mike carey

Damn, I fall behind in reading the forum and I miss your birthday. Bon annivesaire!

No surprises amongst the gentlemen who have said or implied they are open to such things.

Touché!

It may be worth confirming the details with your bank. Certainly for purchase transactions it is Visa/MC/AE that set the exchange rates, and yes, for ATM withdrawals the ATM owner sets the fee (your card issuer may absorb those fees for you). As far as the exchange rate for ATM withdrawals is concerned, my understanding is that it is your bank that determines the exchange rate you are paid, not the ATM owner. (I have no idea whether a bank in the US would have as competitive rate on CZK as it does for CHF or EUR.)

And do a forum search for 'palm springs weekend' and read the threads for previous years' meetings.

That would be kitsch of the first order. I'm sure 45 would love it, especially if it were gold plated.

I look forward to when he's back in Sydney.

It is? Not that 'blurry' is an issue for me. Character is, and Peter has that.

In the Australian baseball league, the Sydney Blue Sox. http://web.theabl.com.au/index.jsp?sid=t4069

A more relevant question would be to wonder about things that happen in the Midlands, Scotland and Wales.

One of those sites, and I think it's that one, doesn't have contact details between midnight and 6am. Something about serious seekers of massages wouldn't be looking then.

Agreed.

I'm fairly close to him, but with his US phone number and recent sign in (and no subsequent visits) I'm sceptical. Thanks, likewise, I'm good thanks. Mike asked?? Wow, just wow!

Who is/where is this guy supposed to be? He just appeared in RM in Canberra. But with a US phone number. Hmmm

There are a number of them around Canberra, talked up on ABC local radio. They fulfil very localised needs, but there is still a vibrant ACT Government library service that lends hardcopy and ebooks. As @quoththeraven says, having them as a local book exchange is good. But don't downplay the role of goodwill stores (Salvos, Vinnies) where you can buy paperbacks for fifty cents or a dollar and donate them back when you've read them. Now I think about it, I should do that more!

I think you'll find that the lollipop pictured next to the cock is also known as an all day sucker.

That's interesting, and may be an example of my living with a different English to yours. To me, queer always had an edge of being just odd, and not necessarily in a good way (although it could be neutral), whereas quirky carries overtones of odd but endearing, or idiosyncratic. The word hasn't been taken over, it has an additional meaning. The other meanings are still there, but when using it in older ways you need to be mindful of the potential for it's now-predominant usage to be assumed. An old fashioned example, a gay bachelor would be taken as a reference to sexual attraction, but a bachelor gay would not be so interpreted. If you say someone is happy and gay most English speakers would not take that in a sexuality-related way. If you wanted them to make that connection you would need to leave a specific cue.

I've been to DC heaps of times so I may skip it this time for other places I haven't been to. I plan to be back there in January.

And here I was thinking that Austin had been on a trip to Denver!

Words do not mean 'what we choose them to mean, nothing more nothing less'. You can't use a word to mean whatever you want, nor can you pretend that one of the accepted meanings of a word does not exist just because you don't like it. You also cannot refuse to accept that some words have come to be offensive in certain contexts. Gay, queer and homosexual are perfectly valid words to reference certain sexual identities and patterns of attraction. People may have their preference for how to describe themselves, and each word has its own nuances of meaning. To my ear, homosexual works if it is used in an academic or sociological sense but has become insulting and even pathologising if used to refer to a particular individual in a social context, or to refer to a community. Another issue to consider is that some offensive words can be appropriated and even become acceptable within the group towards which they were used as slurs. Thus the N word and faggot have been 'owned' by PoC and some gay people. That does not make it acceptable for people outside those groups to use them, and no, that is not hypocrisy. Language moves and grows continually, and English ebbs and flows in different ways in the different Englishes. To refuse to understand the way the language has changed is to refuse to understand the world.

An apt observational piece of advice I heard a couple of days back, 'Don't look back, you're not going that way'.

Although not in his signature, he posted a link to his ad in his OP.

I'm in, see you all there!

My kind of Walker!

Ok, so the thread title is deliberately written that way. I have to stop and do a mental readjustment every time I see a date here. Anyway, after a year when events have conspired to prevent me from travelling, I've bitten the bullet and I'm jumping on QF11 on 1 Nov for a couple of weeks in the north east. I'm really looking forward to seeing the sights and meeting people there. I probably won't stay the whole time in NYC but I haven't planned what other places I might visit.