magicbeans. nothing if not awkward.

and here are some bits and pieces from gale and george's replies.

gale said the following, which helped ease my pangs of obligation a little bit:

Frankly, I'm very glad you can say this. I've been feeling that, maybe because I'm your parents age or older, communications weren't flowing as freely as they need to if this is going to have any chance.

As for me, I now have to live more in the present since my reaonably expected time in the future is nowhere near as long as yours, and it is also highly uncertain. Chiefly this project has been a *lot* of fun to work on. I will have no regrets about the time spent on it even if it doesn't get started. I think all of us have escape hatches -- I am not selling my house here and my daughter will continue living in it; the Codinas expect they will buy the property and continue living there; you two can apparently move fairly easily.

It would prefer it to works, but it doesn't have to. My chief hope if this fails is that I can find something as meaningful to work on afterwards.

i've noticed over the years that george has a hard time really expressing himself without humor. which is not necessarily a bad thing. his response ended with the following two paragraphs:

k. I can not express what i feel in words spoken or otherwise. I am not going to try. I will say the events of the last month have totally spent me emotionally. Staying here in connecticut would only be more destructive to me. i have never done anything this risky in my life. I like to have financial buffers before embarking on any pilgrimage to the holyland of self-improvement but this time there is not one. Every resource i have is devoted to this move. I am not as _resourceful_ as i thought. I have decided "to hell with the safety net and to stop running my life like a banker." Life has not made me overly heathly or happy probably due to my lack of _________. Well whatever it is it ain't here. It may not be in Austin either but i won't know until i look. Besides, my last day at work is Thursday. What would I do? Go up to my _former_ boss and say, "oops, sorry about that moving thing. can you give me my job back and fire that nimrod replacement of mine with the morgage and three kids that you hired for three bucks an hour less than me?"

One thing is certain. I will not move until it stops raining. I hate wet feet and my car's top is very leaky. I have a new top...but i don't have time to get it installed before the move. I am sure there are plenty of places in Austin that can do the job in a few hours. I am not too worried, unless of course they are getting 8 inches of rain a day. Think there is water in that little brook of ours? If it rains for another week we can skip the landbased colony idea and move right into aquarius. I am sure it is much cheaper per square foot to build Aquarius out of used mobile homes anyway.

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speaking of flooding, here's a pic [pic removed, link added] of bastrop, the town that i'll be living in next month.