Cabin rules: No kids allowed. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. Cook one meal for the whole group. And BYOB – plenty of it.

That’s it.

We’ve hit different state parks through the last four years, but this year Andrea found us a private cabin. No neighboring cabins to be seen. And this time: a hot tub.

In the past, we’ve often gone on hikes or just walking about the state park as a group mid-day on Saturday. But not this year. This year our isolation was partially responsible for the sign that graced the front door: “This cabin has been recently visited by Black Bears”. We were asked to follow certain rules pertaining to putting our trash out and to also follow certain safety procedures when walking in the woods.

We sent Sean out the first night with a big bag of trash. For a while we deliberated. Do we keep it all inside until we leave? Is putting the lid on the can enough? Should we maybe wait ‘til daylight and revisit these concerns?

At some point while we were arguing these serious issues, Sean decided he’d had enough discussion and just went out the door. He went about 100 feet to the trash can holding a big bag of bear bait and lived to tell about it.

Later, after much alcohol had mysteriously disappeared, we debated the Un-P.C.ness of calling these majestic creatures “Black Bears”. (One of our group, Keifel, is married to Victoria – it’s a beautiful interracial love story, that certain members of her Southern family think is fine because “He’s not black, he’s Caribbean” Oy.) We thought perhaps our Black Bears were indeed Caribbean Bears, and would prefer to be called such. In the end, we decided that ‘Bear Americans’ was the most P.C. term.

Tara is our resident athlete – she rises with the sun, runs when possible and has energy to burn. So the second night after the dark hit, she put on a coat, grabbed a flashlight and tried (desperately) to find someone to join her for a hike. She made it around to all the others before she tried me . . . I refused, because of the Bear Americans. I said “Tara, I weigh more than you do, and you run faster than me. It’s not happening.”

After another disappointing round of trying to convince anyone to join her, Tara asked me again, too. (Perhaps she hoped we might make poorer decisions as the evening wore on?) At this point, I finally relented. But Tara put the nix on the walk. She didn’t like my stipulations. 1) I got to carry a full bottle of barbecue sauce while we walked. 2) If a bear approached us, I got to squirt the barbecue sauce all over her and run screaming. There was no walk that night.

In the end, the hot tub saw some use (though you would think ten intelligent people would be able to figure out how to get the bubbles on for a second time), some holiday crafts were made, good food was eaten and games were played.

Though we are fans of Balderdash, Phase Ten, Scattergories and the like, one that is particularly fun with this boisterous group is Encore. Even the board on this game looks like it came into style (and went out of it, too) in the eighties. As the name implies, you have to sing (which is why it’s fun when no one can really sing well and there’s alcohol involved.) You get a word on a card, and the two teams face off – one team sings a song with that word in it, and then the other team has 30 seconds to produce a different song with the same word. It goes back and forth until one team can’t do it.

Our word: Shake. We did the usual “shake it up baby, twist and shout” and “shake, shake, shake Sonora” but just before the timer went off my friend Mark (whom I have known since the tenth grade) hopped to his feet and began wailing “My milkshake brings the boys to the yard!”

Yes, I will still be laughing about that one come next October. When I am 90 and don’t recognize my own children, I will still be able to see Mark, jumping around and singing “My milkshake is better than yours, I can teach you, but I have to charge.”

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It’s Arizona that may have the most trouble. No one ever knows which time zone they have an alliance with. On the upside, they don’t have to remember to spring forward or fall back, and never pull themselves out of bed an hour early complaining about farmers. Nor do they get that blissful extra hour of sleep the other 48 enjoy.

Oh wait. Half the time we don’t enjoy it, because we forget about it. We often spend our ‘free’ hour in the fall having shown up for something at the time we thought was ‘on time’. So we waste our hour mad at our friends who stood us up or wondering if no one got the memo . . . only to find out that it was our own fault, and that our hour is gone for another year.

Somewhere there should be a “An Affair to Remember”-esque love story about a couple who agrees to meet, at a certain point and time in mid-November. Only they miss each other, because she realizes it’s Daylight Saving weekend, and he shows up an hour earlier because he forgot to ‘fall back’! Or was the one who set the clock forward the one who’s early?!?!?! It’s just so confusing. That’s why no one has written this epic love tragedy! Who can possibly get it right?

How many of us have called someone in the middle of the night and cringed as we said, “Oh, I thought it was evening there . . . Sorry”? How many of us have screwed up something major because we missed that the time said EST and forgot that doesn’t apply to us. (Thank God for TiVo or when I moved to the central time zone I would have missed my TV shows for probably close to a year. It took forever for me to understand that the advertisement that said “Eight/Seven Central” was talking to me. Because showing up for your eight o’clock show at eight is incredibly painful!)

