I don't normally talk about my life with very many people. Not in the way that most people might talk about their life. Personally I just don't enjoy going on about the various relationships I am in, was in, or wish to be in, but every now and again the emotional need to write about my life publicly is overwhelming.

Take this blog post, from a little over a year ago, that I put on the myspace blog that I had.

Alone - November 20, 2005

Recently I have been struck by how alone I feel. Now to clarify, I do not feel sad - I feel alone. If I were the lone guard in an outpost on the furthest reach of the Great Wall of China, I do not believe I would feel much different. Though I am hardly the first person to feel as I do; I am still alone in my location and have never experienced what it is like to relax in the presence of complete understanding.

Sometimes what I long for most in life is to not require every statement I make to require explanation. I wish to learn to play Go from a person who can discuss its complex nature in the context of the Art of War by Sun Tzu. I wish to walk through the city streets with someone and ask what they see here and be enriched by their perception of now.

Though the Internet allows me to connect to people of similar minds to my own it is not the same as actual human contact, it is little more than a faster correspondence to my lone outpost. The best this correspondence can offer me is when I write something that another understands. They do not feel the need to write at length to elaborate on what I have written because what I have said was all that was required. It is then that I am comforted by the fact that on this Great Wall there are others like myself.

Yet I am still alone, here.

Similarly the emotional need to write about my life has arisen once again. This time I am writing to say that for perhaps the first time in my life I no longer feel as alone as I felt when I wrote the above post. I just spent the last week with a girl who did not require me to explain everything I was talking about; she could hold up her end of the conversation very well. She is perhaps the most delectable girl I have ever been with, and my heart pounds for her (among other things that require blood to pound). Though she had to get back to where she lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada - some 3000 miles away - I have many reasons to hope that with some work this will turn into a great relationship.

Thats all, this was mostly for me, but if you have something to say - go for it.

Without getting into an argument about what causes global warming (which is up in the air in my opinion), or if it is even occurring (which i believe it is occurring) I decided to take a look at the question of how our fair city would do in the case of rising sea levels.

In previous conversations with people they expressed concern about Buffalo's survivability because of our close proximity to the lakes. I attempted to point out to them that the lake we sit on dumps its water over a cliff we like to call Niagara Falls, but they seemed quite sure we would all be underwater regardless.

So I have looked into the issue, as part of my long term planning thoughts for how Buffalo fits in my life. So some facts:

1.) Buffalo is situated at its lowest point (down by the coast guard station) some 177 meters above sea level (thats 580 feet for the SI disinclined).

2.) In the worst of the worst case scenarios that I could find about rising sea levels, the sea only rises about 100 meters. For an idea of what that would look like please go here.

In that pic you can see that though every major city on the east coast becomes Atlantis, we are high, dry, and still a long way from beach front property.

3.) For a more dynamic and less dramatic look at what is considered a more likely rise in sea level you can go here and play around with the maps. Still again the rise is only about 14 meters max, leaving about 163 meters to go before we start to think about rolling our trousers in the lowest part of our area.

4.) This is really just a joke on my part. I do not think that anyone should consider investing in the city just because they are looking for good post-warming property. However, if you are looking for another reason to see Buffalo as a stable place in the long term environment projections, this is one more reason.