Marriage in recovery: A text from an old friend who thinks I"m single

‘I’d like to do something a little risque, a tad secret, a bit daring and very dishonest.’

An old friend whom I saw last year has sent me a text asking if I would like to go out for a drink. I can’t remember if, when we met at the party, I told him I was newly single. All the same, he was more handsome, cleverer and funnier than I remembered him to be in our teens. All of the things I might put in the “looking for” section of online dating blurb.

The text is a year too late. But last year it was a few months too early because all I could think of was R.

A few weeks after we split, out of a vain sense of curiosity over how many enquiries I might receive, I signed up to a dating website. Within minutes I had created a profile and sat back satisfied that I’d avoided cliche in the “About” section, and uploaded a photograph that actually resembled me.

As I clicked on to the website I saw, to my horror, that my photograph appeared in a sidebar alongside the main news page of a very popular website. I had also, in error, used my real name as my username and it appeared in leering capital letters next to my picture.

With all the words fused together, the suffix 34F (age, gender; terrible box-filling error) made it seem like I was flaunting my chest size like a glamour model. After a flustered 10 minutes trying to find the “delete my account” section on the site, I disappeared. Possibly the quickest debut and end to the search for new relationships the world has ever seen.

But now – to this old friend who essentially might be a good suitor if I wasn’t otherwise married – I wonder what I should reply? I’ve always been far more comfortable with receiving rejection rather than handing it out. He is only asking me out for a drink, and yet I still do the thing that marks me out as a coward: I tell him I’m working abroad for two months.

Part of me knows that this is because I find it hard to be honest. Most people might say: “Would have been great but I’m actually back with someone now.” But I keep it vague, perhaps because part of me thinks that if R were to royally mess up and become the impossible drunken husband again, then the chances of finding a sure-fire happy date to get over the heartache of not being with him any more would be hard to stumble upon, and oh, wouldn’t a drink with a nice, funny, handsome, clever old friend, be a rather lovely antidote to post-relationship misery?

Then there’s the awful admission somewhere in my mind that I’d like to go for a drink with my old friend and tell no one. That I’d like to do something a little risque, a tad secret, a bit daring and very dishonest, with the forethought that it was morally OK because we would only be chatting and at the end of the evening I would turn to him and say, “That was lovely but I probably forgot to mention that I am still married.”

Which is far madder than anything you could think up, I know.

The truth is, I miss doing bad things. Most of the time it feels good being good: I like to wake up with a relatively clear head; I’m able to move from one day to the next without always catastrophising a situation; I mostly manage to avoid the self-admonishment that results in me eating half a cake or telling the children to bugger off.

R admitted last week that he found being sober tiresome. What followed was a series of lugubrious days of us trying to avoid each other because we realised that we’d reached some sort of recovery zenith, and it was pretty bloody boring. There was no peak at which to feel jubilant. Early days it is, but I sometimes feel in 20 years we will have to mark whatever progress has been made with a less than remarkable “This is it, folks!” plaque.

Optimism is a hard one for anybody in recovery. In the slow days, it’s like reminiscing about a long-term relationship with someone you once loved passionately, who was not good for you in the end, and who you decided to stop seeing but still adored. The aching heart won’t abate. Sometimes a song or a smell or a city will remind you of all that you had. And you will feel the intense loss over and over, every time the memory is reignited. I know R feels this. And I feel it too.

We both miss being free, and sometimes we miss being bad. While a drink or a kiss with somebody new won’t make us feel any better in the long term, there’s no denying that it could be fun.

