LAX - Auckland - Sydney - LAX would cost about $2K. I still wonder how cheaply I could stay lodged there for, say, a month with nonobnoxious levels of couch surfing, camper rental (or car + camping gear rental), etc. etc.

Darwin! The Great Barrier Reef! Fistfights with beery Aussies outside cheap Sydney pubs at 1am! And Cassie specifically *invited* me!!

And whoa! The fare drops to $1500 if I schedule it for August instead of July. That would be their spring, I'm thinking. And thinking and thinking and . . .

I can just hear the planning meeting: "Great concept! We'll need to get a spot for it that's got HUGE traffic so it gets the exposure it deserves."

So for a year since the separation and most of 2 years before that, I've been dealing with the reality of the end of this relationship. Longer than that, if you count back to the first try at counseling. Longer than THAT if you consider what was going into that counseling and how it went.

So today we went to the courthouse and filed papers with the county to wind up the process. That sounds like an awful, bureaucratic way to state what happened. But what happened was plain old boring bureaucracy. We filed papers with the county. What the fuck difference should that make?

It does, though. It felt hard and heavy. My thoughts at the time were that it could have been SO much heavier. She took it easy on me. She could have made it suck worse than it did. She just walked through it. I admire that.

But fuck it. This has been wrong. It's not moved even a speck in the direction of right. It's been and will continue to be a mismatch. Less pain to both of us to stop doing that.

Right?

I...

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News: The Fed gives up trying to stick its finger further and further into the dike and resorts to frantic bailing. Diesel powered bilge pumps are on order, but running them on $4 a gallon fuel is going to hurt.

Views: So how will our economic regulators -- [Hmmmm? Snicker or barf? Snicker or barf? I can't decide which is the right reaction to that term.] -- anyway, how will they affect incentives for market participants in the long term by placing this floor under their downside risk? Not saying intervention is bad or unneeded. When Bear Stearns is at risk, something pretty dramatic needs to happen. But it just about has to encourage ever wilder speculation if the traders know they'll be allowed to fall only so far before being rescued for the good of the markets as a whole. In effect, I suspect it'll erase the last traces of difference between investment and speculation -- if any still existed anywhere but in my imagination.

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Sites for personal ads and online dating are mobbed by people earnestly hoping to be surveilled by someone nice. LinkedIn is much the same thing, only in business suits. And it's already gone a big step further, when Peter Morville enthuses about the happy day to come when our clever phones will chat among themselves to all in range, seeking through the sea of unknown faces around us for matches . . .

Surely Lee will want to use this as the basis for a campaign to promote their jeans as work pants.

So what's the rule on usage of this 'date' word? How much does it imply sex? Is it still a date if you both know that no sex will result? Is sex required for a 'hot date' or could that just be one with a heightened sense of fun or intensity or potential or something? is sex possible without any specific dating?

One of the many aspects of this 'dating' language that confuses me is the linkage to sex. I'm aware of the more or less universal acknowledgment that everybody who's dating is doing so with the goal of at least sex, and many want that to be part of a big-whoop, capital R Relationship. Dating is the way you get from acquaintance to routine bed partner, it would seem. Is that all it is?

To me, company makes a lot more sense as a goal. Seems like all those layers of expectations would nearly kill any prospects for the bigger connection, unless both somehow miraculously want exactly the same things. Given the inevitability of some mismatch, clarification of expectations is an undeniably vital part of coupling (in all senses of that word). Why would you want to start out under the weight of all that, while you're still uncertain about who's going to be into what with what balance of want and need and hope? You'll have to take that on as a joint project if things progress to that point, but it seems like an obstacle to simple friendly company in the early stages.

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My rear end is nice and straight now, with no more crooked bumper smile. Makes a large difference! Although now the stupid computer is detecting some unknown problem with the lights. The shop didn't get the high brake light hooked up correctly, I suspect. I suppose I'll have to go back to them for the adjustment.