There's a better way to do this.

Let me show you a better way.

And we are live just a couple minutes early as I do a little mic adjustment here.

It is a Monday.

Welcome to another week.

It is also my last full week before I'm gone on vacation.

I'll be leaving next week toward the end of the week.

And I'm going to Alaska on a boat.

Actually a ship, a really big one.

Dorothy has actually talked to me into going on a cruise ship, which was never something

that I was really excited about.

But I'm pretty excited about this.

It's been a long time coming.

We actually didn't take a big trip last year because we kind of went all out on this one

and spent some of that moldy old money that we've socked aside for so many years. We're going to

have a blast. We're going to go out on an island and a float plane and see bears and do some whale

watching and really live it up. Live the high life for about a week on this giant ship.

And so I'll be gone and we'll leave you some rewinds or something like that. But just letting you know that in advance. And I think that's why, Dorothy, for those of you on the video, Dorothy's having a little bit of a second thought on this Santa Claus beard thing. But I told her you guys were like, no takebacks. You don't get any takebacks, Dorothy.

Like I mentioned that last week that she was like, I don't know if I want you to do it. It was her idea. She talked me into doing it. I'm in the middle of it now. And now she doesn't want it. It's like, no, no, no, no. We're going to go all out with Santa Claus Spiro this year. we're in that weird stage though where we haven't grown enough of the beard yet to kind of trim it into place, but I'm going to go see my haircut girl this week, too, and maybe she can make it look a little bit more presentable. I'm doing my best with it. But if you haven't heard me talk about that, that's why I look like this right now. I usually don't have this much of a beard,

especially when the hair is, you know, pretty decent. Anyway, what I'm going to talk about today?

This is a Monday, so it's time for, you know, we pick our head up and look around and see what's

going on out in the real world of current events. A couple, a little announcements, so first,

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