Years ago, in the mid-70's, I was living in the Boston area and liked to visit the ponies. I was accustomed to first class horse joints like Santa Anita and Hollywood Park, but all they had in Boston was Suffolk Downs, a dingy little place, attractive almost exclusively to hard-nosed horse junkies. Not the kind of folk you'd like your daughter to date (surely, I was different - lol).

Anyway, a great horse with some significant Canadian connections, Riva Ridge, had run there about a year or two earlier, and looking around the place, I just couldn't understand it, and I approached a guy who I'd seen every time I ever set foot on that racetrack, and asked (certainly displaying poor judgment and uncalled for hubris and uppitiness), "why would a horse like that, run at a place like this?" The guy looks at me, and utters what instantly became an enduring life lesson, "Buddy, offer 'em enough money, and they'll run in your backyard."

Not to say I'm not really pleased with the NR, and I am especially impressed regarding the CFO, and, if nothing else, it speaks volumes of the bona fides of the company, but the above statement can be used to explain a lot of things in life.

Whether the news would have pushed us higher on a more normal day, who knows, but we were certainly fighting a strong headwind today.

How's that new lab doing - hopefully they've actually plugged in their equipment and started work on our samples, for goodness sakes.