Conference

So, speaking of this SPIE conference I'm going to, the other day, Jim was showing me the gateway the company uses for booking travel arrangements. It's very much like Expedia, but the company prefers that we use it. So Jim's showing me that you enter your cities here, and your dates and preferred travel time there, and then you select "Sort by Schedule" just like you would if you were buying tickets for yourself. Right... maybe just like a super-smart, super-high-paid guy like Jim sorts tickets when buying for himself.

And, if I want, the company will hire a limo to take me to O'Hare... though I think I'll just make use of the super convenient Pace Bus 250 which goes straight there from the metra station. Limos are for funerals.

Am I more an individual or part of a couple?

I feel that we are two individuals leading one life. I wouldn't have it any other way. Since we decided to get married, everything either of us does impacts the other, and every major decision is likely to impact the other for the rest of our lives. There's no getting around that without having less of a relationship.

Each gear in a clock is no less an individual gear for being part of a clock, and the clock is no less a clock for being made up of individual gears. The collection of gears that become a clock become something more than the sum of their parts. Where as the clock that losses a gear becomes a partial clock, a broken clock. Each gear is still an individual gear, but also part of a broken clock which will never run correctly without the missing gear or a replacement. I think individuals and couples are like this. I am all of a person and half of a couple. I can't be one of these things more than I am the other, as each is true in the absolute. One and one is not two, nor is it one, it's three.