Crippled: Two Weeks and Counting

Well, it has almost been two weeks now, since I have endured my infuriating handicap.  No, I haven't lost a leg or a kidney, I have lost at times, and have had a severely handicapped sense of smell and taste due to my son who so generously passed along his cold to me.  There is nothing like a robust virus to cramp a coffee guy's style.  It is amazing how much both coffee and wine and food, for that matter, have tasted like the handle bars on my old bicycle.  Each time I run a coffee tasting, I stress how much our noses are part of our ability to enjoy the diverse world of coffee flavours.  These two weeks have simply galvanized that for me, as I have suffered for too many days, the monocrome and bland world of taste.  Some days I think I could handle a black and white visual world far better than I could a bland tasteless world.  People often ask me jokingly whether I plan to ensure my tongue, ala Gene Simmons.  It's a question which I regularly laughingly pass off without much thought.  That is until now, after two long weeks of severely limited taste, I now may give that tongue insurance policy another glance.  OK, enough about that.  Seriously, the point of this post (yes Virginia, there is a point) is to encourage everyone to revel in the flavours of your daily world.  Do not take for granted the vast diversity that you can experience through your nose and mouth.  So many of the simple pleasures of life are available to us through our mouth and nose, but in order to fully appreciate this world, we need to pay attention.  In other words, it is important to STOP and SMELL the roses, the coffee, the herbs, the bread, the vegetable and to log into memory both the fragrances and the associated words, so that the next time you come across that same aroma, you will know it, own it.  OK, maybe I am being a bit edgy, but then again, I haven't really had the use of my faculties for two weeks.