We've relaxed since getting here, having put down our daily lives on the floor next to our bags and picking up something simpler. We've flitted from restaurant to restaurant, snagging wings here, Chinese there.This afternoon, we went gifting, bringing Patrick along for the plan of getting him a birthday shirt. A simple plan, a dress shirt; help Patrick finally find a dress shirt he liked that actually fit, buy it for him and wish him a happy birthday.

It was late, and our words were quiet. The house slept around us, snoring noises emanating from the various rooms."It's not so much about turning thirty," I said. "I've earned this number, and I have no reason to hide from it, but…"

"The round number makes it easy and natural to take stock of your life."

I whispered agreement. Conversations like these don't often take place during the light of day; they are the omnipresent thoughts, but the last to be voiced. First in, but last out; only after the chitchat and the catching-up conversations are exhausted do the soul-searching words tumble out as the friend's hand reaches for the metaphysical doorknob of sleep.

I write this here knowing that he will see it, knowing that I'll dread the moment he comes home, wanders off to his computer, and eventually spots these words, because it'll likely happen while I'm here. None of these words will surprise him, but it's the first time I've acknowledged any of them openly.

Can I write here about what I see at work?

I need a little help here, guys. As we live in a post-Dooced era, I must make choices in what I say regarding where I spend my daytime hours. As such, I have decided that I will veil my discussions in a haze of deliberate obfuscation.

In other words, a certain place needs a name.

I've been offered several versions, but the two I like the best are:

1) "Isle of Aisles"—making us Aisleans?
2) "Land of Librios"—making us … ?

There is nothing left to do, and little left to say. Three years' worth of work culminates in this, a five-day span in which I will work harder at something than most people would ever dream of calling 'fun.'This database has grown beyond what any of our predictive abilities believed it might become. We expected a flat, two-dimensional set of data: names, addresses, phone numbers. What it became, though, was a central point around which everything else revolved. A repository.

"If there's ever been a good time for this, it's now…"