(Hello faithful readers of my dear friend Donald S. Thompson. I'm writing today, in lieu of Donald's regular column, because I haven't heard from him this morning and I fear it may be a matter of grave concern. Also, I wanted to make sure you got your fix of Olympic updates.

Normally I wouldn't drag behind the scenes business out in front of the curtain, but there is a little bit of concern here. The way it works is that Donald calls me at 6am every morning, or whenever he's up to watch the coverage. I told him early on that it's not necessary, but he said, somewhat cryptically, that he would prefer if he could check in, just in case something happened. I try to be as accommodating as I can to the writers, so I bit the bullet, so to speak, for the last two weeks. This morning I awoke pleasantly at 8am. At first, I was unusually refreshed, calm and rested. Then I looked at the clock, and I lost that feeling. I just had a feeling: I knew something was wrong.

Of course, I called Donald right away, but there was no answer. I checked my email (he's not much for email, but he's getting there)-nothing. I sent him a message to the effect that he should contact me as soon as possible. So far, I have heard nothing, and I am worried.

Most of you will have read Donald's rantings and will have noticed that he has several times made reference to the fact that he spent some time in northern Russia, working for the military. Well, what you don't know is that his work up north was a continuation of that mission. What I fear is that his enemies (they may be Russians, they may not-apparently the world of international espionage has changed such that national affiliation is less than meaningful) may have got to him. I say this because part of his concern in writing this blog was that he might be identified and located. We convinced him that using a pseudonym and changing the location from which he was writing would be enough. I am afraid we have made a deadly mistake.

We're sending someone up there by charter plane. We should know by tomorrow if "Donald" is okay.

The USA is leading Great Britain 7-5 in the 9^th end in the men's curling bronze medal game. I'll post updates of the gold medal game involving the Canadian team over the course of the day. Meanwhile, we'll work at locating our lost man. Thanks for understanding.)