ON THE WHOLE I DON’T MIND GOING SHOPPING. I actually like tooling around the supermarket looking at all the things I don’t want. I have a lower level of “like” when it comes to shopping for clothes. Doing that is just a necessary pain in the tookus.
Even farther down on the Krafty Scale of Shopping is going out looking for things about which I am awash in ignorance.
Best Job EverFriday was a rainy day. I played the autoharp, and children sang and danced their hearts out. I love rainy days. I love music. More importantly, children love music. A child came up to me in the middle of the songs and asked, “Jennie, can you play “I Want to Hold Your Hand?”
Did I hear that correctly?
“I Want to Hold Your Hand”, by the Beatles?
Yes, that was exactly the song he wanted to hear.
After I got over my initial shock and excitement, I said, “Better yet, I have the real song, a record album. I’ll bring it in on Monday. And I did. You could have heard a pin drop as I pulled the record out of the album cover with fifteen saucer eyes staring at what was happening. It was wonderful.
This is as good as it gets. I’m giving a child a song he wants to hear. I’m introducing music on a record player. I’m playing some of the best music from my teenage years, and the children love it.
Jennie
I SPENT A HEALTHY PORTION OF YESTERDAY AFTERNOON being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the world of the Best Buy Electronics store.
I bought a new phone and now I am completely out of touch with the rest of the world and poorer by a few million dollars.
It really wasn’t in my plans for the day to be going phone shopping, but my old phone had other ideas. When I say my “Old Phone” I’m not just casually tossing around words. My phone that I had comfortably tucked in my little belt holster was a Samsung 4. That was a “New Phone” back sometime in the Carter Administration or thereabouts. I had that phone a loooong time and it was starting to show its age.
SOME THINGS ARE BETTER LEFT ALONE. That’s another way of saying my personal motto: “Just because you can do it, doesn’t mean that you should.”
Would you pick up a stick of Dynamite with a short lit fuse? You could I suppose, but it wouldn’t be a good idea. Would you go up to every stray dog on the street and try to pet it? You could, but again – not a good idea.
“Oh, look, Harvey, he has foam all around his mouth. He must have been getting a shave.”
Yeah, right.
TELEVISION. IT’S A MIRACLE. IT’S A CURSE. I love it. I hate it. But one thing I don’t do is hook up all of the equipment and cables.
My wife, the lovely and electronically wizardlike, Dawn, does all of that.
That’s OK by me. She is good at it, enjoys deciphering the gobbledegook instructions, and she doesn’t burst into flames like I do in situations like that.
Our Cable TV System – They call themselves “Spectrum” now, which doesn’t mean or accomplish anything other than help people forget that they used to be “Time-Warner,” decided to upgrade their system to “All Digital.” To be honest – I thought they did that several years ago, but what do I know?
I HAVE TO ADMIT IT. I am finding having the “Alexa” technology in the house both helpful and entertaining. It can also be a bit perplexing at times, but we confuse it just as often.
“Alexa” is the attempt to make our home a “Smart Home.” in contrast to what it has always been – a “Smarty Pants House.”
We have that little hockey puck size device hooked up to the Internet so that we can get information by voice command. Quite nifty, but not as simple as it sounds. “Alexa” might be an example of “Artificial Intelligence”, but that doesn’t mean that she is all that smart. It doesn’t take much to stump her.
Down the Hall on Your Left 