Post-vacation statistics

M and I have returned home after ten days in San Francisco. From the sun and the warmth to the rain and the cold. Here are a few utterly unimportant bits of info concerning our return:

• Spam received at home while gone: 670 messages.
• Spam received at the office while gone: 814 messages.
• Trips to the Apple Store: 2
• Items purchased at the Apple Store: 0
• Items desired at the Apple Store: all
• My shifting arm is more sunburned than my steering arm.
• My legs are not sunburned at all.

Books acquired on trip:

  • Amsterdam, by Ian McEwan. I’ve read this book already, but it’s one of my favorites, so I nabbed this excellent condition hardcover (used) when I found it at a bookstore in Berkley.
  • Atonement, by Ian McEwan. (See note above.) Additional note: I looked for a good (used) hardcover version of this for over a year, and finally gave up and bought the softcover (new) when I was in San Francisco last year. What is it with me, Ian McEwan, and San Francisco?
  • Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck. How could I resist? M and I were checking out the revitalized, tourist-trappy Cannery Row in Monterey, and I was moved to go to a bookstore and find this classic novel of Cannery Row in the 1930s (which I have not read before).
  • The Moon is Down, by John Steinbeck. Hey, I was on a Steinbeck roll. Shaddap.
  • Magnum Landscape. This is a book of landscape photographs from Magnum agency photographers. You don’t normally think “landscape” when you think “Magnum” but here it is. Note, however, that these are not your typical “calendar” landscapes. They are perhaps better defined as “social” or “cultural” landscapes as they deal with our perceptions of our physical environments. This has always been my primary area of interest in photography, so when I found this edition from Phaidon I jumped on it.

Speaking of landscape photography, have you been checking the Monday Morning Photo Blog? If not, go there now, and check the archives too!

2 thoughts on “Post-vacation statistics

  1. Welcome back. Did you bring any sun with you?

    I remember Jack Kerouac lane rather well, next to the City Lights bookstore…gotta go back to SF soon.

    So you’re lusting after all the Apple-ry now are ya? Didja get a chance to see what a G5 can do?

  2. I enjoyed Jack Kerouac’s lane more than I did his book. While I appreciate “On the Road” in terms of its place in literary history, it has not aged well. It has been imitated so much that reading it nowadays for the first time makes it feel highly derivative. By about half way through I found it was just a lot of blah blah blah. Yes, I can see why kids in the 50s and 60s would be inspired by it, but its only relevance now is historical.

    Yeah, I’m becoming an Apple luster. I really like MOST things about my new(ish) iBook. A few things still drive me nuts though (like the one-button mouse, and since its a LAPTOP the argument that I can install a third-party two button mouse is irrelevant). Also, I hate the use of the Apple key when there is a perfectly good (and EASIER TO REACH) control key right there on the keyboard.

    G3, G5, G90, whatever. I’m not a speed freak. I’m not convinced the G5 does anything different from the G3, just that it does it faster. And imperceptably faster given that all I do is Web browse, email, and writing.

Comments are closed.