Marriage in recovery: A text from an old friend who thinks I"m single

Is Arkansas" "Personal Option" A Block Grant? Insurance Skilled Bob Laszewski Thinks So, But He Is Wrong

Throughout the previous couple of months, insurance coverage industry insider Bob Laszewski has chronicled a lot of of the failures of ObamaCare’s launch. He has raised some very critical questions and concerns from the insurance business about future policy and premium bumps that lay ahead below the ACA. Sadly, his recent assault on Republican governors and state lawmakers who have rejected ObamaCare’s misguided Medicaid expansion totally misses the mark. He contends that Arkansas’ “Private Option” is genuinely just a block grant for Medicaid. But the truth lies in the fine print, and even though there is no question the Private Option puts state taxpayers at risk, it also produces a new entitlement and ceded most of the manage for the plan to the federal government. It’s like putting the fox in charge of the hen property.

Laszewski praises the Obama administration for getting “very cooperative and flexible” on Medicaid expansion, by permitting states to improve Medicaid eligibility via applications this kind of Arkansas’ “Private Choice.” There’s just one dilemma: the promised “flexibility” in no way materialized.

We not too long ago talked to Arkansas State Senator Bryan King, chairman of the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee, who has been monitoring Private Option implementation. Here’s what he had to say about that promised versatility:

Arkansas’ negotiations with the Obama Administration manufactured 1 factor clear: the bureaucrats in Washington hold all the cards and their primary concern is implementing ObamaCare, not providing states with any true flexibility. They could relent on tweaks that quantity to nothing at all more than window dressing, but their intent is for states to expand Medicaid and enroll much more Americans into government-run well being care. Arkansas produced a grave error in trusting the Obama Administration’s false promise of flexibility and our state’s sense of buyer’s remorse grows worse by the month. I only hope that leaders in other states are not fooled by these empty guarantees.

Senator King is correct: Arkansas was given no meaningful flexibility at all.

The Federal Government Did not Grant Arkansas A Medicaid Block Grant

The Private Alternative Medicaid growth produces a new entitlement for in a position-bodied, operating-age grownups.  It is not a Medicaid block grant. By definition, a block grant calls for a state to acquire a fixed amount of funding in exchange for meeting particular policy goals. Although the federal government positioned a per-individual cap on Private Option spending—though kept an open-ended funding scheme for an unlimited amount of eligible individuals—it did not accompany that cap with accurate versatility. It’s the worst of each worlds for Arkansas: capped per-individual funding from the federal government and no meaningful flexibility to manage charges.

The Federal Government Did not Grant Arkansas Versatility On Who To Cover

The Personal Choice Medicaid growth covers all of the ready-bodied grownups that ObamaCare envisioned. The vast bulk of these ready-bodied grownups are operating age, have no dependent young children and are ineligible for most other sorts of welfare, such as money support and extended-term foods stamps.

In order to safe its waiver, Arkansas was forced to guarantee to cover men and women who have been already purchasing private insurance coverage – either via an employer or in the personal industry – as well as people who would otherwise qualify for federal subsidies on the ObamaCare exchange.

Other states that have explored partial expansions or various prepare types, like South Dakota and Indiana, have been smacked down by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—the choice-making arm of the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Services when it comes to Medicaid-associated negotiations with the states.

Is this the cooperation and flexibility that Mr. Laszewski praised the Obama Administration for?

The Federal Government Didn’t Grant Arkansas Flexibility On What To Cover

Personal Alternative enrollees are assured the same Medicaid rewards they would acquire below a conventional growth. All positive aspects not typically covered by private insurance coverage, like non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) and early and periodic screening, diagnosis and treatment (EPSDT) benefits, are merely delivered through the traditional fee-for-support Medicaid program.

The Federal Government Did not Grant Arkansas Flexibility On What To Charge

Beneath the terms of the waiver, the vast bulk of enrollees in Arkansas’ Private Option have no cost-sharing whatsoever. Even between these who have to shell out nominal copays, cost-sharing is reduced than what existing Medicaid principles allow.

The Federal Government Didn’t Grant Arkansas Versatility To End The Expansion Whenever It Wishes

Practically nothing in the Personal Alternative waiver provides the state new authority to roll back its ObamaCare Medicaid growth. Federal law and regulation nonetheless classifies the growth population as a new “mandatory population” for states that opt into the expansion, which authorizes the federal government to consider away all federal Medicaid money if a state were to roll back eligibility for that group.

