NYC Thoughts

I'm trying to make up my mind whether I could live in New York City or its environs. 

There really is a lot to like. Active neighborhoods, sports venues, and large park areas. Interesting stores abound as well. Prices are good enough at stores and restaurants, not more than a tad higher than smaller cities. Rents and houses I can't speak to though.

What's not to like? I think I'm a people person at heart, but there's a lot of people. From my limited experience traffic isn't all that bad, but there is a lot of it just the same. Be ready, as I intimated the other day, for way too many car honking symphonies. There seems to be activity all the time, which can be disconcerting.

I think the lack of ready parking is my biggest turn off. I'm too much of a Midwesterner to want to wait to drive my car; I want to go places when I want to go. I want to walk outside my door, and there's my wheels. They aren't blocks away or lodged in a parking structure.

The judgment? Definitely a great place to visit. The jury is out on making it a home.

Low Tech

I ran into something completely unexpected during my travels this week. A hotel I spent a night in didn't have USB ports for recharging my electronics, the cell phone I always carry, my Kindle, and laptop.

Such amenities have become so common that I had not bothered to pack a three prong plug in adapter. Everyone has those recharging ports, don't they?

I'm not knocking the hotel, honest. Everything else was more than satisfactory. Then, too, they certainly aren't obliged to cater to my every whim, despite the capitalist dragon which stirs our hearts to entitlement. I simply never expected a lack of what seems to me a standard these days.

I got around such trivial issues because my techy things hold power for significant periods of time as well as with the use of car charging adapters. But I confess my initial reaction was, What? They don't have those?

But it isn't all about me, is it? That's twice this week I've had that lesson hurled at yours truly. I'm beginning to think it's a message.

Pointed TP

I don't stay in hotels often. But I am living out of one for most of this week as I attend a trade show. And I am struck by some of the amenities.

They're all good, mind you. I'm making no complaints. Nice big rooms, plenty of hot water, microwave oven, refrigerator, color TV; and what coffee lover doesn't love the single cup Keurigs at their service? I even brought several extra coffee pods because the two they leave you are nowhere near enough for a true coffee hound. But I quibble.

Still, I find myself obsessing over things such as, why do they bother to the fold the ends of the toilet paper into triangles? Why is the first facial tissue out of the box fluffed out into a design of some sort (I can't actually tell what it's supposed to be, but I assume a flower of some kind). Why do I get a washcloth folded origami style into a little fan? Are people actually impressed by these efforts?

None of it would encourage me to stay in any particular place. Don't misunderstand; I love the hotel I'm in. I wouldn't think twice about staying here again. I'll almost certainly house myself in this very same establishment for the 2024 version of this show.

Only not for the origami washcloths. I simply can't imagine stuff such as that mattering to a traveler. "Oh, we can't stay there. They don't have the toilet paper ends folded into triangles.' I mean, who even considers these things?

The first person who says, clearly you Marty, gets a smack on the head with a wet spaghetti noodle. I'm not thinking about this, I'm reacting to it. So. There.

The origami fan washcloth

I don't stay in hotels often. But I am living out of one for most of this week as I attend a trade show. And I am struck by some of the amenities.

They're all good, mind you. I'm making no complaints. Nice big rooms, plenty of hot water, microwave oven, refrigerator, color TV; and what coffee lover doesn't love the single cup Keurigs at their service? What's not to like? Nothing, really.

Yet I find myself obsessing over things such as, why do they bother to the fold the ends of the toilet paper into triangles? Why is the first facial tissue out of the box fluffed out into a design of some sort (I can't actually tell what it's supposed to be, but I assume a flower of some kind). Why do I get a washcloth folded origami style into a little fan? Are people actually impressed by these efforts?

None of it would encourage me to stay in any particular place. Don't misunderstand; I love the hotel I'm in. I wouldn't think twice about staying here again.

Only not for the origami washcloths. I simply can't imagine stuff such as that mattering to a traveler. "Oh, we can't stay there. They don't have the toilet paper ends folded into triangles.' I mean, who even thinks of these things?

Maybe that's the game: to furnish brain teasers for the consumer's entertainment. If that's so, then I need to stop thinking about it lest it drives me crazy.