ur awake because you're trying to get adjusted to west coast time?

Atak, all the best buddy

Oh, and y'all chew on this: even with all my loathing of pragmatic, American-style politics, at the moment I'm working for the Dems in New Hampshire, canvassing for get-out-the-vote and coordinating some stuff. I came up as a favor to my aunt — I'd never have done it without that — but it's not so bad. Canvassing (door to door stuff) turns out to be interesting, fun if you let it be, a source of a few stories, and also, shockingly to me, fairly effective — I estimate my work here in the last few days has been worth several net votes. Bizarre and frightening but true.

I know I haven't been manic through the tribulations of the relationship because I kept sleeping, but unfortunately that stopped a couple nights ago. I'm hoping that tonight I finally sleep — I don't want to go 72 hours without.

(That's actually an exaggeration: I've probably had three or four hours in that time).

do you believe in the cause at all, or is it just for shyts and giggles?

Oh, I definitely do in that from between these two choices, I think one is about a trillion times better than the other. But I'm a liberal, not a democrat, and I think Obama has let liberals down — not a shock, I realize, but still. He ran in '08 as a dove, but is a pretty decent warmonger as it turns out, and I loathe that. But yes, I believe the world will be far worse if he doesn't win.

Also, I had dinner last night with a candidate for the New Hampshire legislature, for whom I'm also working, and she turns out to be not only incredibly nice, but someone I really do think deserves to win. So that feels good.

So, why'd you guys break up?

The weirdest thing about the canvassing is the undecided voters. You would think, or you might anyway, that by now everyone would have a pretty good idea where he stood when the issues are so clear, but no, there remain a large number of genuinely undecided voters. Voters who intend to vote.

Even more shocking: a few of these people seem to be bright and educated. I had conversations today with two undecideds (substantial conversations — ten minutes apiece, I'd say); one was not brilliant but did seem to be trying to figure out what would be best for him (concrete worker) and his girlfriend (traveling nurse); the other was clearly thoughtful and educated but said he worked two jobs and simply hadn't had time to go through the details yet; he plans to on Tuesday.

The second one was tougher because he thought foreign policy, and particularly military action, was an important thing (almost no voters seem to at this point), and he felt let down by Obama in that regard. As, as you see in my post above, do I. We talked practicalities and alternatives, but obviously that approach to it isn't black and white.

i'm actually somewhat undecided myself

I need not to get too much into this, but I guess I do need to address it a bit. I'll keep it general, though. I was driving her crazy, she was driving me crazy, her daughter wasn't helping matters (though that did fade into the background recently), and it's actually not clear that our longest-term goals for a relationship are or ever were compatible.

Oops — not meaning to offend. I just would have thought, a week ago, that almost no one who thinks much about the choice wouldn't have a clear preference, one way or the other. But that seems to be wrong.

Sounds like you're doing well and in decently good humor atm, keep it up, dawg

I am trying to put on a good face. A few hours ago I was throwing up from the anxiety, and as I said, it's not like I'm sleeping or anything silly like that , but I'm trying. And talking about stuff — anything but the thing — is good; that's just who I am. Thus, reopening the well.

Hint for anyone who's planning on guessing my plan: it's discussed in this well, in a way. (I'll reveal soon; I'm really not planning on being too asinine about it.)

So anyway, here's the basic idea:

soooo i helped!

best of luck with whatever you do attakdog

Still awake because you're adjusting to a night schedule in order to become a gigolo, ldo

and by the time your training is finished, the NHL will probably be running games again, so boom, all your problems solved!

gl with everything

Very nice! I wish you the best as well

Hey, I was right, kinda.

Could be, right?

Except, in all seriousness, Devi once pointed out that a yoga instructor sleeping with his students is very bad, very much unlike me sleeping with my MCAT and LSAT students back in the day (which I did a lot). Reason (translated out of yogaspeak into atakspeak): Much of yoga is mild to fairly deep hypnosis, so students are quite vulnerable to manipulation; it's inherent in the relationship that it's never quite balanced. (She said the problem arises when the students come on to the instructor, because that seems like it should be OK but still isn't because to some extent they're not attracted to you, but to the fact that your yoga makes them feel good.)

I'm attracted to many yoga instructors without having ever been in their classes.

I am a big fan of this plan. My immediate neighborhood (Fremont) is full of tutoring businesses, and almost no others. I have some connections too...

Plus we could play bridge with filthy, elliot, and iversonian.

Politics poster rjoefish has been doing this and posting about it from Florida. Interesting stuff.

It's weird how much that post did help. When I read it it immediately seemed she'd written it for me. (She hadn't, at least not consciously; we talked about that later.)

It's going very well, and I should be well prepared for Kripalu even though I'm way less experienced than most trainees. It also doesn't hurt that I'm getting ridiculously strong and healthy, at least by my own standards. At 46, I'm seeing better gains from my weightlifting (I do that on top of the yoga) than I have since I was 28, and that was when I was doing an insane amount of heavy work; now my routine is quite reasonable. And the only explanation that's reasonable is that somehow doing the yoga is facilitating the weightlifting. Meanwhile my flexibility is improving, visibly every week, not just in cosmetic cute stuff like hamstrings and gastrocs but important things like (the biggest one for me) my surgically-altered, badly scarred shoulders.

That sounds about right — I'm done with part two the first week of February, so we can party then. Yogically, I guess.