Is Arkansas" "Personal Option" A Block Grant? Insurance Skilled Bob Laszewski Thinks So, But He Is Wrong

Could Google Glass Make Football Safer? Chris Kluwe Thinks So

Minimizing the frequency and severity of injuries, notably concussions, is priority No. 1 for the NFL proper now. Punter Chris Kluwe, who in his enjoying days was never hesitant to say what he imagined the league ought to be performing differently, thinks he may have a answer.

At the TED conference in Vancouver this week, Kluwe gave a talk about how he believes augmented actuality is about to alter the way most sports activities are played, and the way followers see them. Kluwe is a member of the Google Glass Explorer plan, and even wore his Glass throughout a education camp stint with the Oakland Raiders. After his talk, I caught up with him for a a single-on-one.

Chris Kluwe, photographed for TED by James Duncan Davidson

Here’s how Kluwe sees AR playing out in football: Before the ball is snapped, a quarterback scans the defense. His helmet-mounted personal computer, seeing the alignment of linebackers and linemen, notifies him, by way of a heads-up projection on his visor, that this seem implies it is 85% probably he’ll have one particular-on-a single coverage on his main receiver. The center snaps the ball, and the QB’s display flashes red on the left to warn him of a blindside rusher coming cost-free. He unloads the ball just in time, hitting his receiver, who has indeed beaten his only defender.

I have a tough time buying this situation, for the cause that I can not see the NFL making it possible for engineering to influence the end result of plays to such a important degree. Right after all, the league only just started out letting coaches use tablet computers on the sidelines to substitute Polaroids and laminated play sheets. Helmet radios have been around for decades but their use is nonetheless restricted to 1 player per side and they have to reduce off 15 seconds before the perform starts.

But Kluwe insists that the financial incentives are too tempting as well ignore. “The cause the league will allow it is since it raises the quality of the item on the discipline,” he advised me.

An unprecedented degree of parity is often cited as one of the principal aspects in professional football’s accomplishment relative to other American sports activities, but you still get blowouts like the Seahawks 43-eight destruction of the Broncos in this year’s Super Bowl. “It was one of the lower watched Super Bowls of the final couple of years due to the fact no one particular was viewing following the second quarter,” noted Kluwe. What if the Broncos had had some technologies that offset Seattle’s physical edge? “Now, all of a sudden, it is a back-and-forth struggle and men and women are invested in the final result.”

Eh…maybe. I feel it would be a difficult sell. What I don’t feel would be a difficult sell at all — what could, in truth, be just the inducement the NFL demands to get over its technophobia — is the other situation Kluwe proffers, the a single wherein helmet-mounted AR techniques are “warning players when they are coming into a dangerous situation” and therefore eliminating traumatic collisions. Kluwe:

Say you’re going across the middle and you don’t know there is a guy coming up to lay you out. An even much better example would be that appropriate now defensive gamers actually really do not know exactly where they’re supposed to hit someone. They cannot go high, they cannot go reduced. It is like, effectively, what do we do? With augmented actuality, you could be searching at your tackle box: Here’s a green region the place you can hit this guy. It is like an airplane going down on a landing strategy, going via the boxes in order to hit the proper zone. Now, as a player, you are lining up on the proper zone so you know you are hitting a spot that will maintain the two of you safe.

It sounds like science fiction, but it is extremely much in trying to keep with the league’s current path of R&ampD, he notes.

They’re previously speaking about placing stuff like accelerometers and GPS sensors in helmets to measure concussive impacts. If you have something like that in your helmet, say you go on a play in which you get cracked going across the middle, now it is flashing red and telling you, ‘You need to have to get out of the game. You have a concussion.’ And it is not just telling you — it’s telling your trainers on the sideline. From a health care standpoint, you can diagnose it immediately and avert those injuries that come about when a player refuses to come out of the game, because no player’s going to get himself out of the game. You risk shedding your task.

