Commodity Correction

(That is the headline on CNBC at the moment, brought to you by a business reporter who has silver-gilded lettering on his business card)

I have learned two important lessons over the past few days:
1. GPS outshines online maps & directions
2. Hotels like to tout “going green” as code for “cutting corners.”

Considering you can see the detail of the stone on my front porch on Google Earth, I assumed “the powers that be” at Google could give me accurate directions from St. Louis to Austin, Texas. After all, Interstate 35 has been around since 1959. Significant traffic increases have to take place before an “Exit 242” is divided into “Exit 242A,” “Exit 242B,” “Exit 242C,” etc. This kind of growth takes time. I guess it’s naïve to think Google would be just as interested in keeping its maps as current as its street views. Instead, I ended up wasting paper (and at least 30 minutes) painstakingly writing down directions, taking care to specify if the highway is also known as US-107 or Frontage Road, Blvd or Business Route, and then taking the wrong exit. Could have saved paper if I had used the GPS from the beginning. Could have been more GREEN.

In the two budget inns I’ve stayed at so far, there are full-color glossy informational cards touting their greenness because they don’t change the sheets or towels every day unless you ask them to. I know this because I read over the card as I drank the coffee I’d recently released from its plastic sleeve, freshly poured into my paper cup, getting ready to eat my continental cereal in a Styrofoam bowl with plastic spoon.

What I didn’t save was coffee as it dribbled down the carafe because of its haphazard design (and my lack of grace):

But now that I have this petty bitching out of the way, I can focus my energy on the beauty of Austin…