A happy travel story, for a change
Oct. 23rd, 2011 09:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexagonSo I went to NYC this past week for a work conference. After the all-out skeeviness of Richmond, it blew my mind how lovely it was walking south from Penn Station to my hotel. It was like 15 blocks (the short ones) of walking through a music video of Shiny Happy People... it felt so busy, alive and safe, and I wasn't the only one of any description on the streets. Even the folks loitering were giving me the impression of "street as a public place to be", rather than "I am about to get mugged". All the way down to my swanky-ass hotel I just smiled at people, most especially the adorable gay couples in the Village.
I stayed 3 days in that hotel (fully stocked mini-bar in the fridge, a box of snacks/treats next to it that included condoms and sex toys? an umbrella for my use? wow), worked out in the NYC Equinox, and spent my days hobnobbing with very smart Zillianaires in the Zillian office there. I got my morning workouts in, and one of the evening ones. Every morning I thought "All systems are go in the greatest city in the world", which is my favorite line from Don't Care High, and snickered my way to the free breakfast.
Then one of those things happened that seemed bad, but drove home how amazing my life has really become: on Friday I lost my Nexus S smartphone. I thought it would be catastrophic. But what really happened was that I changed my Google account password from the train on the way home, and the next day I took![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heisenbug's old Nexus One down to the phone store and, for a $20 fee that they waived for no reason, got a new SIM card. That's it. That's all. My account wasn't used for anything bad, no cell phone calls were made, I have a phone again. The odds are decent I'll get the Nexus S back (I lost it in the Zillian office), but even if I don't, in two months I'll very likely get the next new phone from my dear employer for Christmas anyway. And I am grateful... so incredibly grateful that somehow I have this life where losing a several-hundred-dollar phone just rolls right off.
What is missing here? Oh yes, a picture of the new stuff in my life, because I didn't buy anything (yayyyy). They did give me a dorky T-shirt, but I'm counting that as raw material for T-shirt weaving practice, rather than a permanent possession.
I stayed 3 days in that hotel (fully stocked mini-bar in the fridge, a box of snacks/treats next to it that included condoms and sex toys? an umbrella for my use? wow), worked out in the NYC Equinox, and spent my days hobnobbing with very smart Zillianaires in the Zillian office there. I got my morning workouts in, and one of the evening ones. Every morning I thought "All systems are go in the greatest city in the world", which is my favorite line from Don't Care High, and snickered my way to the free breakfast.
Then one of those things happened that seemed bad, but drove home how amazing my life has really become: on Friday I lost my Nexus S smartphone. I thought it would be catastrophic. But what really happened was that I changed my Google account password from the train on the way home, and the next day I took
heisenbug's old Nexus One down to the phone store and, for a $20 fee that they waived for no reason, got a new SIM card. That's it. That's all. My account wasn't used for anything bad, no cell phone calls were made, I have a phone again. The odds are decent I'll get the Nexus S back (I lost it in the Zillian office), but even if I don't, in two months I'll very likely get the next new phone from my dear employer for Christmas anyway. And I am grateful... so incredibly grateful that somehow I have this life where losing a several-hundred-dollar phone just rolls right off.What is missing here? Oh yes, a picture of the new stuff in my life, because I didn't buy anything (yayyyy). They did give me a dorky T-shirt, but I'm counting that as raw material for T-shirt weaving practice, rather than a permanent possession.
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Date: 2011-10-24 01:04 pm (UTC)and hee! Zillianaires!
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Date: 2011-10-24 10:19 pm (UTC)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprang
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Date: 2011-10-25 03:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-10-25 10:40 pm (UTC)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yz429pqqdO4&feature=related
Things vs materials?
Date: 2011-10-24 11:04 pm (UTC)Re: Things vs materials?
Date: 2011-10-25 09:34 pm (UTC)For me, materials are even more burdensome than "completed" possessions, because, aside from the burden of the components themselves (storage, etc.), they also have a "claim" on future time I need to spend to "make" them.
Re: Things vs materials?
Date: 2011-11-06 08:49 pm (UTC)Like
Your chips and wires and boards and stuff... are they materials for predetermined projects, or are they around the place as "spare parts" or "just in case" for future things that might arise? Though I like getting rid of stuff as much as the next minimalist, I don't feel much mental burden from spare parts -- they're things I wouldn't pack up and move if I were moving cross-country, so it's easy to not care either way about whether I happen to have them around currently or not. Things I have that are like this: wrapping paper, tape, batteries, band-aids.
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Date: 2013-10-12 01:29 pm (UTC)Don't Care High? That's an awesome reference. And you've read it enough to quote it! That rocks; I love Korman. (I try to re-read the high school trilogy - for the uninitiated: DCH, A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag and Son of Interflux - every few years. I'm due again.)
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Date: 2013-10-21 10:06 pm (UTC)I hadn't realized that A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag was up there with those two. If you say it is, then I'll be reading that in the very near future. :-)
How about Daniel Pinkwater?