I've called the diploma frame folks to get my diploma frame redone so that my diploma won't have to hang sideways. Now I've got the bug to get my other two diplomas framed better. Right now they're in cheap Wal-Mart type frames. But that will have to wait for another day. I spend far too much money on non-essentials, but then, it's been mine and the esteemed one's lifestyle. He can't pass up new electronic gizmos and gadgets, and I can't pass up everything else! Were he to live as a bachelor, he'd be in this really bare room with one big comfy chair and a television the size of the refrigerator. He'd have every version of TiVo and DVD recorder and whatever else is in vogue. Currently, he has an MP-3 player hooked up to his car radio (which he had replaced so he could get Satellite radio) so he can listen to books on tape. Everything he touches gets draped with wires. That would be the other decorating motif of his bachelor pad--wires everywhere. He's but one step away from being a Borg.
I, on the other hand, despite this newfound love of blogging, am no big fan of things electronic, especially since my eyes aren't that good and they keep making the damned buttons so tiny. The print that tells me what to do with the buttons is even tinier. Even when I can read it, I don't understand it. What happened to ON and OFF? It takes a minimum of four steps to turn on the television now. We have about six remotes, some of which relate to the television and others that do not. I don't know when to use one rather than another. My favorite television in all the house (we have five televisions, if you don't include the little battery-operated portable that we use when the power goes out) is in my office. It's a tiny little thing with a VCR built in. In another 15 months (as hubby reminds me) it will be obsolete because broadcasts will be in digital rather than analog. Whatever that means.
I have a cell phone that can do any number of things, including take pictures and get directions. Half the time I can't even figure out how to answer calls on it. I don't hear it ring, and then when a message has been left, I have to get hubby to figure out how to listen to the message. It's a good thing I don't have a lover who calls and leaves messages. That could get downright embarrassing. As for texting, I have no clue. I can write a dissertation, but I can't text. Something is wrong with this picture.
Truly I do miss the simpler days of electronics, even if I don't miss having to go outside and turn the television antenna. We had one television (black and white until the mid-60s, when we got a color set). It was connected to our very tall outdoor antenna that was right outside the living room. When the picture was fuzzy on one of the three channels we could get (two channels most of the time, a third occasionally), one of us would run outside and gently, slowly, twist the rusty metal pole that held up a huge array of metal antlers that magically sucked a tv program out of the sky and sent it to our tv. Someone else would stand by the window and yell out progress reports: "Go back the other way a little! That's it! No, you went too far!"
I don't want the house of the future. I don't want to program my lights, heating, cooling, oven, microwave, or dishwasher, all from the convenience of my automobile as I text-message from my cell phone and listen to satellite radio, while my car dashboard sends me cute messages about road conditions. I don't want to read books on my computer, either. Writing them is, however, another matter.
Here's where I stop being such a cave woman. I've tried to go back to handwriting. I kept a journal for years, and I thought I'd always prefer handwriting over typing. But old hands, with arthritic bumps and strains, would rather type. And because I can type relatively fast, I can almost keep up with what I'm thinking. In handwriting, there is this huge gap between thinking the thought and getting it down on paper. I love fountain pens and expensive beautiful paper, and in fact, I have quite a collection of both. They don't get used. My handwriting used to be readable, if not pretty, but now--I can't read it myself once it gets cold.
However--big one--I still have journals I wrote when I was a teenager. How long will these digitized words that I am writing in this moment last? We're told email lasts forever, but then, all of us have been writing along on our computers, only to have some power blip erase it all. If it's still there, it's in hiding, and there is no way we're going to find it without paying some Geek Squad a lot of money to help us.
I really do think I'd prefer a simpler existence. As long as I get to keep my computer and internet access. Dr. S.
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