Some kind of in-helmet engineering will almost definitely find its way onto the discipline in coming years as the league seeks to ward off the existential threat of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. But for gamers to have screens in their visors telling them in true time how to perform the game — isn’t that a bit antithetical to the spirit of sports activities?

“It depends on what level of technological innovation you want in your sport,” Kluwe says. “If we were taking part in true football, we’d all be wearing leather helmets with no facemasks. We’d be sporting operate boots and cloth pants and jerseys. We wouldn’t have any pads, and we’d be dying out on the field. Technologies in sports is always evolving.”

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Note: My headline and Kluwe’s speak both elided a distinction that Google tries to make when speaking about Glass: It is not technically augmented reality. Since the display sits above the eye, not immediately in front of it, utilizes really don’t see an overlay on the physical planet as they would in the situations Kluwe articulates. Kluwe says he considers Glass a phase toward the NFL’s AR future.

Could Google Glass Make Football Safer? Chris Kluwe Thinks So

Kobe Bryant On Nike"s New Flyknit Basketball Shoe, His Pedicure Program, And Who He Thinks Will Win The Super Bowl

Kobe Bryant’s new Kobe 9 Elite is Nike’s most technical basketball shoe but – it incorporates 3 new methods (Flyknit, Flywire and Lunarlon) into his eponymous shoe line and contains a novel carbon-fiber heel counterbalance that operates with a fresh rubber outsole for greatest strength and responsiveness.

The shoe is also the star guard’s solution to the large-top versus lower-prime debate amid basketball players all over the place: Which is far better for play–does the higher-top kind conserve ankles or make them weak? Does a low-top appear indicate unrestricted selection of movement or dangerously vulnerable tendons and joints?

Kobe’s latest sneaker is so high that it appears a minor like a boxing shoe—and certainly Bryant was viewing a lot of Pacquiao even though creating this distinct edition. I spoke with him a number of days ago at the New York debut of his new line. He was in town for the Knicks v. Lakers game (regardless of currently being injured he’s traveling with the staff) and determined to unveil three new colour schemes for his shoe (1 of them, marble, evoked his native Italy).

Aside from discussing the high/low debate, we spoke about what the variation amongst forward and lateral motion implies for shoe design and style and the truth that he will get paraffin wax pedicure remedies on the normal. (It’s just protecting his investment! he says.)

Study on for more. My concerns are in bold.

Inform me about the big difference between employing Flyknit in a running shoe and in a basketball shoe. What did you have to contemplate when adapting the engineering from 1 to the other?

When you’re talking about basketball there are so many dynamic movements that you have to element in and consider into consideration. Not only are you moving in a various plane but now you are taking that technologies that has a excellent foundation, a lot of possible, and you’re taking that in excess of to a sport exactly where each and every detail counts when you are modifying route. It’s how do you get that technology and beef it up in specific locations so it can give you the strength and the engineering without the shoe capitulating, you know.

I like that you just utilised the word capitulating to describe a basketball shoe.

Ha, it’s true! You don’t want the shoe to do that. You really don’t want the shoe to cave on you in particular areas. You want it to have give but you want the shoe to be responsive, and the Flyknit had the prospective to do that, but it was a whole lot of operate. I imply we actually worked challenging to get this shoe to be ready to execute the way a Flyknit shoe could perform and the way a basketball shoe must carry out.

I’m assuming you attempted out prototypes as you produced this thing more than two years. What did the earlier prototypes feel like compared to the finish end result?

Effectively, a small instance is when you’re shifting directions you have the foot rolling over the shoe.

Moving side-to-side.

