CONTEMPORARY GRAMMY?

Hello blog audience and buckle in because this "issue" may be turning into a short story! Not long ago, one of the Elders was told, by her gynecologist of all people, that she and I were very contemporary women because Aunt Cracker was sending me text mails during her office visit. You chuckle to yourself but there are times and places that you need to carry on a private conversation and texting is the least intrusive way to accomplish this long distance.

What was so important that we had to discuss right then and there? We were planning how to play our music on our ipods at our Girl's Night Out/In that evening.

Contemporary, the doc called us and we laughed because here we are all approaching 50 years of age and yet our Elder group gets together every couple of months for a typical jr. high school age slumber party. Maybe not typical, we don't do makeovers or try to sneak out of the house to teepee the neighbor's house; it's usually just long nights of eating, DRINKING, and talking that we don't want to end.

But boy have things changed as we've grown from those jr. high school years. In music, we've went from albums, 45's, 8-tracks ("Eat a Peach" by the Allman Bros was my first 8-track and I literally wore it out), to cassettes. CD's were a big thing and now we have our Ipods and recently purchased little "boom boxes" (for lack of a better word) to play our Ipods anywhere we go. And I've added to my Christmas list some sort of gadget to play my Ipod in the car. I love my Ipod, I can carry most of my music with me at all times; who would have thought this would have been possible!

We started out using landline phones (and remember when the first cordless phones came out? We could even walk outside with them). Then we got "important" and had to have our beepers and now we can't live without our cell phones. Not only do we make calls, we send text messages and some of us have phones with little miniature keyboards to make this task easier. We've gone from VCR's to DVD's and Tivo's and DVD-R's and Blue-Ray (whatever that is) and on and on and on. It's really hard to be Contemporary with all this updating. Some things I just procrastinate on learning, hoping the next phase of technology may be clearer and easier to learn.

And computers....I remember when I received my first computer at work. My boss at the time decided I needed one as other areas in the company we worked for had them. So he ordered me a computer. As the tech was setting it up and I'm asking how to turn it on and off--couldn't think of anything else to actually ask---I HAD NO IDEA HOW IT WORKED and was just totally overwhelmed, my boss is carrying out stacks of paper and folders from his office to mine for me to "put in the computer". Talk about a long, boring weekend reading technical manuals about how a computer worked and all the things that I could do with it! I was in tears most of the time but I learned how it works and here I sit working in a software engineering department. How I've grown!

I literally cannot do without my email (home and work) and we've all learned how to set up accounts in MySpace and Facebook just to keep up with our friends (and stalk the kids!---not strange kids, just ours, we gotta keep up with their lives somehow!) Look at all we've learned!

But how much do we want to know? Believe me, cruising around MySpace, I've seen and read some things that I wished I hadn't but it's like we are all possessed. Not only do we read it all, we want to write it all as well. And here I sit writing a blog for anyone to read.

When I was much younger, I gave my grandma a little book that I bought from a mail order catalog. It gave her topics to write briefly on such as "how did you meet grandpa", "what was school like for you", etc. I treasure that little book but imagine if she could have written a blog where I could have read all sorts of her thoughts and insights like the P's will be able to when they get older. (You know, this stuff out on the internet, stays out there forever!!) But with the way technology is increasing and whipping past us all every single minute, one must wonder, what will be replacing the internet in a few years?!

Something to think about and now it's time for me to do some research on a Kindle Reading machine (to replace books). Imagine!

Contemporary Grammy signing off.