The gathering part

There are plenty of places in which to hunt the daily bread; just need to drum up the desire. It occurred to me that I needed to finish assembling a package for one of my family, who enjoys the chocolate items I've sent in the past. Got her done, and enjoyed an informative yet unusually brief conversation with the proprietor of the mailing store, a man who came here from Iraq in the late seventies or early eighties, who always has insightful and ironic observations about everything. Customers were arriving behind me, and he wished me a happy holiday. He was brought up Christian in Iraq, and has a very broad worldview that usually jibes with mine, despite my non-believing ways. When the Bush/Cheney regime blundered into Iraq, this guy had a New Yorker cartoon up for quite a while that depicted soldiers at an Ali Baba-like cave full of what looked like WMD's; I don't recall the caption, but of course "Open Sesame" was involved.