Right now, real estate is sort of like a 37-year-old contemplating (for whatever reason) reentering the dating pool. Prior to actually asking someone to dinner, one first rejoins the gym and/or commences to diet.

Then one tortures oneself each morning with the ritual of the mirror and the scale. Can I suck in the gut? Does this hair style work? (Or conversely, can anyone tell that I am losing my hair?) Then we try to quantify the issue: Did I lose a pound? Gain two?

Any “Miss Lonely Hearts” worth her salt would be sure to advise those who are dithering in this fashion that while good eating habits and a sound exercise program are certainly good things well worth doing for their own obvious benefits, potential dates are almost certainly going to evaluate you on underlying qualities that cannot be altered in a week or two of calisthenics and outfits with horizontal stripes.

In other words, it's time to get off the scales and get going. Invite someone out to a movie and a burger (or a salad if you must). If you are open-minded, and reasonably careful with how much you invest in any particular date, you will probably have a good time.

Having said this, let me assure you that yes, I have some experience in this area, but fortunately will never have to face it again, as my current wife assures me that there are no more divorces in my future. Death by iron frying pan, perhaps. But divorce? Naaah.

No, my point here is actually more germane to the stock market than to my current personal situation, in that we have been endlessly weighing various economic factoids as we head long toward the Federal Reserve's two-day meeting at the end of this month.

Why the endless digging and delving, searching and sieving? Why are we so desperate to know whether the Fed will drop a quarter point off the short-term bank rate, perhaps add one, or (most likely) do what this particular board does so well: nothing?

Some folks do it because they want to know how the market as a whole will react come February 1. In their minds, a rate drop might offer our captains of industry access to cheap capital, which they reinvest in the machinery that might power a strong market rally.

If so, then now is the time to buy, before the market really takes off.

Then again, a rate drop coming now from a Fed that has otherwise been as agile as granite might mean that things really stink. Wow, maybe this is time to sell?

And that's just the conundrum wrapped around one of three possible choices before us. It only gets more twisted from there. What would the Fed do? How about a rate spike? Would that mean that things were great? Or is inflation getting out of hand?

Handicapping the Fed can be an enjoyable exercise (heck I like to do it as much if not more than most folks). But agonizing over it is not necessarily the most productive thing you can do with your time or energy, anymore than that 37-year-old's endless pondering over their waistline.

Face it: You ain't going to see 29 again, but that nice woman in accounting may still say yes. And the Fed is most likely going to do nothing, but stocks that are already positioned to go up will still go up, and bad ones will still go down.

And tomorrow, I will list a few for you from each of those lists. Just think of them as decent dates regardless of how good or bad the movie turns out to be.