I once visited my Dad in Eastern and had a handful of online meetings from his house. Some of the meetings were country-wide, and thus originally listed in EST. Some were in Central. I converted them ALL! Ooops. Then when I went back home at the end of the week, I converted them back again . . . That next month was epic. They still talk about it at my office.

I also can never remember if we are in Daylight Saving time or not. And if you have that problem, don’t ask anyone for help – no one else knows either. Some people are convinced they are right and they are NOT! I finally stopped trying to figure it out. It’s easier to just spell out ‘Eastern’ when talking about time than it is to look up whether you are EST or EDT.

And another thing people are wrong about: it’s not the farmers’ fault. Farmers don’t care what time it is. When the sun comes up, the rooster crows. The rooster has no concept of clocks. In fact, roosters in Nashville (the far eastern edge of Central Time) crow nearly an hour earlier than roosters in Fort Stockton, TX (the far western edge of Central Time). In fact, the best reports show that Daylight Saving harms farming more than it helps.

It was put into place in the late 1800s to help reduce the usage of energy, but doesn’t do much of that in this modern time. Also, sunlight adjustment (the real reason behind it) is tied to sporting events (that may or may not need sunlight), evening entertainment, health and CRIME! Though I get the correlation between cover-of-darkness and crime, I just don’t see that extra hour being beneficial. Do criminals say “It finally got dark, but it’s almost nine. It’s just too late to rob anyone tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”? I don’t think so. What I do think, is that crime goes up on those two weekends that are most affected. I think people break up with boyfriends and girlfriends when they get stood up. I think people who have to get out of bed an hour early are grouchier, and they take that yelling from their boss about being late even harder. Yeah, bosses . . . you watch out in the spring. That’s all I’m saying.

Honestly, I fail to understand time zone math. And what’s worse: I fail to understand my failure. I can talk intelligently about axial tilt and eastward rotation. I agree that four time zones in America is better than one time zone without the math. (Think about that for a minute. Yeah.) I can sum infinite terms and find asymptotes. Give me a parabola or a quadratic equation, I’m on. But at this point in my life I’ve given up on the simple 1, 2, 3 addition and subtraction of the time zones.

I’m really sorry I posted this blog so late at night. I thought it was earlier where you are.

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I bet Ke$ha looks beautiful right when she wakes up in the morning.

Can mushrooms get mold? It just doesn’t seem right.

Why don’t Americans understand that every American is an immigrant or the descendant of an immigrant? Even the Native Americans aren’t native (they came across the Bering Strait, remember? That means the immigrated.) I’m not saying there aren’t issues; we clearly need a process that works. But – unless you are a squirrel – just don’t be a jerk about it.

Why does the GRE contain words that the Webster’s Dictionary doesn’t?

Why is the “this semi makes a wide right turn” sign posted on the back right corner of the truck? That’s the spot where you are when it’s too late to do anything about getting out of the way. They’d be better off putting a sign there that said “Sorry Charlie.”

Why does the autocorrect on my phone have the word Klaxons in it? And why, when I type b-e-t-e-r (instead of ‘better’) does it give me this list: Beyer, Veterans, Veterinary, Heterosexual, Heterogenous, Beret. (Better isn’t even an option!)

Why does New Mexico keep posting those pictures of the bear with the arrow through it?

I understand it’s a Native American symbol but it looks like it’s the Native American symbol for ‘Bear with Diarrhea’

Do people not see that it’s oxy moronic to call something ‘The Incredible True Story’? Since ‘Incredible’ means ‘not believable’ . . . and once I even saw a movie advertised as ‘the incredibly true story’.
If we are all so grossed out by sixteen-year-old Courtney Stodden’s marriage to fifty-one-year-old Doug Hutchison, then why is the Edward/Bella (Twilight) romance so dreamy??? Edward is 110. Bella is in high school.

If dogs have such a keen sense of smell, why do they keep sniffing each other’s butts? If I had that great a sense of smell, a butt – particularly a dog butt – is the last thing I’d want to sniff.

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And then, we found SCIENCE!

Electricity became the movement of electrons – which we harnessed, wired and put a dimmer switch on. We realized the stars didn’t work with us at the middle, and it all made a lot more sense if we gave ourselves less importance in the grand scheme of things. We discovered magma and tectonic pressure build-up and virgins everywhere breathed a sigh of relief.

