We had a friend in her mid 30’s who moved to Byron Bay for a little dating action.  Unfortunately for her all the men in her catchment i.e. 35-45 were dating way younger woman.  The 50+ casanova is a common Byron occurrence.  She had a very slow year on the dating front and returned to Melbourne. 

Regardless of how this started the simple fact of the matter is economic growth was always going to stop and it was always going to be ugly when that happened.  Most people in Australia have everything they need and more.  You can only have so many shoes, TV sets, iPods etc.  Once you have all of that there is really no reason to buy anymore.  Now people have got to the point of saying “how much more do I need” they stop buying – unfortunately it’s taken the crisis for a lot of people to say this.  My prediction is that if the crisis were over tomorrow we would not go back to spending.

Also thank god the heat came off housing.  The obsession with houses, prices, real estate was so boring.

Hey Mamma – Animal, Vegetable Miracle is about a family who live off food grown within 50 miles of their home.  Sounds boring but it’s a really compelling read.  I loved it.

I agree poodles are smart.  It’s one of the breed characteristics.  One of the reasons you get all these new designer breeds like spoodles is because spaniels are nice but thick and poodles are clever.

There is a group called Open Ground that teach mindfulness meditation.  They have a website and are pretty well organised with training all over the place.  They also sell very good CD’s.

http://www.openground.com.au/