The Digital Age

This is an iteresting era in which we live. Communications are instant. I carry a cell phone, a blackberry, a laptop and have a gps system for my car. Now I know where I am, where I am going and how to get there. I can conduct business on the way to and fro. I can find the nearest eatery and get a rating on that eatery by googling it on my blackberry. I can IM my husband and the office, and yet I find it hard to get information from people....

I know that sounds crazy. I remember when you had to actually dial the phone. I remember when you either answered the telephone or it rang and rang and rang. I was alive and cognizant before we had tv remotes (though my aunt and uncle had a device that would allow them to stay in bed and turn their tv on and off which was enabled by a cord that ran from the TV to the bedside table). I remember when the 2nd quickest way to contact someone was by sending a letter through the mail. I remember having a pen pal one year who wrote to me on scented stationary. It was always orange scented..smelled sort of like fruity pez. It was an event, when my pen pal Tracey would send me a letter.

I don't know for sure if this blog today is in praise of being digital or a lament of that same fact of life. I love getting email, but there's nothing still that beats a nice note from my grandmother in the mail. I prefer getting a response to a post or an IM conversatioon with a friend, but there are no real nuances in those conversations. If you don't KNOW me, you don't understand how to take what I am typing. I am sad for my children to a degree, because they will NEVER know a time where phones were not portable and mommy didn't get her email in her pocket. My 18 month old answers anything if she hears a phone ring. She'll pick up her banana or her spatula and say "hi?" "heyyyyy" when she thinks a response is warranted.

Oh well. My dad still calls us. I email him and he calls me: "yeah denise, about that email" uh ok. This is an almost 70 year old man who forwards every.single.email he gets that's "jokey" to me, but he can't hit the reply button in hotmail? My brother thinks it's because he can't type. Not so sure here, i think it's because he misses the now-human interaction of the phone.

hang tough my friends...pretty soon we'll have communication implants and we will be able to chat telepathically. God forbid people ever really know what I am thinking.....

Western PA roads

OMG. Travelling for my job, and tonight I was in Western PA. Ultimately travelling back to my hotel at night.

I was using a GPS unit and found myself turned around on a ramp. I followed the directions of the GPS unit and then found myself on a fricking pitch dark gravel road. It was maybe 1.5 lanes total. I couldn't turn around, so i continued forward, all the while scenes from Motel Hell and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the original Tobe Hooper version) run through my mind. I travel this road around for about 4 miles and THANK GOD get onto a paved road and finally to a more or less major road.

Of course there remains over an hour and a half of winding hilly road...road that goes up and down so quickly that sometimes I am afraid that the road ended...ugh

but i arrived safely at my hotel about 3 hours after leaving my last destination. But I did arrive safely and my luggage was here!!! That story's for another time though b/c my bed is calling me :-)

wheeeeee!