Day 106: Giving Thanks and Extending Points Makes a Good Marriage

So I (Claire) was reading this great book, Blink (Malcolm Gladwell, the author of the other great book, Tipping Point) and it had this interesting bit in it. It said that one of the best predictors of whether or not a marriage will break up is if, when one partner asks for "points" or credit for something, the other partner gives them out. They should.

Since I do not have a current husband, and Lara is already bearing the brunt of every marriage like communication betterment theory I read about,* I wanted to extend this point to you great readers in several complementary ways.

1. I credit you with points for all the very nice and unnecessary posts congratulating me on the travel book agent news. In response to your questions about the title, Einbahn (a German word) in Austria is the word for one way street. In Germany, the similar but different word is Einbahnstrasse. Thank you, Teresa, a German in Russia who does fascinating work on social responsibility in the business world, for the excellent explanation. As my brother Little Tony said about a recent day at work, "Work sucked. But I met a guy from Germany!"

2. I ask you to give me points on occasion for the technologically saavy phenom I have become. Not only am I almost barely versed in things like "Bluetooth" and "HTML" so as to constantly make this useless blog as visually exciting as possible, but I (more importantly) have a great network of people who help me out. (See point #3)

3. Thank you, again, to these widget people for all they suffer in efforts to help me. This week, special credit goes to Singaporean Diplomat Diana, who bought us a cool 14 month subscription to have great NeoWorks map icons that count things, AND our newest soon to be revealed HateToHelp staffer, who wrote me this charming email back when I asked him to do the honor of taking on a part time position at HateToHelp, the bizarre bastard child of TrippingOnWords where you give away old negative energy for the betterment of the world.

Claire to Secret Staffer Man: "I have a proposition. It's basically not any good for you but you'd be helping us out."

Secret Staffer Man to Claire: "You really suck at asking for favors. I'll do it (I think I can handle that workload), though I'll leave it to you to craft an identity and image...I suspect your creative powers are wholly up to the task."

*My three greatest life goals: 1. Awesome Marriage! 2. Many Bilingual Children! 3. Writing Career!

P.S. This picture has nothing to do with anything, but is cute, and we are soon to write about the loving transformation of this once sucky, selfish dog into a "hecka tight" dog on HateToHelp.