The Electronic Age and Being Old

I need to say, first off, some of the words about the amaryllis got covered by the picture. Don't know what happened. Words you missed are not important.

THE ELECTRONIC AGE AND BEING OLD was written by one of my TOPS members. Aretta
puts out a newsletter every month and she wrote an article about electronics. I have paraphrased it and
want to share it with you. Aretta's title was "Trying to Avoid Becoming A Fossil in the Modern World".
(I am putting this article here to follow my ipad entry).

I can remember that I didn't want a microwave. An acquaintance got one and talked about making fudge and cakes and cooking meat (that was grey because micros didn't brown!) and I thought, "No way". I thought it was a foolish appliance and I would never use it. When sis, Joan, and I bought a house together, she had one and I did use it - to warm up my coffee and heat a TV dinner. When we sold the house and I moved into my cozy apartment I HAD to have a microwave. How could I live without it?
I fought owning a cell phone. Sadly, I got one when Joan became sick. Susi got one and we kept in
touch with reports of Joan's illness. I continued to keep it when my car started acting up. I needed to be able to call AAA or Ron, my car man, when the PT Cruiser died out on me. I did not give my cell phone number to anyone but Rebekah. I don't need to be wired to someone 24/7!
I have mastered the computer, do pretty well with it, although I probably use only 10% of what it can do.
The digital camera came along and I love it. If I didn't have my camera, there would be no blog. The blog was created to send pictures to family and friends who are far away.
"Progress" keeps coming at us at an alarming rate and it is hard to keep up with it. These electronic
gadgets I just talked about came slowly, giving me time to learn how to use them. But I am being bombarded with dozens of new things.
Now there is Facebook, Twitter, Skype, blogs (but I have a handle on that one!), texting and sexting.
E-mail is almost a thing of the past as people turn to Facebook to keep in touch. I stay away from Facebook because I don't want to "friend" everybody and his brother.

I want to say this about Facebook. I have a friend who is a teacher. She was out with a group of friends, having dinner @ a restaurant that serves beer and wine. Someone was ready to take a picture
of the people around the table. My friend moved away from the shot because the table was covered with beer bottles and wine glasses. No one was drunk but there were 10 people gathered there and that
could mean 10-15 beer bottles on the table. My friend had heard of a fellow teacher who had been let go from her job because she was in a pic much like the one I've described and her boss thought she was
not "the kind of employee" he wanted. (IF THAT HAD BEEN MY BOSS I WOULD HAVE HAULED HIS ASS INTO COURT!) My friend was afraid the pic taken of her friends would end up on Facebook. Her friend's picture did end up on Facebook and all believed that's where the boss saw it.

But, to go on with Aretta"s article. The most annoying thing about the 21st century is the inconvenient practice of the way business phones are answered. No more secretaries or telephone operators who
connected you immediately. Now, it takes a long time to get past the computer voice that wants to solve your problem by pushing buttons. And, sadly, many voices are so heavily accented I cannot understand what they are saying and have to repeatedly ask them to speak slower and, with my hearing, LOUDER!!! Sometimes, when you finally get through, a recording tells you, "I am away from my desk or am speaking to another customer. Please leave a detailed message and we will get back to you
ASAP". Sometimes you get a call back the next day and..........sometimes you never hear from them.
These'are Aretta's words They are so dear! I don't long for the good old days when things were slower and there were not so many distractions. I realize that those times would not work well in our fast-paced modern world. But I think if the present deluge of scientific gadgets continue at the current rate, I may have overstayed my time and need to
push on. NOTE: Since writing this some months ago, there is now Kindle, Ipod, Ipad, phones that access your e-mail and take pictures. latest information tells us they are not teaching cursive writing
in the schools anymore. I know I must sound Victorian but I still have love letters tied with a ribbon in
my cedar chest. They were written in a beautiful masculine hand. I am glad they were not text messages! Aretta"

Christmas 2012 - Tree and Flowers

 I thought I better get these pictures in here before it was Christmas 2013!!  This is my little Christmas
tree covered with 100 lights. I got the tree from my dear friend, Carol King Stager, in 2009. In 2011
I bought the lights and dear Bill put them on the tree for me. If anyone is interested, I have pictures of Carol's wedding and pics of this tree the first time she was loaded with lights.

