sj,

no doubt. I thought he had hired security guards. I think white-haired man can probably get around most security systems, but still he and Emily (after all this time) should have one.

Thanks guys. I was in Williamsburg last night, and seeing all the young, pretty people reminded me of what I missed out on.

I get that.

Combined with yesterday’s therapy session, it felt like a gut punch.

I get that, too. In a big way.

But I still think you didn't miss out on your best years, because they're not a fixed period.

You know how you're convinced you're this total dork, and then you go to intense analysis for eleven years, and then you finally start to believe you're not a dork, but then you realize that you're in late middle age, and the best years of your life have completely passed you by?

I understand completely. It's simply a case that there's only so much time left, and things you wanted to do didn't happen, and a hard-eyed look at circumstances will tell you about the odds of them ever happening.

I have also been resenting the hell out of the young, perky people who the world is fawning on and feeling like society keeps looking at me and thinking "You're still here?"

All the "Your best years are what you want them to be!", "Age is a number!," "I'm much happier now than when I was younger" doesn't make much of a difference, really. You feel like you feel. Embrace the curmudgeon-hood. Trip the next burbly youngster you meet into the gutter. You'll feel better, at least briefly.

Hey, does anyone have any tips I should know for making a Priceline bid on a rental car? It seems less fraught with randomness than flights and even hotels, so I'm not terribly worried. I don't actually have a preference for rental car company (like I do with hotels), and it's not like with flights where I might have to show up at 5 a.m. to get a flight.

I guess my question is: what's the best way to figure out how low I can bid without lowballing myself out of the acceptable price range?

(Hurr, hurr. I said "lowballing.")

This post brought to you by Holy Shit, We Are Leaving For Vacation In 14 1/2 Days And Will NEVER Be Ready.

I have also been resenting the hell out of the young, perky people who the world is fawning on and feeling like society keeps looking at me and thinking "You're still here?"

I would be resenting the young, except their career prospects suck in this economy (which will affect them their whole lives) and they'll have to deal with much more global warming and fuel shortages when they get older than I will.

Photographs of people being blasted by wind in the face are priceless

I resent everyone, depends on the part of the day who my ire is focused at. It is really unpleasant and I know it is my position to change, not anyone else. I am very good at faking social accepted behavior though, so I am not so horrible to be around for others....yet.

I have therapy today and I think she will either say "finally, the real real you came out warts and all" or "holy hell this is what the cesspool of resentment on your bottom level of coping looks like." Cause really, I am over her telling me I need to think about myself and take time for me and work on digging for what I really need. No I don't. that shit is a luxury and I don't get to do that now or probably anytime in the near future. Better or worse mac is pretty much all consuming and I need to find a way to find some peace and happiness in that reality instead of trying to make it something else. I need to get my Zen on and right now I am fighting it, imagining and hoping to find my tribe in order to be happy I think is actually an obstacle not the right path.

30s were career focused, 40s and 50s were family focused.

::high fives Laura 'cuz I know what her focus was in her 20s::

Age is just a number, Sox, until your body starts to fall apart in new and unflattering ways. That noted, my life has certainly not been trending in one direction. It's been more waves and troughs.

Elementary School: Good! (Little League, comic books, reading)
Junior High: Horrible. (hormones, alienation, social ostracism)
High School: Tolerable, then pretty good.(finding my circle of friends)
College: Great. Maybe not the best years of my life but I hit new peaks with friendship, romance and intellectual achievement.
Just out of College: Pretty good, then pretty bad. (Mom died)
First career attempts: Pretty good (Fantagraphics), then very bad for a while (not really published again for more than a decade).
Twenties: Good! (Serial monogamy! Lots of sex)
Thirties: Hard (new parenthood) and then horrible.(divorce)
Forties: Very good (emerging from Divorce, new marriage, new baby) and then some difficulty. (Money, work, lack thereof)
Fifties: Not so great. So far.

So, anyone doing anything special for Sunday's annular solar eclipse?

Sunday's Solar Eclipse 'Ring of Fire': Where and How to See It

On Sunday afternoon (May 20), the path of an annular solar eclipse will cross parts of eight western states. SPACE.com estimates that an estimated 6.6 million Americans live within the path of annularity.

An annular solar eclipse is typically no match for a total solar eclipse. It is really more like an embellished partial eclipse, with the beautiful solar corona not becoming visible and the sky never getting really dark. Nevertheless, an annular solar eclipse still ranks as one of the most remarkable of celestial sights for avid skywatchers.

Sunday's eclipse track begins in East Asia and crossed the Pacific Ocean before reaching North America. In the United States, the U.S. National Park Service has invited skywatchers to view the solar eclipse from a national park, while the University of Colorado, at Boulder is opening its Folsom Stadium — a football stadium — to the public in what organizers are calling the world's largest solar eclipse viewing party.

eta: An annular solar eclipse happens when the moon is too far away from the Earth to completely block the sun.

tommyrot's right: I wouldn't be a recent college grad right now for love or money.

I rather like my 40s: I'm not as fit as I was 20 years ago, but I have much better fashion sense, and I'm making enough to do some traveling. The only big downside is dealing with my aging parents.

The project was eventually scrapped as it was felt that the public would not respond favorably to the U.S. dropping a nuclear bomb on the moon

There's a great book about how, in the early 1960s, the Dept. of Energy decided that the best thing to do with a nuclear bomb would be to use it to excavate a new harbor on the Alaskan coast north of Nome. The protests and lawsuits associated with stopping that were some of the foundation for the modern environmental movement.

But I'd never heard about bombing the moon! Just ridiculous.