And taking as many like-minded friends along with me as I can -- in private conversation for the most part, elsewhere than here. But that's the virtual world.

IRL, I'm moving on, too. I finally found a job to which I can apply all the skills I learned peripheral to my last "career", without deliberately re-entering the feast/famine cycle of the construction industry. It is, however, steeped in a kind of political and economic irony. . .

Officially, I'm employed by a State government. But that's because I'm working for (and at) the state university's medical school, which of course is also a hospital, and which conducts medical research -- some of it very cutting-edge; most of it funded by private corporations who manufacture pharmaceuticals and/or medical equipment. The State in question will be paying me with funds re-allocated from a research grant solely supported by a German firm who makes the equipment being studied for its effectiveness.

So here I am, the only non-clinical person among a research and clinical group of eight. I'm the "administrative coordinator" -- what in the ancient days was called secretary -- and an official, though neophyte, member of the species of parasite responsible for the steady increase of government bureaucracy and health care cost.

Don'tcha just love it?

Point is: I suddenly have lost all the time I had to devote to talking about caring about people in the aggregate. I suspect that four more years of Bush will be as survivable as, for instance, the second Reagan administration was . . . so it's time to hunker down in the trenches, and (if you'll pardon the expression) husband my emotional resources for those who touch me personally.