By Booker B on 4/15/2008 8:57 PM

So. The last of the court's paperwork is about complete. Didn't get it done within the 20 day period that would have avoided the requirement to have a court appearance. Oh, well. We'll spend 20 minutes at the City & County Building. I seriously don't expect it to take more trouble than a traffic ticket, and I don't know how I feel about that.

The weird thing is that it's paperwork. So I've been telling myself for a while. It's not the important part. But it turns out not to be just paperwork. It was already a very unexpectedly heavy slog. Then she looked at me and said "You want to do this?"

Well, fuck. It's only been years, with two useless turns through couples counseling and endless repetition of the same fucking discussion/argument and no change and not even any significant communication about anything not completely practical. So, yes I want to finish this stupid fucking paperwork.

But no, I don't want to rejec ... Read More »

By Booker B on 4/13/2008 8:24 PM

if you get a chance to see Martin McDonagh's feckin' play The Lieutenant of Inishmore, do not feckin' hesitate. Nevermind the 6 gallons of feckin' fake blood or the 30+ gunshots. It's feckin' hilarious, as are the other McDonagh shows I've seen, but it goes way beyond those. He's known as a crazy feckin' feck, and this seems to be him saying to himself "What, they think THOSE were the work of a feckin' feck? Well THIS will feckin' show them!!"

Warning, though: Cat lovers will be simultaneously fascinated and repulsed.

By Booker B on 4/1/2008 8:55 PM

Dunno what I did to deserve these fucking back spasms. I've not had trouble with this for a long time now, pretty much since I started working on strengthening the core muscles after the pinched nerve incident 4 years ago. Before that, lower back pain was a pretty regular problem for me. But especially over the last couple years, when I've done a regular gym routine, I've had almost no problems.

Then wham yesterday morning. I was fine at the gym and when I arrived at work. Stood up to go to a meeting at 10 am, and my back informed me that it was just plain fucked up. I don't remember tweaking it in any specific event. The ache was just suddenly there, like it always had been, and I just wasn't noticing it for a while.

The only explanation I can think of is that I got out of the morning gym routine while traveling to the PCA event. I wonder if I'm now addicted to the stupid exercise, and the bod is going to go into withdrawal spasms if I ever skip. Weird. Read More »

By Booker B on 3/29/2008 8:54 PM

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 . . .

By Booker B on 3/29/2008 8:51 PM

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."

By Booker B on 3/26/2008 8:49 PM

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 pai ... Read More »

By Booker B on 3/17/2008 8:48 PM

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 go ... Read More »

By Booker B on 3/17/2008 8:41 PM

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 . . .

Read More »

By Booker B on 3/11/2008 8:44 PM

By Booker B on 3/6/2008 8:37 PM