Relaxing

Actually, I've been pretty relaxed. We had a huge hurricane last week, but where we live there's no chance of a tree falling on our house and we're nestled among a bunch of buildings about the same height so the wind mostly went over our heads. As the storm whipped itself toward its peak fury, I decided I'd better buy a bottle of milk before the store ran out of the stuff. Alla begged me not to leave home, certain that I'd meet my demise on the street. I went anyway, but her concern heightened my awareness of the tall trees twisting and turning overhead as I walked toward the corner store. I wondered if I could really run away from a falling branch if I even noticed it breaking off, and decided that maybe I didn't need to go down to harborside at high tide after all.

I'm grateful to say that we sustained no damage (beyond some already-weathered furniture covers on our roof deck.) Friends weren't so lucky, but all things considered I think Boston made out much better than cities in coastal New Jersey and New York.

I did look forward to relaxing, however, because Alla has been a little wound up. She doesn't like travel nearly as much as she likes being at interesting destinations. Right now we're en route to Maui, in the Hawaiian Islands. Alla packed her suitcase two days ago. Somehow she finds it difficult to decide what not to bring, so she likes to start early in order to have time to reflect on her luggage and add important things she remembers later. This means that she never forgets anything important, but sometimes things get doubled up or lost underneath something that proved to be extra and unused. I tried to stay out of that process as much as possible, but I can never steer completely clear.

Anyway, here we are. We might be the only people on the plane with no affiliation to Microsoft. Everybody else, as far as we can tell, is receiving this vacation as an award from that company. They all seem to have those fancy new Surface tablet computers and/or Windows Phones or at least some sort of computer running Windows 8. One wife of a Microsoft employee confessed that she uses an iPhone. I'm using an Android tablet. There are plenty of Kindles on the plane too. Apparently it's not heretical for a Microsoftie to have a Kindle.

Anyway, everybody is feeling jolly. When we get off the plane, we'll have warm, sunny weather and warm starry nights. And at least most of us won't have to work for a few days. It sounds pretty relaxing indeed.