Thank you Vern, and greetings to my long-suffering fellow members who have to listen to me two weeks in a row because you weren't here last week Vern, and Jim gave me the opportunity to say a few things on account of August containing a day that is of special significance to me and also to Steve. Our anniversary has come in August. It's very nice to see George and Joe and Mrs. Hub and me, and I imagine that Millie on the way to Niagara Falls or Windsor, wherever she is, is probably feeling a little guilty right about now because of the way you do when you're gone for an evening when your meeting's supposed to start. I always like to find the title for a group of thoughts before my typewriter and I sit down to help each other think things out. This has one advantage to you. First, it helps me to limit my range a little bit, and it may even give you some idea of what I'm talking about. So these remarks come under the heading of A Use for Adversity. We often hear in our AA meetings, people say, I speak only for myself, or this is just how I see it, and believing that these statements ought to be said often, I say them too, actually a person can speak only for herself or himself. It's hard enough to do that and be truthful about it. I don't suppose very many people have deliberately set out to experience alcoholism. I know I didn't have that in mind. Now and then I've tried to figure out just what benefits I had expected to get from all the drinking. In the beginning, it made me feel gay and carefree and vastly tolerant of behavior in myself that I might criticize in someone else. It helped to stifle the still voice that kept insinuating I was being inconsiderate and ruthless and hell-bent on having my own way in everything. These doubtful benefits seemed to snowball, and after a time I was reaping a bumper crop of wild and senseless behavior with no regard at all for the inhibiting, civilizing influences that help us get along with other people in this life. In the beginning, I welcomed, I sought the personality change which liquor induced in me, but the degree of change doesn't remain constant in…