Mary Schmich's “Wear Sunscreen”, which turned into an unlikely 90s hit (2019)

From the podcast as well as the reactions here it seems this song/speech touched if not changed a lot of lives for the better. How powerful music and words can be is astounding.

And how wonderful that this song with so much impact has such a history of random events and lucky moments.

Every hotel has mini fridges they can put in your room. These are for people who have medicine that needs to be refrigerated. You can request one of these fridges if your room doesn't have a fridge. I always let them know that I don't need it for medicine and that they can have it back if they need it. I did this every week and only once was a hotel ever out of fridges; never did they request to have it back.

Bring your own router and network cables. Sometimes, I should say often, the wifi signal is weak in your room. If there's an ethernet jack then you can setup your own access point. If you can only get one connection, then the router can help share that connection. A nice router will also have multiple ethernet ports of course, so you can both be wired in when you have important calls, etc.

Bring your own streaming media device. If you like roku, or firetv, or whatever, bring your own and plug it into the hotel TV when you want video entertainment. If you bring your own router it also makes for easy setup on their network. Roku, Amazon, Apple and Google all have models with ethernet support if you want extra stability.

Bring a small toolkit with basic tools and a flashlight. Sometimes your things or the hotel's things are broken and it's so much faster to get up and running with a couple turns of a screwdriver than waiting for a maintenance guy who may never show up.

The flashlight is also very useful if you're renting cars. They're often parked in dark airport garages and it's nice to walk around the car first so you can properly report damage before you take responsibility of the car. Never rent from low priced local car rental agencies, they are known to milk the same damages for money from every customer.

Bring a good bluetooth speaker. If you enjoy music, decent sound is a simple luxury that punches above its weight. In a jam, you can cut a rectangular hole in the bottom of a hotel paper cup to make your phone speaker a little more directional. Having that toolkit is helpful here.

Check the tax laws. If you stay in any one place too long, you'll owe income taxes there. 21 days shouldn't be a problem, but probably good to check.

When I stay at a Hilton, I get points per dollar spent not including taxes. But including hotel restaurants.:

- 10x - base points everyone gets

- 10x - Diamond status for having the Amex Hilton Aspire card

- 14x - every dollar spent at a Hilton including taxes and fees..

So that's 34 points per dollar that I usually would say is worth $0.17 to $0.23 per dollar in points.

Also with Hilton, if you pay for four nights with all points, you get the fifth night free. You also don't pay taxes and fees when you pay with points. We are planning to stay for free at least 40 days next year in various big cities across the US.

You also get 10K points for each 10 days you stay over 30 and an additional 30K points after you stay over 60 days. Hilton is usually running some kind of special. For instance from May through September, you get an additional 20 points per dollar when you stay more than 3 days. That's 54 points per dollar or almost 38 cents per dollar toward future stays.

Airlines aren't nearly as generous - ever.

I travel maybe 6 times a year for business and collect points using "other people's money"

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody%27s_Free_(To_Feel_Go...