It's fun to see where people live. - David Sedaris

At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me.

Plenty of animals had pets, but few were more devoted than the mouse, who owned a baby corn snake — “A rescue snake, she’d be quick to inform you. This made it sound like he’d been snatched from the jaws of a raccoon, but what she’d really rescued him from was a life without her love. And what sort of a life would that have been?

My trip reminded me that we are all just animals, that stuff comes out of every hole we have, no matter where we live or how much money we've got. On some level we all know this and manage, quite pleasantly, to shove it towards the back of our minds.