Yeah, the ball of your foot rolls more than the shoe. So if the shoe is sturdy enough possibly it is not responsive sufficient, correct? How do we deal with that? We alter the foundation of the shoe, we lift up the bottom sole of the shoe, we produce a greater heel line so now we do not have individuals concerns. And then it is just the specific aesthetics issues of the shoe itself: Are the footwear bunching up? Is it folding? Does it not search appealing in particular places due to the fact of the materials?

For how numerous video games do you put on each and every pair?

I wear one particular per game.

So will longer-phrase dependability for the Kobe 9 be an concern?

No, I try to make that not an situation since like we talked about earlier there is a great deal of dress in-and-tear testing of it. We want to make certain they’re durable. At the very same time, I am offering sneakers, so when I phase out on the court and perform, my shit wants to appear fresh every single night. You know what I’m saying? It is got to look fresh every evening.

I get that.

I could just as effortlessly dress in them every game, but you know it is like you want the children to almost seem at it as a fresh billboard each time you step on the court.

That’s sensible.

Absolutely.

Do your feet have any weird items about them compared with your teammates? I imply your feet specifically.

Ha ha. You know what? Actually my feet are fairly damn regular.

Give me specifics.

Ha, effectively I don’t feel you will uncover a basketball player in the world that has arches. It is extremely hard. I have flat feet. But they really don’t seem atrocious however, haha. They don’t look atrocious. They really don’t look atrocious.

Okay I’ll make a level of that.

Yeah, you know I’ve often created it a stage to get pedicures. I mean if you believe about it you are creating a residing from your feet.

It is your livelihood.

Exactly. You’ve got to safeguard them. I get a pedicure, take away the calluses, all that entertaining stuff. You have got to do it. I do the paraffin dip each and every now and then.

Oh, wow, you are sophisticated. That’s an sophisticated move!

Hey listen, pay attention, I go all in. I get care of my feet.

They are your tools.

Well, yeah. You’ve got to spend attention to detail – take care of your feet. And spend interest to that detail when you are generating a shoe.

Okay, great. So I’ve spent some time with Kevin Durant and Leo Chang who created his shoe, and it seems like there is really a debate about the substantial-prime versus lower-prime basketball shoe. Is there? Why is it this kind of a point?

I developed this debate simply because when we decided to go low the pushback, the feedback, was that high-tops would shield you from ankle sprains. Well the thing is how numerous instances have you had an ankle sprain when you’re wearing a higher-prime? A good deal. So it is most likely not guarding you as considerably as you think it is. We know you can go lower and generate a organic motion in the ankle so you’re truly strengthening the ankle.

It’s like strolling close to with substantial-tops on will not give your ankles the opportunity to move close to in their normal state, so with people you’re not strengthening your ankle joints you’re truly creating them weaker. Now we go to the point where it is like let’s create a large-best but let it carry out like a low. Let’s go substantial, produce the tactical stimulation–which is established that it does produce some impact in terms of responsiveness when you sprain your ankle–but let’s have it move like a minimal. The material that we use is incredibly light and really powerful so you really don’t truly feel something that is close to your ankle. It is not limiting you in any way your ankle is still moving in its unique movement. It’s far more of a challenge toward innovation and saying we’re going to create something that is substantial efficiency.

Okay, that helps make sense. But far more importantly, what’s your prediction for the Super Bowl?

Man, uh. I’d really like to see Payton since of every thing he’s been by means of. I’d adore to see him come out and win–but Seattle may well be as well hard.

That’s a really diplomatic solution.

No, it’s accurate! I mean Seattle is tough. They’re challenging, and they’ve had fairly a handful of injuries as effectively but managed to…I select the Seahawks.

Ha, thank you!

Thank you.

The KOBE 9 Elite releases globally on Feb. eight, 2014, at Nike.com and pick worldwide retail locations.

Kobe Bryant On Nike"s New Flyknit Basketball Shoe, His Pedicure Program, And Who He Thinks Will Win The Super Bowl