![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
1. Having gotten things done early (not unexpected, but we weren't sure) in Rochester, we moved our flight up a few days. Only to have the flight we were aiming for get booked up overnight. So we took a flight the next day. Only to have it canceled. (The flight before that one, earlier in the morning, ended up getting off an hour and a half late, landing two hours late, and then, if the computer was right, sitting on the tarmac for over two and a half hours waiting for a gate.) Why was it canceled? Snow. Not in Minnesota, mind you. In New Jersey. So we're looking to fly out early this afternoon. But the flight is pretty full. There's a chance we'll get bumped. We're not sure. (But at least that should be our choice.) If this keeps up, we may end up on the same flight we'd originally booked.
ETA: Flight wasn't full, after all. Looks like a few of the people who were on it managed to get on an earlier flight or something. So now we're at the airport with two hours to kill. But we should get home just fine.
2. In the hotel lobby yesterday morning, the TV was tuned to CNBC, a financial news channel. They were going over stock prices and indexes and whatnot. This company is up because their new product is expected to sell well. This company is down because there's some lawsuit that looks like it will cause them trouble. That sort of thing. At one point, they came back from commercials with BREAKING NEWS that housing prices (meaning trading of funds investing in real estate) were up 2%... only to cut that person off mid-sentence to have someone talk about how the Dow Jones had just gone over 13000 for the first time this year. (By the time he was done talking, it was back down.)
At another point, they switched over to a look at the commodities market. Buying and selling actual stuff (like frozen concentrated orange juice) on something very much akin to the stock market. The big news? Wheat was up. For 8 straight days - something that hadn't happened with wheat in a long time. Why was it up? The analyst discussed it in the same even, almost conversational tone as anything else. It seems food prices keep going up in Africa. People are starving. There are food riots. Particularly in Egypt right now. So there's speculation that the Egyptian government may soon buy wheat.
(Therefore, people are investing in wheat, driving the price up and making money off it. Instead of, you know, helping the people who are starving because food has become too expensive to buy. - That part was left unsaid.)
And now over to our discussion of the price of Verizon.
ETA: All over the news today is that Egypt exploded. Tens of thousands of (mostly peaceful) protesters in the streets, with riot police and eventually the military stepping in to break things up with tear gas, fire hoses, and possibly more. Communications have been limited, since the Egyptian government shut down almost all internet access in the country. They then imposed a curfew, forcing everyone off the streets for the night. In other news, the price of wheat is back down a bit today.
What is wrong with people?
ETA: Flight wasn't full, after all. Looks like a few of the people who were on it managed to get on an earlier flight or something. So now we're at the airport with two hours to kill. But we should get home just fine.
2. In the hotel lobby yesterday morning, the TV was tuned to CNBC, a financial news channel. They were going over stock prices and indexes and whatnot. This company is up because their new product is expected to sell well. This company is down because there's some lawsuit that looks like it will cause them trouble. That sort of thing. At one point, they came back from commercials with BREAKING NEWS that housing prices (meaning trading of funds investing in real estate) were up 2%... only to cut that person off mid-sentence to have someone talk about how the Dow Jones had just gone over 13000 for the first time this year. (By the time he was done talking, it was back down.)
At another point, they switched over to a look at the commodities market. Buying and selling actual stuff (like frozen concentrated orange juice) on something very much akin to the stock market. The big news? Wheat was up. For 8 straight days - something that hadn't happened with wheat in a long time. Why was it up? The analyst discussed it in the same even, almost conversational tone as anything else. It seems food prices keep going up in Africa. People are starving. There are food riots. Particularly in Egypt right now. So there's speculation that the Egyptian government may soon buy wheat.
(Therefore, people are investing in wheat, driving the price up and making money off it. Instead of, you know, helping the people who are starving because food has become too expensive to buy. - That part was left unsaid.)
And now over to our discussion of the price of Verizon.
ETA: All over the news today is that Egypt exploded. Tens of thousands of (mostly peaceful) protesters in the streets, with riot police and eventually the military stepping in to break things up with tear gas, fire hoses, and possibly more. Communications have been limited, since the Egyptian government shut down almost all internet access in the country. They then imposed a curfew, forcing everyone off the streets for the night. In other news, the price of wheat is back down a bit today.
What is wrong with people?