Driving what used to be excitement

Regular readers know I am writing this from San Mateo just south of San Francisco. Aren't the tubes great? I can not only write this from here but collaborate with the listgirly to get a photo of the day up. SF is expensive. The Marriott is $170/night which is average but they add $10/day for internet and $15/day for parking. Dinner last night was about $45. And my rental Pontiac G6 is $51/day. Maybe I should be happy I get to drive a Pontiac before they are all gone. Pontiac's old slogan was driving excitement! I must say I'm not getting the whole excitement thing. Maybe if I had rented a Jeep I could have come to understood the Jeep cult. I'll ask for one next time. During Sunday's drive to the airport, I heard an NPR story about the increase in bird-airplane collisions. US readers probably remember the US Air flight that amazingly "landed" safely in the Hudson river after a pair of bird strikes. Nice to hear this story just as I'm ready to jump on a plane, eh? And I live in America's birdiest city to boot! Luckily there were no kamikaze birds Sunday afternoon. This trip ushers in the end of my two week coke sabbatical. I drink a fair amount of diet coke and was wondering what would happen if I stopped. Would I get drowsy? Would I crave it? Would I go stark raving mad? I am happy to report I did not notice any change at all. When I was eating salty food I wished for Coke, but that was it. During my morning popcorn I substituted about 8 oz of Pomegranate-Blueberry juice alongside a glass of water. I think as I bring coke back in to my diet I'm going to stick with the fruit juice at popcorn time. It wasn't bad and that way I'll get a few more nutrients - albeit with a few calories every morning. My company is going to do a project involving the Amazon Kindle and has acquired a couple of units. Luckily I was able to snag one to bring along for this trip. I was told not to buy "too much" on the company dime. This unit already had Outliers on it which I hadn't read yet. I also purchased a fiction book. I have quite taken to the Kindle though not enough to spend $300 on it. It has a great screen and the device size is good. The pages seem to fly by. Incidentally, it's uncommon enough that people ask me about it all the time when I have it out in public. There are a few problems though.

• Graphs and charts don't always display properly
• I can only get books from Amazon
• I can only get new books, no used, no library, etc

The limitations don't seem so bad when I picked up the Kindle for free (albeit temporarily). But if I bought one I'd have more expectations. Finally, I have already finished Outliers and it was great. Recommended. At this pace I may have to buy one more book on the old company and potentially get scolded. But in fact I find that danger along with the prospect of more reading truly exciting. So I will risk it.