To New York

Kate and I are off to NYC tomorrow. She hasn't been there since 2001. I haven't been there since I was 7. The last time I was there, it was the trip to FAO Schwarz and the Statue of Liberty that were the biggest hits with me. We hope to see a lot while we are there, but we were most concerned, naturally, about where we were going to eat. We've had those places picked out for a while now. I'll save that blog for after the trip.

I am just finishing up packing and decided not to bring with me any of the books I am currently reading. You can't just read a page here and there of The Brothers Karamazov. And I am too close to finishing the other two to bring them on this trip. In addition to that, I always end up bringing way too many books on vacation anyway. The truth is, I don't read all that much on vacation. I like looking up, not looking down at the page while I am in a new land. However, it is sacrilege to go on any sort of trip without a book, so I am bringing along a Bill Bryson book. I've never read Neither Here Nor There and Bryson already made me laugh by the quote he opens the book with. It is from A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell:

William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was "A smell of petroleum prevails throughout."