Drew and I are heading for hawaii october 26-30th. Any tips for us?

More specifically, we'd like recommendations on:

1) which island we should go to.
we're not really city people, so we'd rather go somewhere more natural - with mountians, hills, volcanos and pretty beaches. snorkling and hiking would be fun. museums and aquariums are nice, too. what do you guys recommend?
2) whether we'll need to rent a car.
Or can we get around on buses/scooters?

one of the things i've learned from past relationships is that -
sometimes, love just isn't enough.

there are so many other internal and external factors that contribute to the failure of relationships that no matter how passionate the love, no matter how strong the determination - it's just not enough to keep the relationship afloat.

don't say i haven't tried. don't say i haven't waited. don't say i haven't given more than i ever thought i could possibly give - and then some. i've done all that and i've still lost, time and time again.

but that doesn't mean i won't keep trying.

I keep dreaming of Columbia. Sometimes I get in, and sometimes I don't. And when I wake up, the dreams continue. Sometimes I get in and sometimes I don't. Both scenarios have been played out in my mind dozens of times. In the end, I suppose it doesn't really matter. If I get rejected, I will apply again. If I get accepted, I will go now. I'm not even sure why I feel so stressed.

Apparently, James Jen plays Settlers of Catan too...

Anyone else?

Click download to get the game. Sea3D 1.2.0a is the source code, don't click that.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/settlers3d/

Vatican at night




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Best "glaces" place in Nice.... yummie...

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we all know the same alphabet. we all speak the same language. we're all equipped with the same tools. "we are all the same."

yet it always amazes me how certain, exceptional people can use these ordinary tools to create extraordinary works of art.

i wonder whether graceful writing is a skill one can acquire; if i roll these delicate words over and over in my mind, will i, too, be able to form such thoughts, string such sentences, write such paragraphs, and publish such works?
_______________________________________________________
"Richard was the person Clarissa loved at her most optimistic moment. Richard had stood beside her at a pond's edge at dusk, wearing cut-off jeans and rubber sandals. Richard had called her Mrs. Dalloway, and they had kissed. His mouth had opened into hers; his tongue (exciting and utterly familiar, she'd never forget it) had worked its way shyly inside until she met it with her own. They'd kissed, and walked around the pond together. In another hour they'd have dinner, and considerable quantities of wine. Clarissa's copy of The Golden Notebook lay on the chipped white nightstand of the attic bedroom where she still slept alone; where Richard had not yet begun to spend alternate nights.

It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it *was* happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been long overshadowed by other writers; and even the sex, once she and Richard reached that point, was ardent but awkwad, unsatisfying, more kindly than passionate. What lives undimmed at Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part bbecause it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other."

- "The Hours" Michael Cunningham

Police blunder into sex game

Police trying to foil a kidnapping in Holland found they had instead blundered into an elaborate sex game.

Passers-by called police after seeing a young blonde woman being bundled into the back of a van in Brunssum.

Three men had roughly manhandled the struggling woman who was handcuffed, blindfolded, gagged and staggering on high heels in fishnet stockings.

Police scrambled a helicopter, motorbikes and squad cars - 22 officers in all - and tracked the van to the city of Heerlen some 20 miles away.

There was a dramatic chase which ended in a police road block and the men being ordered to lie face down at gunpoint on the road.

Two of them were only half dressed and police feared the woman had been raped in the back of the van.

But when they untied her and took her gag off, she reportedly screamed: "You stupid b******s! I've been trying to set this up for months! And now you've ruined it, just when it was getting interesting!"

The three male occupants, aged 36, 39 and 58 and all from Heerlen, were freed.

"We ascertained no crime was committed because this was a sexual fantasy that the 'victim' set up and was a willing participant in," said a police spokesman.

"We advised her next time to arrange to be kidnapped in her own home."

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1310699.html?menu=news.quirkies.sexlife