I can't even imagine what it must be to sit in a first class airline seat, to find out what that's like.

For now, old backpacks, crowded subways, wadded-up sweaters as pillows on sofa cushions, car seats, or perpetually late Chinatown buses, and doing fundamentally stupid (but kind of fun, because you know you've got the slack to handle it) things like walking halfway across Manhattan because you wanted lunch and so spent $2 on a hot dog instead of train fare...

...this is normal for me.

Self-portrait taken in the window of the NYC el, going through a tunnel. The backpack in front is mine, and contains everything I went to NYC with. The backpack in rear is Matt's, and is a camping frame full of things he asked me to bring back to Boston for him (his family lives in Manhattan).

It is a good kind of normal to be able to have. It makes me appreciate things more, when they're better than you expect - although scooping rice and beans out of a massive refrigerator tub is plenty tasty (and healthy and cheap and filling to boot!)*

*now y'all know how I save all that money.