Home From California
Mar. 8th, 2003 03:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ralphmeltonA last rambling post about my trip to California, written on March 29.
The plane was pretty uncrowded. I managed to sleep most of the way to Newark.
Got to see the sunrise from the air. Yay. The colors of a sunrise from a plane are so intense--much more so than from the ground. Ground sunrises do not impress me all that much, frankly--I've seen them from time to time, and they're not really worth waking up for, much less staying up for. But airborne sunrises are amazing.
Had to go through security again in Newark. The security guy asked if he could open the iBook (to wave his explosive-sniffer across the keyboard), and was surprised when it woke from sleep when he opened it.
Picked up baggage and went out to the curb just before the time Lori drove by. The timing was exquisite.
Had breakfast at Cracker Barrel, went home and slept for most of the day.
I read David Brancaccio's Squandering Aimlessly on the trip home; I finished the book as we were pulling in to Cracker Barrel. (Which gives me some misgivings about whether I got good value for my money, but at least I got the book used.) I found it a good book on what people do with a monetary surplus; I think that Sean in particular would enjoy reading it. His final conclusion was fairly unsurprising: "it's a good use of a surplus if it makes your life substantially better". But I enjoyed the stories of getting there. My favorite stories were the story of the nude accountant and the story of the biggest surplus Brancaccio himself ever encountered. (I also enjoyed the hints at what Brancaccio makes, and what constitutes a lot of money for him. I don't feel I know enough about what other people see as a lot of money.)
The plane was pretty uncrowded. I managed to sleep most of the way to Newark.
Got to see the sunrise from the air. Yay. The colors of a sunrise from a plane are so intense--much more so than from the ground. Ground sunrises do not impress me all that much, frankly--I've seen them from time to time, and they're not really worth waking up for, much less staying up for. But airborne sunrises are amazing.
Had to go through security again in Newark. The security guy asked if he could open the iBook (to wave his explosive-sniffer across the keyboard), and was surprised when it woke from sleep when he opened it.
Picked up baggage and went out to the curb just before the time Lori drove by. The timing was exquisite.
Had breakfast at Cracker Barrel, went home and slept for most of the day.
I read David Brancaccio's Squandering Aimlessly on the trip home; I finished the book as we were pulling in to Cracker Barrel. (Which gives me some misgivings about whether I got good value for my money, but at least I got the book used.) I found it a good book on what people do with a monetary surplus; I think that Sean in particular would enjoy reading it. His final conclusion was fairly unsurprising: "it's a good use of a surplus if it makes your life substantially better". But I enjoyed the stories of getting there. My favorite stories were the story of the nude accountant and the story of the biggest surplus Brancaccio himself ever encountered. (I also enjoyed the hints at what Brancaccio makes, and what constitutes a lot of money for him. I don't feel I know enough about what other people see as a lot of money.)
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no subject
Date: 2003-03-29 06:31 pm (UTC)I think other people tend to see "a lot of money" as "more than I have now", for better or for worse.
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Date: 2003-03-29 06:44 pm (UTC)For me, "a lot of money" is not exactly "more than I have now" as much as it is "as much as I had in 2000."