Beau, whom I met almost two years ago during a JMG-sponsored blarg crawl, is in DC tonight. We hit it off that night 17 months ago, palling around together because neither of us knew any of the other bloggers who were participating. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch with a few emails but mainly through each others’s Twitter tweets. This is not a date, but friends getting together. Beau is happily spoken for.

I’ve take the familiar D6 over to Dupont to meet up, but I’m waiting for him to finish with his client dinner. After exiting the bus I went to the ATM to have some mad money in my pocket. First time at an ATM in months! Then to the CVS for camera batteries. Then I’m trying to think of a place to meet up and I stumble upon Urbana, which used to be called something else, and Mimi’s is now some other establishment so I’ll belly up here.

three hours later

This evening didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. I was thinking Beau and I were going to do a barhop up 17th or down P St or something but it turned out that we simply ended up staying where we were, ordering drynx at the bar, for the entire evening. I think this actually turned out to be the right thing to do, as we were able to have a fantastic conversation through the evening. We discussed the blarg crawl and how we became fast friends there, we discussed Twitter and its social associations and how we think it should never make money, the merits of blogging, Facebooking, my future and of course, New York City.

The best part about this evening was how seamless our reunion was, after all this time becoming more and more familiar by twittering. We were able to pick up, without a hitch, our conversation that we left off two years ago with minimal fill-ins. It was truly a beautiful moment that would could not have happened ten years ago.

I’m thankful for friends like Beau, near and far, with whom I have such a great connection that camaraderie is effortless. Beau, being the proper gentleman that he is, pays for all the cocktails and even though I insist on taking the D6 return he pays for my cab ride home. Thank you, sir.

After arriving home, I realize that we totally forgot to take any pictures together. Damn! While our conversation is what I will really remember from this evening I grabbed a photo of our original meeting in NYC. Here are me, some dude, Joe, Beau:

Tonight, live twitterpubcrawling with @rhagern; click me.

WASHINGTON (AP)—The number of people receiving unemployment benefits has reached an all-time record, the government said Thursday, and more layoffs are spreading throughout the economy.

The Labor Department reported that the number of Americans continuing to claim unemployment insurance for the week ending Jan. 17 was a seasonally adjusted 4.78 million, the highest on records dating back to 1967. That’s an increase of 159,000 from the previous week and worse than economists’ expectations of 4.65 million. As a proportion of the work force, the tally of unemployment benefit recipients is the highest since August 1983, a department analyst said.

The total released by the department doesn’t include about 1.7 million people receiving benefits under an extended unemployment compensation program authorized by Congress last summer. That means the total number of recipients is actually closer to 6.5 million people.

Businesses continued to hemorrhage jobs Thursday. Ford Motor Co. reported a fourth-quarter loss of $5.9 billion and said its credit arm would cut 20 percent of its work force, or 1,200 jobs. Eastman Kodak Co. said it’s cutting 3,500 to 4,500 jobs, or 14 to 18 percent of its work force, as it posted a $137 million quarterly loss on plunging sales of photography products. Black & Decker Corp. said its fourth-quarter profit tumbled 77 percent and the power tools manufacturer announced about 1,200 job cuts.

More signs of the deepening recession came in separate government reports on home sales and durable goods. The Commerce Department said Thursday that new home sales fell 14.

7 percent in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 331,000, the lowest pace on records dating back to 1963. For 2008, builders sold 482,000 homes, the weakest results since 1982. The median price of a new home sold last month was $206,500, a drop of 9.3 percent from a year ago. 

Meanwhile, new orders for durable goods dropped by 2.6 percent last month, even worse than the 2 percent decline economists expected. Orders fell 5.7 percent for the year, the second biggest drop on government records, exceeded only by a 10.7 percent plunge in 2001, according to the Commerce Department.

The tally of Americans filing new jobless benefit claims rose slightly to a seasonally adjusted 588,000 last week, from a downwardly revised figure of 585,000 the previous week. That also was worse than analysts’ forecast of 575,000 new claims. The number of initial claims is close to the 26-year high of 589,000 reached in late December, though the work force has grown by about half since then. The record number of ongoing benefit claims is an indication that laid-off workers are having a difficult time finding new jobs, economists said.

A year ago, continuing claims stood at about 2.7 million, less than half their current level when the extended unemployment program is included. The rate jumped to 7.2 percent in December, a 16-year high. Employers cut an average of 510,000 jobs in the last three months of 2008, and may cut a similar amount in January, Reinhart said.

The crush of new and continuing claims has overwhelmed many states’ ability to process them all. Electronic filing systems crashed in three states earlier this month, and last week Michigan said it would hire 276 workers and open a fourth call center to handle increased phone traffic.

President Barack Obama’s $819 billion economic stimulus package, approved by the House Wednesday and now on its way to the Senate, would provide $500 million to the states to upgrade their unemployment insurance systems. The measure also continues the extended unemployment compensation program, which adds up to 33 weeks of benefits, until the end of the year.

Companies have announced a huge number of layoffs this week as they prepare for an extended period of economic weakness. Economists expect the current recession, which began in December 2007, to be the longest since World War II.