Today, all our wives and husbands have Blackberries or iPhones or Android devices or whatever-the progeny of those original 950 and 957 models that put data in our pockets. Now we all check their email (or Twitter, or Facebook, or Instagram, or) compulsively at the dinner table, or the traffic light. Now we all stow our devices on the nightstand before bed, and check them first thing in the morning. We all do. It's not abnormal, and it's not just for business. It's just what people do. Like smoking in 1965, it's just life.

My wife, there's certain kinds of housework that she just doesn't see as necessary to do in the way that I do. Things like the state of our closet or where things are in the kitchen. I have this almost unhealthily obsessive desire to have things in their place and she just totally doesn't. And this is a potential point of conflict, of course.

We have so many choices that it's only always our fault if we're malcontent.

There are things about us that make us who we are, personality traits, or capacities that we have, or knowledge we possess or that we don't possess, habits we have that are good or bad.

The idea of thinking of our relationships with people as also being structured by limitations and constraints can be useful.

My lawnmower can't change in the way that my son can or that I can.

Fun doesn't have anything to do with pleasure, necessarily. I think this will be terrifically unintuitive for people.