Stocked up on some snacks for camping. Dh got granola bars at Target (sale).

I found Raley's a much better/cheaper place to buy water toys. I stopped by Walgreens on the way, but less selection and more expensive. Well, okay then.

Stopped at Raley's for trail mix and crackers. I hadn't walked into that store in years. For one, since I don't do the shopping. But we have a very nice Bel Air right down the street now, so rules out the need to go to Raley's, like ever. So it was weird going in.

I found out that our neighbors are really snobby about the self checkout lines at these stores, BTW. LOL. They have got the be kidding.

"Self checkout lines are so ghetto."

Whatevah. I guess I value my time more.

I waited in line (longer than I've ever seen there - the customer service used to be 1000% - never wait in a line). Because I had quite a few items and was just lazy. The self checkout always gives me problems. But I usually only run in for a couple of items, which is my perspective I guess. I usually LOVE to just run in and out with no human contact.

I know Bel Air has the reputation for upscale groceries, but it's a pretty big misnomer. The store is NICE and the customer service can't be beat, but they went through and shifted a big part of their inventory to "low price leaders" a few backs. I mean come on, who would shop their otherwise? We don't live in Bel Air. LOL.

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I picked up a book at the library to peruse on my vacation. If I have time...

Bobos in Paradise. David Brooks

A slightly older book, but the title caught my attention. I just love the word "bobo." Thinking to the Peter Sellers movie - "The Bobo." Or my favorite monkey, the bonobo.

Anyway, but it looks quite interesting, beyond the title. (Bobo = Bourgeois Bohemians).

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"It used to be pretty easy to distinguish between the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture. The bourgeois worked for corporations, wore gray, and went to church. The bohemians were artists and intellectuals. Bohemians championed the values of the liberated 1960s; the bourgeois were the enterprising yuppies of the 1980s. But now the bohemian and the bourgeois are all mixed up, as David Brooks explains in this brilliant description of upscale culture in America. It is hard to tell an espresso-sipping professor from a cappuccino-gulping banker. Laugh and sob as you read about the information age economy's new dominant class. Marvel at their attitudes toward morality, sex, work, and lifestyle, and at how the members of this new elite have combined the values of the countercultural sixties with those of the achieving eighties. These are the people who set the tone for society today, for you. They are bourgeois bohemians: Bobos. Are you a Bobo? Do you believe that spending $15,000 on a media center is vulgar, but that spending $15,000 on a slate shower stall is a sign that you are at one with the Zenlike rhythms of nature? Does your newly renovated kitchen look like an aircraft hangar with plumbing? Did you select your new refrigerator on the grounds that mere freezing isn't cold enough? Would you spend a little more for socially conscious toothpaste -- the kind that doesn't actually kill germs, it just asks them to leave? Do you work for one of those hip, visionary software companies where everybody comes to work in hiking boots and glacier glasses, as if a 400-foot wall of ice were about to come sliding through the parking lot? Do you think your educational credentials are just as good as those of the shimmering couples on the New York Times weddings page? If you answered yes to any of those questions, you are probably a member of today's new upper class. Even if you didn't, you'd still better pay attention, because these Bobos define our age. Their hybrid culture is the atmosphere we breathe. Their status codes govern social life, and their moral codes govern ethics and influence our politics. Bobos in Paradise is a witty and serious look at the cultural consequences of the information age and a penetrating description of how we live now."
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Anyway, this really caught my attention. I can't say I know many people in the upper class, but am entrenched in the upper middle class culture of silicon valley.

I started reading the first chapter and the author really seemed to be talking much of the upper middle class as well (kind of blurring the 2, though I personally see a LARGE difference between the 2). The upper middle class are a dime a dozen where I am from. If my spouse worked we'd be upper middle class in a second. For now I feel we kind of are on the verge.

But when I think upper class, I think of maybe one or 2 clients (income $500k - $1 mil). I think of my BIL who reigns from one of the richest families in San Francisco. & they are in a completely different realm. $200k income doesn't buy much here, but you can't argue $1 million income can buy a pretty significant lifestyle. & I really know few in that boat.

Anyway, most of my friends from high school (on the intellectual side) have spent their 20s gathering degrees and traveling the world. I am surprised how firmly they wear this as a badge of honor. & how looked down I often feel upon my own traditional route, marriage, children, accountant.

(In reality my parents weren't going to support me in my 20s or buy me a useless degree, so I had little choice but to be a lot more practical. LOL).

It REALLY cracks me up though because I have friends who work at BIG corporations and make BIG bucks as engineers and such. & yet I get the sense they kind of turn up their nose at me for selling out to the Corporations.

Oh please, I make $50k a year for a small mom and pop outfit helping small mom and pop businesses. (I actually personally have NO interest in big business). & we moved two hours away for a MUCH simpler lifestyle). & yet I get the sense my friends who work for Intel and Google thing I am a corporate sell out. I am always confused how someone with twice the income can look down upon me being such a money grubber. LOL.

{I do make more money now, but this is exactly where we were at when we moved here, and when I started to notice this divide. I still make less than my big Corporate friends, obviously.}

So when I saw this book description I thought - "Bingo!" I had to read that. I didn't get far into the book before the author started expounding on EXACTLY what I have been thinking. A lot of the big corporations have done a great job appealing to the intellectual/artistic types. & yes, it's cool to villify the lawyers and accountants of the world. The new upper class is filled with engineers and artists. & they look down upon the old paradigm.

So anyway, I think this book looks fascinating and may shed some light on my old experiences. Wish I had seen it sooner...

I'll try to take less offense next time I am called a greedy accountant. My friends will go on about the greedy accountants. But look at me and say, "Well, we didn't mean you." At least I am getting a little more insight where this whole thing comes from. Hard to take it personally when you understand this whole paradigm shift in class.

I just find this stuff interesting, regardless.