hasn't gone to bed yet! I want to stay up til the sun goes to bed!' Thank the Lord for blackout curtains). Anyway, in the morning now our bathroom is full of warm sunshine, filling it with bright light, which always starts my day off in a good mood. I wake up and am usually out the door before anyone else in the house is up, and I enjoy the peace of the morning routine. (The preceding statement would make my mother's jaw hit the ground, if she could figure out how to turn on the internet to read it). I was in mid-facial-shave contortion - one of those face stretching angles that thrust my chin forward and upper lip out - when I saw it. It was a nose hair. And it was white. What the hell?! It was only a few years ago that my nose decided to sprout a jungle, and now they're turning white? When did this happen? Why wasn't I invited to vote on that decision? I had seen some grey hairs on my head previously, but only confined to the parts I ask the barber to trim. Soon after my nose decided it was jealous of the hair on the rest of my head and began an earnest effort to catch up, I had promised myself I would tend to that new patch with some diligence, and avoid ending up like some of those old guys who can braid the stuff coming out their nostrils. This is another one of those things that isn't in the Handbook On Getting Older but should be. If we have a son, I will do better by him, and pass this bit of sage advice on before he leaves the house: Nose hair is not sexy. Tend to it. Also, your prostate is not your friend. I realized I had been standing in front of the mirror in the same position, razor halfway through a pass, staring into my nostril at the latest insult time had inflicted on my body for nearly five minutes. No doubt this is not the last insult time will have for me. And I am sure that as the grey hairs continue to crop up, I will have to get used to it. I think this one scared me not as much for where it is, but for where the next one my show up.

ATF agents are always on alert for anything suspicious - including ninjas.

Jeremiah Ransom, a sophomore from Macon, was leaving a Wesley Foundation pirate vs. ninja event when he was detained. "It was surreal," Ransom said. "I was jogging from Wesley to Snelling when I heard someone yell 'freeze.'" ATF agents had noticed Ransom's suspicious behavior and clothing and gave chase, apprehending him, Williamson said. "Agents noticed someone wearing a bandanna across the face and acting in a somewhat suspicious manner, peeping around the corner," said ATF special agent in charge Vanessa McLemore. Ransom was wearing black sweatpants and an athletic T-shirt with one red bandanna covering the bottom half of his face and another covering the top of his head, Williamson said.

A) Even if he was a ninja, since when did the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms get jurisdiction over ninjas? and B) Pirates vs. Ninjas? Seriously? Ninjas win, hands down.

I've mentioned before that I really hate Air France. This week, I had to fly down to Lisbon for a meeting - living as I do in the wild north of England, there are no direct flights for me to take. So I ended up on Air France, connecting through Paris, there and back. I'm not a complete idiot - I figured I'd avoid checking my bags at all costs, and avoid the worst of the pain. Not too bad. When I got to the airport in Manchester, the self-service check-in machine said "You cannot check in here. Go to the desk, you filthy non-French person." Which was an inconvenience, but not too big a deal. Coming back, I found another Air France self check-in machine at the Lisbon airport. I thought that maybe this one would be a little less hostile, so I gave it a go. To my pleasant surprise, it printed me out a card and told me I was now checked in. It also said that I didn't have a seat assigned at this point and should 'go to the meeting point' for seat assignment. Meeting point? I figured that maybe this was the Portugo-French translation for 'Gate'. Maybe. So I took my card and headed for the gate. At the security checkpoint, Portugese Guard #1 shook his head at me and the pathetic little card I received from the Air France machine. PG#1: That is not a correct boarding card. Me: But I got it from the boarding card machine... PG#1: That is not a correct boarding card. Me: It came out of the boarding card slot in the boarding card machine... PG#1: Pointing at the words printed in 4 point font on the bottom left corner of the card which read 'NOT VALID FOR BOARDING' That is not a correct boarding card. Oops. Yeah. Look at that. I took my not-a-boarding-card back to the check-in desk and waited in line. (Isn't the whole point of a self-service check-in machine to remove the need to go to the check-in desk?) Once I got to the desk, I handed the not-a-boarding-card to the nice lady behind the desk, and said 'Your self check-in boarding card maker made me a not-a-boarding-card,' to which the nice lady behind the desk made one of those scrunched up faces which said 'why did you have to show up on my shift?' It soon became apparent that she was genuinely confused by the not-a-boarding-card. She had to ask her two colleagues behind the desk what to make of it, and soon, I was single handedly preventing all passengers headed to Charles de Galle airport on that flight from checking in, as all of the checker-inners were all trying to sort out what my not-a-boarding-card meant. Need to piss off a bunch of foreigners in a strange country without even trying? I'm your man. After a fifteen minute consultation, they figured out that the self service check in machine had been out of boarding card paper, so it had printed me a not-a-boarding-card instead. That's right. That means someone purposely designed machine to take two different kinds of paper: your normal boarding cards, and then an additional but different paper stock which was to be used to print out not-a-boarding-cards, just in case the other paper ran out. That's as oppossed to, oh, I don't know, just putting extra boarding card paper in there in the first place. I can only imagine that this is directly tied to some Franco-employment scheme along the same lines as their latest good idea. And yes - I did, eventually, get a real boarding card. But the guy behind me kicked my seat all the way to Paris.