AC Capehart capehart

This morning, I had a simple, but I think profound realization. Wealth creation is not a zero-sum game. For me to be wealthier, I do not need to make you poorer. Now, I’ve known this before. You probably have too. But sometimes it feels like it, because of the exchange of money, and the erroneous conflation of money with wealth. Wealth has been in the back of my mind for some time.

I like Virgin Airlines. I particularly liked my transcontinental business class trip on Virgin America. I like the Virgin lounge in Heathrow. And I LOVE business class when east-bound transatlantic. I’ve had worse nights of sleep in hotels than on that “red eye” (I’m looking at you Barcelona Pensione!) Obviously, I’m a Virgin flying club member. That was then. This is now. Now, each transatlantic flight comes directly out of my own pocket and I’m in uncertain financial waters as I try to start a transatlantic business.

After much humming and hawing, I signed up for broadband in Virginia with Comcast. I’m wary of them based on their filtering, and other subscribers talking about their dropping idle connections (sometimes, long-lived SSH connections are handy). But I wasn’t able to get much bandwidth from CenturyLink due to my location. So far, speedtest looks downright awesome. Here are the results from my new connection in Virginia. Here’s what I get at the inlaws office where I’m working now.

I had a dream last night about a statue. That’s all I remember about the dream – the statue. The statue was titled “The Many Muses of Flight” It was all white as if carved from white marble. It had a man in Dickensian garb complete with top hat leaping up, but he was only partially distinct from the white marble mass which was primarily shaped like the plumes of smoke from the early stages of a rocket launch.

I was thinking recently of things I’ve done, places I’ve been. At forty, I still feel young. New to the world, even though my body isn’t capable of what it once was. Looking back though, I’m astonished and overwhelmed at the people and events that have found their way into my lives.

Sometimes at Thanksgiving, the holiday has just come and gone. Good food, good friends and family. This year, though I spent a little bit of time reflecting. I count myself genuinely lucky for the breadth of experiences I’ve had, people I’ve known, places I’ve been.

Thank you.

If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. I don’t recall if that was formally part of my upbringing, but for the most part, I take it to heart. I’ve been pretty quiet lately. In part, it seems to be the norm for social media too. It’s OK to be momentarily frustrated by something, or to need help with a task, but if it’s not funny, engaging, or a bit of over-sharing, it doesn’t belong in your tweet or your facebook update.

Saturday: Ditchling Beacon to Devil’s Dyke (route) (photos) Sunday: Lewes Castle to Brighton (route) (photos) Originally, this weekend, we had planned to train up to Gatwick and from there to take a trail along to Pooh Corner and the Hundred acre woods. We had that queued up for Sunday so decided to go for a walk on Saturday. Only we slept in on Sunday because Saturday’s walk tired us out, so we gave up Pooh Corner in favor of Lewes Castle.

<p> Two weekends ago, I went out with Simon and we tooled around in the woods and on bridle trails (usually!) for 20-odd miles. My rides with Simon have been a delight, if not exactly purposeful. Like any riding, it&#8217;s only a matter of making the time for &#8217;em. Cycling remains for me the one form of exercise that I don&#8217;t think of as exercise, but as fun. We mainly find our way up into the downs.

I just upgraded to the latest version of WordPress. I also deleted a lot of users. If one of them was you and your actually reading this, sorry. Best I could tell it was sleeper spam accounts. But basically, if your email address is in the .ru or .pl domains, and your “real name” doesn’t match your email address at all, I figured you and I weren’t on very close terms.

On Friday, it was supposed to rain. We were going to go shopping. I needed a replacement keychain – my “England” one from Heathrow had broken under the strain of daily use. I needed a hat (CF my post wherein I left my hat on the train on the way up). I was interested in a sweater of Scottish wool. We have various birthdays coming up that we need to provide for.