Crossing the Potomac

When I’m planning music for Mass on Sunday mornings, I like to smoke a cigar and have some coffee while I’m planning. It helps me get into the zone so I get a feel for the music that would be good with the scripture readings. It’s a quiet, peaceful, and prayerful time for me and a great stick just enhances the experience.

When I went to choose a cigar from my humidor this morning, I remembered how I had several in a dry box that got squishy in my electric humidor (that’s another story) and saw my last CAO America Potomac. Since it was my last one, I’ve been passing it over in favor of smokes I have more of, but this morning, yeah, I had to have it.

So, I picked it up to see if it regained its solidity. It had, and I could see through the cellophane that the surface of its wrapper was glistening with oil. I guess getting a little moist then drying helped express the oils from the wrapper. I did this by accident, and it is NOT something I’d recommend, though I do recommend dry boxing after a long rest to reacclimate cigars to the rH of the outside world.

Anyway, when I took that first puff, I immediately went to my happy place! It tasted SO good! And in that feeling made planning for my service today super-easy and incredibly fast! I normally take about an hour or so to plan a service, but when I’m in my zone, it seems I know exactly what songs will fit with part of the Mass. I even rewrote the lyrics of today’s Psalm that I wrote a couple of years back and I didn’t even need to have a guitar or piano nearby. I got all that done in less than a half hour!

After I finished planning Mass, I went to a couple of cigar forums to see what was up and put in a bid for a box of 20 Potomac on CigarBid.com. Then I started writing this diary entry. I’m now about an hour and fifteen minutes into the smoke and I’m down to the last third, which is my favorite part of this particular cigar because it’s like smoking a malted milk shake. The smoke is thick, rich, and creamy, and the spice is practically non-existent with just a tiny bite on the finish.

This is one of the only cigars I smoke that I will finish down to the nub. Like George Washington crossing the Potomac, there’s victory at the end… at least figuratively in this case.