This is the amaryllis I bought in November. It is
amazing how fast this thing grew. I swear I could
watch it grow!  The pic above was the first shot, the pic to the left the second shot and the picture below shows her in all her glory.
As you can see in the bottom pic, one stalk is in full bloom with 4 blossoms. To the left is the second stalk coming up fast. There are always four blossoms facing North, South, East and West. The second blossoms bloomed before all of the first blossoms had died. It was a spectacular
Christmas flower.

How $329.00 Became $539.04

This is my new ipad nestled in her pink suede case. Isn't she pretty? Ah, but what it cost me to get it here on my table is a story fraught with anxiety. So here we go with a fraughtful tale. (STEVE AND
REBEKAH: Look it up and expand your vocabulary!)
I had some fun money to spend and decided I would buy an ipad - or is it Ipad?? I asked my friend, Mary Lea to go with me to purchase one. We went to Best Buy and found what I wanted. Here was the first "fraught". The $329.00 ipad was smaller than the one I wanted. I wanted the one that cost
$399.99. Ok, I can deal with that. I'll get the $399.99 model. (Incidentally, it is 9.5"x7.5"). Now we move to cases. I do understand that I want to protect this $400.00 toy so we looked @ cases. Second
"fraught" - the cases range from $30 to $60. Wow!! I hit the middle price. That pretty pink suede cover
cost $49.99. Now I'm up to $449.98. That's still not so much that I wanted to back out. So I said "yes" to the pretty pink suede cover. Third "fraught" - You must buy a screen for the face of the ipad. "You must...." was said by the clerk and seconded by Mary Lea. "The reason for the screen is to protect the
glass of the ipad from scratches". "What would scratch it"?, I asked. "Fingernails and diamonds",

the clerk said. Right then and there I should have showed him this. This is the only ring with a stone in it that I wear. It is a peridot that is set down in a silver setting. Nothing sharp here. And....notice the nails? Cut as short as I can get them and not a bit scratchy! But I wasn't thinking straight so I said,
"Go for it". Guess what it costs. Go ahead, guess! $39.99!!!!! Now my total has risen to $489.97.
Fourth "fraught" - "It is not easy to install this screen so we"ll do it for you", the clerk said. Mary Lea
said it would be VERY hard for me to do it, and like a sheep led to slaughter, I went along with this last
suggestion.
This story does not end here. I paid the bill, noticing the total was $539.04. "Why is this bill so high?"
I asked. "It costs $14.99 to install the screen", said the clerk, with a sheepish look on his face. "Yeah, these screens are hard to get on,  BUT we'll do that for you" is what he had said. No words about the charge to "do it for you". Ok, ok, ok, I let the geek squad do it. But they didn't. While Mary Lea and I killed over 45 minutes waiting for my "screened" ipad, they tried two times to attach a screen only to find both were flawed. I got my money back for the screen and installation and we left.
I went back on Friday and said to another clerk, "Put a screen on my ipad with no flaws in it, do it in 45 minutes or you're getting the ipad, screen and case back!!!" 40 minutes later I got my ipad with a
flawless screen attached. Yay!
I must say my ipad is an expensive toy but, hey, you only live once......what's money for but to spend?......it's only money! How's that for justification?!?
I went to Yarn Envy with my lovely ipad in tow only to find it had to be charged. Duh!! We charged it and my knitting friend, Lynda, started teaching me how to use it. It takes some getting used to because
there is no mouse. You do everything with your fingertip. But....I  can do a lot with my computer so I'll get this ipad going in no time.