A Million Dollars

How would your life change if you won or inherited $1 million?

Let’s face it, one million dollars doesn’t have the buying power it used to. From months reading the Washington Post real estate section I know it wouldn’t buy me a house in my neighborhood. Most of those go for at least $1.2.

But it’s still no laughing matter. It’s enough to make some significant life improvements, but not so much that you’d get stalked by strangers from middle school asking for a “loan.”

Here’s what I’d do with my million:

1. Share half with my immediate family members.

2. Apply to anthropology or archaeology programs in DC  and take a couple years off work to go to school full time.

3. Travel to dig sites around the world and volunteer while waiting to matriculate in a graduate program.

4. Invest in cameras and lenses to document my travels from site to site.

5. Buy a couple new laptops.

6. Splurge on some first edition leather bound books.

7. I would take flying lessons and get a pilot’s license.

8. Upgrade to a 2-bedroom apt. with den.

9.  Save $100,000 for a rainy day.

10. Put $100,000 in a separate account so that I could donate the interest each year to my charity du jour.

What would you do with your windfall?

Filed under: figment, pure gold

Short fiction

I am a huge fan of short fiction. I devour stories by Alice Adams, tasty morsels by Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway, decadent treats by Isabel Allende, dark chunks by Poe, and those wonderful America’s Best anthologies.

I picked up New Sudden Fiction the other day, and am enthralled with Stacey Richter’s “The Minimalist” and Leslie Pietrzyk’s “Pompeii.”

I wish I could write like them — but my brain just doesn’t marry images and words the way they do.

These stories are delicious torture.

Filed under: between the lines, figment, inspiration point, pure fiction

Time

 

Back in 2001, I changed fields completely… went from working for the housing and construction industries to working in science.

The toughest concept I learned – in addition to getting a crash course in just about every discipline out there (archaeology, astronomy, biology, chemistry, genomics, nanotechnology, proteomics, etc) – is that there are no absolutes.

Now, I thrive on absolutes, on guarantees, on infallibilities…. like knowing for certain that 100 cents makes one dollar or that 1+1=2 or that dogs bark and cats meow or that Friday is payday or that there are 24 hours to a day.

I get a little upset when ALIAS moves from Sunday to Wednesday nights, when my brother changes his email address and forgets to inform me, when the Euro starts to bitchslap the US dollar, when I finally understand that time is a constant (it does not pass – we pass through it).

Quantum Physics my friends – the multiple worlds theory. For a quick introduction, rent What the ^@!&@# do We Know?

So now, almost five years later, absolutes no longer exist in my world. And, I think my life is better for it, though it’s been a long process.

And it’s got me thinking…. IF this many-world view of reality is a possibility and IF some super-genius at MIT figures out how to travel between these universes and IF I could afford to travel in time (because we all know it’ll be ludicrously expensive when it’s first commercially available), then where would I want to go?

10. Participate in a druid ceremony at Stonehenge in 1500 BC.

9. Tour the Great Library of Alexandria in 100 BC

8. Visit Alexandria, Egypt during Cleopatra’s reign in 51 – 30 BC

7. Witness the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776.

6. Menlo Park in 1879 when Thomas A. Edison invented the lightbulb.

5. Stroll the decks of the Titanic on the day of her launch on April 10, 1912.

4. Cape Canaveral, Florida, on July 16, 1969 for the launch of Apollo 11.

3. Hear JFK’s Inauguration Speech on January 20, 1961.

2. September 1499 for the return of Vasco da Gama to Lisbon, Portugal, during the reign of Manuel I.

1. Florence in 1480 to pose for Leonardo da Vinci.

If you could travel in time, where would you go?

Filed under: Eureka!, eye opener, figment, pure gold