2047 Observations

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

My house is on the helicopter flight path between Albany and NYC, and they fly low through here - I mean treetop level. Normally there's an average of one helicopter a week thrumming over, shaking the house and scaring the cats (it sounds like a train is heading straight for the house).

Lately it's been two to four a day. Even if I had no idea what's going on these past two weeks, I'd know there's something big going down.

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The government and media are trying to scare us! Everybody keeps stressing the 700+ drop in the Dow. They say it's the biggest drop blah blah blah.

Well, in bare numbers, like 750, yeah. That's the largest number. However, it's not the biggest drop! Nowhere near. Don't forget that the Dow has been rising steadily for years. In percent, this drop is (heh heh) a drop in the bucket. It's only a 7% drop. That's only the seventh largest drop since something like 1940!

To call it the largest drop since the Great Depression is sensationalism and fear-mongering, and it's not true, and it pisses me off. AND, by creating fear, it almost guarantees further dropping (not to mention the administration gets its power-grabbing way).

I run a portfolio table online. I don't check it often because I'm a long-term investor and day-to-day rises and drops don't bother me. So I checked. Yeah, I have had some painful losses comparing three weeks ago to today. However, one of the columns in the table tracks gains over the cost basis (mostly the prices in 2002 through 2004), and even with the losses of the past week, I'm still showing high gains over base. So even today, I have not lost a cent, and have actually gained by an admirably healthy amount.

[Later Update - See this. He agrees with me. I'm hoping that this delay in pushing the bailout through will allow the OTHER proposed solutions to get a hearing.]

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I saw The Man last night. We had dinner in Newburgh, our "halfway point".

He'd had some stuff going on, and we hadn't been able to get together in five weeks. A very frustrating five weeks. He had suggested an overnighter for last night, and I said no, just dinner.

I needed to see how I felt, and how I felt about "us", and I didn't want to be distracted by a promise of the physical.

I know how I feel about him. There's no question of that. What I was unsure of was the relationship. Over the past five weeks of not knowing for sure what was going on, and wondering why I'm putting up with what feels like half a relationship, like there's something missing, feeling shut out sometimes and wondering why, I needed to reexamine what I want, and whether what we do have is enough.

I'd almost reached the conclusion that no, it wasn't enough, and maybe it would be better to go our separate ways. Yeah, I arrived at the restaurant in breakup mood.

Within a half hour of his arrival last night I knew that it's worth it. Worth the frustration. Worth everything. We have some kind of Vulcan-like mind meld, and it's extremely satisfying. We were together four hours, and it was non-stop talk and laughter and mutual admiration.

The chemistry between us could power a nuclear submarine.

I guess I just need to be more definite with him about what I want and need, and more insistent than I have been. I still don't know where this is going, but once again, I don't care.
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