massage! cheap!

In the spirit of awesome things at a reduced rate, I just wanted to pass along this opportunity to you, my dear Portland-based friends.

My very dear friend Benjamin is a really-very-amazing massage therapist offering a 50% discount for new clients for either Thai or Deep Tissue massage. I’ve been to a number of massage therapists in the past and Benjamin performed better work while he was in school than most professionals after years of practice—and he’s even better now.


If you’ve never had Thai massage before, it is sort of like a passive yoga session, where you end up feeling like you’ve had a bit of a workout and a bit of a massage, energized and relaxed at the same time. I highly recommend it! Ben is also offering the 50% off for two hours of Thai massage, which amounts to less than an average 1 hour massage costs. His Deep Tissue work is also awesome, but I prefer the Thai, personally.

Anyway, I wouldn’t pitch him to you if I didn’t honestly think his work is amazing. If you’re interested, just print out the attached coupon and try it for yourself; I suspect you’ll want to return. And if you’re not interested, no worries!

getting better all the time

A friend of mine asked me recently whether relationships are worth it (relationships, as in the romantic kind) because they seemed to take a lot of work. I told her at the time that I think it depends on the balance.

All relationships take some amount of work and if you are actually interested in real communication, not just a host of assumptions, then it will require more effort than it would seem many people are interested in putting into a relationship. But, I also thought that perhaps there was some invisible line, a demarcation between the effort being worth the payoff, and too much effort for too little benefit.

I am here to say, unequivocally, that when both you and the person you are in the relationship with are worth the effort then all the effort in the world to be honest and communicate is worth it. When the relationship is about actually relating it is worth it. And when it is so, words like "worth" become useless, because there is no tidy value, no way to make such relating fit into any kind of market terminology.

I am stupid in love with the most amazing person and I don't care who knows it. We have struggled and miscommunicated, but have persevered honestly and respectfully and I wouldn't trade a moment of our history. He is my best friend and most powerful ally and I can't imagine my life without him in it. My heart breaks with happiness. What sort of value can one assign to that? My life is better with him in it. Enough said.