Homeward Bound

Tomorrow (technically today), I go home for thanksgiving break. W00t! And most of my work is under control, so my vacation can actually be relaxing.

Home at Last

In the airport on the way home, I heard two guys talking about game theory, so I couldn't resist joining the conversation. A woman from the same flight then also joined the conversation. As it turned out, the two guys, Brandon and Derick, were both IT people from a college in Kentucky who had been in Boston for a training seminar, and the woman (who's name I did not get) was an enterprise marketing executive for Microsoft's eastern seaboard operations. (Only later did I realize that I should have asked for a business card. D'oh!)

The conversation continued on the plane, where Brandon, Derick, and I, were joined by Peggy, a teacher from Boston, and we talked about economics, ethics, politics, and the meaning of life. Brandon talked about his love of order and his belief that labor unions were obsolete, Peggy shared her spiritual existentialist philosophy, and Derrick and I talked about social justice (me from an atheistic point of view, him focusing on Jewish conceptions of social justice centering on the concept of Tikun Olam (healing the world), which I knew far too much about from my experiences at Camp Tavor (which I went to before I went to Centauri).

The moral of the story is talk to people in airports.

Anyway, it's great to be home, but as soon as I met my dad in the airport, I received the sad news that my Great-Aunt Sala has passed away (apparently a few days ago, but, due to problems in communication (each thinking that the other had done it), my parents had not told me). My mom had mentioned Aunt Sala's declining helth a few weeks ago (when Aunt Sala had a stroke), but Aunt Sala has had health problems for a while, so I either missed the tone of the email or it made things sound less serious than they really were. *is sad*