Are you as much a sap as I am when it comes to getting your mother (or father, I suppose) gifts from the places you travel to? I love to see the look on her face when I present her with something I know she loves. If it comes from Ghiradelli Square in San Francisco, she is going to love it!

She is just like any other person that has a love affair with chocolate, so I’m ensured that she’ll always smile when receiving one of their great chocolate sampler packs. One time I got so caught up in the chocolate thing that a gift I purchased for her never even made it to her hands (or her mouth for that matter!)

My only challenge with getting Mom stuff is that she’s a collector. If you read that last sentence and accidentally inserted the word “hoarder” for collector you would be well justified. I was trying to be polite.

Mom comes from a long line of “collectors”. Her father owned just about any and every toy manufactured from the early 1950’s till he passed away last year. Family members are still having a field day selling his stuff on ebay.

Mom is more a collector of other themes. Refrigerator magnets? Yup, she has literally tens of thousands of them. Post cards? Yup. While no longer actively collecting them, at the height of that phase she had over 70,000. That’s SEVENTY THOUSAND post cards, most of them mounted in little corner bracket things inside of 3 ring binders.

Can you imagine? And the list goes on, but you get the concept. Which brings me to buying things for dear Mom when I get the great fortune of traveling to places she’s either not been or rarely gets the opportunity to see.

Tomorrow I travel back down to Los Angeles. While I’m not sure my LAX Airport hotel will have much in the way of interesting memorabilia I’ll be sure to pick her up something here in San Francisco. Like I said, she loves Ghiradelli Chocolate. Now I just need to make sure I don’t love that chocolate more!

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photo credit: theleetgeeks

I’ve just checked out of my room at the LAX Airport hotel after a pleasant few days in the ever expanding metropolis of Los Angeles. Pretty sure that the surrealistic cityscape that was presented us in the movie Blade Runner is going to happen here in the near future.

I suppose the reason I’m saying that has to do a lot with the highways of the area. In Phoenix we have a lot of very new double, triple and I think there’s actually a spot in the Valley of the Sun that has 4 different levels of over/under passes going on.

Other than the few dense traffic regions in Arizona, everything is spread low, and extends far. When approaching LAX from San Diego earlier this week, I got a real eyeful. At certain points while flying up the coast you get to see how development has butted right up against the edge of the various mountains that protect and encapsulate the greater L.A and Orange County area.

My first flight into Los Angeles was as an 11 year old kid who was coming to visit his father and brother, for the first time. Yeah. Weird. I know. Our parents had divorced while I was in my second year, so I never really knew these people or the Left Coast where they resided.

But the one thing that struck me about flying into LAX was seeing all of the streets, buildings, the civilization that existed out here. It was amazing and overwhelming for a kid on his first ever plane ride. And a solo one at that! Pretty sure that was the best I’d ever been treated on a plane, but that’s a story for another post.

During the approach this time there was one thing that caught my eye. Off in the distance to the east you could actually see where the home developers were starting to carve out those bounding mountains I’d first observed protecting the area.

Now you could clearly see the excavations and massive terracing that was prepping those areas for yet more homes for more people to be able to live in the California sunshine.

While I’m not sure how high up on those hillsides they can build it was observing this that made me think on the Blade Runner future of Los Angeles. They are going to have to start building up if growth is to continue. I wonder how that will affect life here? How will the future affect all of our visits to the area.

Would love to hear if you have any thoughts on the concept, be it here in L.A. or your favorite travel destination. Be good to yourself!

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Found out a bit ago that I have to get down to the LAX airport hotel for a mid morning meeting. I was scheduled for appointments the day after tomorrow in Century City, but now I’ve had to change flights and get an extra night at the hotel.

photo credit: Telstar Logistics

As I sit here at SFO waiting for the flight to board, I’m realizing how important it is to have “other things” in ones life. I read a lot, so that helps me to pass time during these little lulls. Of course, there’s always something to do work-wise, however, we can’t always be work productive.

As I mentioned, I do read a lot, so I’m always carrying a book or two. I was wondering if I should invest in one of these newish types of ebook reading devices. Do you have one that, based upon your experiences you would recommend? Or ones that I should definitely steer clear of?

My instincts tell me to move towards the Kindle, mostly because of the dominance Amazon has in the book world.

But I’m open to suggestions, obviously. They are somewhat expensive, especially when you compare them to buying printed books. At the same time, being able to have 1500 books at one time?! Can you imagine having to carry that many hardcovers and paperbacks?

Obviously, you wouldn’t, but still! Let me know what I should do. Thanks!

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