Health
Recovering from a mild bout of the common cold. Stuffy nose, but not much else. Real bummer getting it just before my big teaching run for the quarter, but I'm glad it's nothing more serious.

Speeding
We have a large number of speeding cars in the street outside our house. It's pegged as a 50km/hr zone, but plenty of people ignore that. The local area has a large hoon population, with souped-up cars, doughnuts, and drag-races a common site. While I chuckle at this most of the time, and admit that it's probably a symptom of deeper community issues, I have to admit that speeding cars isn't making the street a safer place to live.

A recent report in the local newspaper talks about how when the police do a blitz on traffic offenses, they end up booking an incredible number of drivers. At the moment they're particularly targetting the speeding problem. Now, this sounds like a great money-making enterprise for the police, except they're a community service and have other things to do than sit by the side of a road with a speed camera.

And so it dawned on me. The police should sub-contract. If I can easily spot a dozen cars going 20-30km/hr over the speed limit per day, then so can most people on the street. Arrange for a training and qualification program for civilians to operate speed-cameras, and arrange for them to get a decent slice of any fines issued from cars they've caught. Before you know it, you'll have a bunch of enterprising people doing their qualifications and operating speed-cameras from their front-yards. Speeding is going to become very expensive. Those streets which are considered particularly probelmatic will probably have citizens jostling for the right to operate a camera.

Of course, you'll probably see a higher incidence of road-rage as irate drivers take out their frustration on the newly empowered citizens. That's a bit of a bummer.

Returning Friends
David, who's gone and joined the army, will be visiting this weekend. I won't get to spend as much time with him as I'd like, since I'm leaving interstate on Sunday on a teaching assignment.

We've organised for the next ToEE game to run to co-incide with David's visit. Apparently joining the army and being posted interstate isn't an excuse to miss roleplaying sessions. ;)

Work
Stacks of invoices to print and send, although all the money will be passed onto the lovely people who have been minding the business while Jacinta and myself have been away.

Business turn-over is likely to increase strongly over the next year. We'll have plenty of staff (at last!) and hope to take advantage of as many opportunities as possible.

Accounts Receivable is currently huge, with about 12% of our net value being in A/R.

Honeymoon
Tuesday 21st October
Arrived in Airlie Beach. Checked into the YHA where we were staying. Dropped into the dive centre, picked up reading materials. It's hot up here.

Honeymoon
Back from Honeymoon. Had a fantastic time, lots of diving (11 dives in total), snorkling, swimming, lazing around on beaches, and all those other good honeymoon things. Reading material on flights was an excellent book discussing the Australian stock-market, and Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad. Haven't finished either, but Kiyosaki's book is far too light on information for my tastes. If I wanted storytelling, I'd be reading a novel.

Discovered that Ian and Lizy have been doing an excellent job of looking after the business while I was away.

When it's not quite so late at night I'll write a much longer log of my exciting travels.

Wedding
I'm getting married in about four and a half hours. Am I nervous? No. Almost everything is prepared, and those few things that may not be fully fleshed out are minor details that I'm sure we can easily accomodate.

We're certainly fortunate in the weather today. It's bright and sunny, although it may be a little warm in a big suit or fancy wedding dress.

I have a wonderful feeling of peace and relaxation. For once in a very long time, work pressures are not on my mind. There's very little that I personally have to do before the wedding, and so wedding pressures are also gone. I feel very free, and very happy, and very comfortable. The feeling is very much akin to what I felt back in my days at University, especially during the holiday periods. No pressing matters, and plenty of time to relax, to learn, to invent and create.

Of course, I don't really have plenty of time. In a few hours I'll be shaving, putting wax in my hair, donning a suit, and heading off to the church. In other ways, I do have plenty of time. The honeymoon is going to be a huge break, and I'm really looking forward to it.

This beautiful feeling of freedom certainly re-inforces my conviction to retire as soon as possible.

Retirement
Whenever I talk about retiring at 30, or even as late as 35, I find that I'm often met with feelings of disbelief, shock, sometimes almost outrage. The biggest question people ask me is "what will you do?" and "won't you get bored?". There seems to be a big mentality out there that work is life, and life without work is empty and vaccuous.

Ask yourself, has there ever been anything that you wished that you could do, but couldn't because you never had the time? Aren't there skills you'd like to practice, knowledge you'd wish to gain, deeds that you'd wish to carry out? Without the constraint of having to work, you're incredibly empowered. You have a real opportunity to do things that are important to you. You can make the world a better place.

I have an almost endless list of things that I would rather be doing than working. I've been blessed with incredible friends, but I never seem to have enough time to spend with them. I have a great many things I would love to learn, or to teach, or to create, but only time for a scant few of them. I'd love to learn more about this world that I live in, and how I can make it better, but time constraints make that too difficult to put into practice.

To be able to do what I feel important, rather than what pays the bills, is definitely a dream for me, and one of the biggest reasons I left regular employment three years ago.

When people look at my calendar, they claim that I'm mad to be so busy. To me it all makes perfect sense. Money is time, and most importantly, interest on money is also time. When a day's worth of work means that Jacinta and myself can live comfortably for a week, and two busy months allows us to live comfortably for an entire year, being so busy isn't mad at all.

I better get ready, I'll be married in four hours.

Wedding
Yup, it's tomorrow. We've done the rehersal. We've had a bit of dinner beforehand. Jacinta's gone off to her grandmother's place, where's she'll be dressing up and everything tomorrow before the big event.

I still have to write a speech, although I'm not too worried about that, being a regular public speaker has its advantages. There's a bunch of work things that I would have like to have done before the day, but they'll have to wait.

Right now, I'm kicking back, listening to some tunes, and just taking it easy. We've got house-sitters all organised, and all those wedding things, and most things in the business should run themselves.

Managed to drop my inbox down to less than 150 messages (down from 600).

Dive Medical
On our honeymoon we're planning on doings lost of diving. However, I used to be asthmatic. Uh-oh. Diving as an asthmatic in Australia is a no-no. The problem isn't that you may get asthma underwater and you can't use a bronchiodilator (eg, ventolin). The problem is that asthma means you lose lung capacity, which can mean trapped air. If you're underwater, and rise to the surface (or to less depth) that air will expand. If it expands too much, you can pop a lung.

Popping a lung isn't nice, but not the biggest thing to worry about. Air in the bloodstream after you've damaged your lung is a much bigger worry. It can give you an embolism, causing brain damage, permanent paralysis, or death. That's bad.

So, you can imagine that my doctor was cautious about even thinking about passing my medical after hearing that I used to have asthma. I got to visit a respiritory lab to be given bronchioconstrictants (lung-irritants) and my reaction measured.

The good news is, my reactions were considered to be well within the normal range, and as such I'm considered "fit to dive". I'm still going to be cautious, an ex-asthmatic is still more likely to have problems than a regular person. I suspect that if I do feel any tightness of chest underwater, I'll need to go against my regular instincts and ensure that I stay under until it passes.

Advice to business-owners
If you think that your tech-magician, who's getting married the next day, gives a toss that you've having problems with machines after you've completely disregarded his advice, then you're completely mistaken. He can deal with your problems any day. He's only going to get married once.

Goodwill is like a bank. You can deposit into it, and you can withdraw from it when things are tough. But if you try to withdraw from it when it's empty, it's going to end up costing you a lot.