And still we discover more. We can see direct evidence of our postulated atoms. We believe in dark matter. And right now, I’m working on a computer that makes the green DOS prompt of my childhood look like it came from the same time period as the American Settlers. (You have died of dysentery!)

I love reading books with time travel in them. Because they never get it right. If someone today went back in time, he would die a feverish death of some dread disease in his peas porridge. Or else he’d die from his own hand after 9 days of peas porridge. (The rhyme is thought to have originated from people just adding more food to the singular pot that hung over the fire and heating it up each time they wanted it . . . hot.)

If someone from the past came into our world today, it would be similar to watching fainting goats. This person would be so frightened by everything around him, he would pass out at the slightest provocation. Turn on the TV? Out he goes. Pop up the toast? Out again! Wait til the phone rings – it’s funny every time.

If this person could hold it together long enough to stay conscious, he’d think you a witch or a demon. He’d shake his rattlesnake tail at you and demand you ‘Get back, foul beast!’ You could try to win him over with a Pop-tart, but the shiny plastic would clearly be the work of the devil, the sugar would send him into a coma and none of that would matter because he’d pass out when the toaster popped.

And yet, with all of this, as far as we’ve come, and all that we’ve developed, we still have people doing the modern day equivalent of shaking their rattlesnake tail and calling foul.

Why can’t ESP exist? Why can’t prayer harness real power? Why can’t some things be pre-determined? Hello?! That remote control for your TV? Wireless power transfer? The internet? On your cell phone?

Just a hundred years ago, that was all magic. Not science-yet-to-be-discovered, but ‘magic’. All of the science we have today (lighting fires, restarting the human heart, that text message that tells you that you have an email that tells you someone will give you half their Swiss Lotto winnings if you’ll just provide an account number to deposit the money into) was once considered magic. So why can’t the things we don’t understand today go into the ‘possible future science’ category?

I’m not saying it’s all real, nor that we should believe in everything. Sometimes science shows us to be stupid. Yeah, bleeding people when they were sick . . . sorry about that one. Boiling tree bark and drinking the tea was a good one though! The idea of the flat, centrally located earth fell to the wayside, but gravity explained a lot! And so does Relativity . . . and String Theory.

I get that there are a lot of things out there still operating under the people-want-to-believe/snakeoil hypothesis. But if it really isn’t going to work, don’t worry, Penn and Teller will do their best to explain it away. In the meantime open your minds, people!

Oh, gosh. I am going to laugh so hard when we discover that the weather isn’t science based at all. But really the consequences of the whims of a childish deity. That sure would explain a lot.

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If you don’t know it, you are not a member. And if you are a member, you said (or most likely, sang) “What’s your function?”

But there’s a lesser known test for Gen X, and it’s defined by this phrase: “Where’s my flying car?” (and the slightly less common “Where’s my personal jetpack?”)

Cars haven’t taken the quantum leap that was not only predicted but planned for in the 1900s. They not only don’t fly, many use more gas per mile than their counterparts from just twenty years ago. Electric cars were an interesting idea – and I know there’s a whole movie about who killed them. But I think the fact that you couldn’t just ‘fill-up’ was problematic. You had to plug-in (which required finding a station) and wait around. If you had an electric car you couldn’t take long trips (or you could, but they’d be REALLY long, because of the re-charging problem.) Conspiracies aside, I don’t think these cars would have completely caught on. Have you ever forgotten to re-charge your cell phone over night? Yeah, I know. I’m not responsible enough to have an electric car either.

The hybrid car is faring much better – it has the best of both worlds and never has to be plugged in. But scientists pulled them apart and were greatly saddened to find a mere 40%-ish efficiency. If you know anything about engines, then you know that’s crappy. There’s part of me that says, ‘I could have told you that.’ Because Ford is selling hybrids that get up to 22 miles per gallon. Twenty-two miles per gallon! Stop the presses . . . !

Why? Buying a super-gas-guzzler hybrid is like buying a fake fur coat with real fur trim. Or like owning a pro-football team and telling your friends to suit up for a game. If you can afford this car, you can afford to tell people what you really think. That little H on the back of your big, big car isn’t making anyone believe you care about the environment.

Though cars aren’t going to take flight anytime soon (they aren’t even going to be able to achieve Dukes-of-Hazzard-like leaps), they have evolved. And the evolution has come from some pretty unexpected sectors.

It isn’t the car companies or even the scientists that are making the biggest strides in car development, it’s the good-ole-boys and the gang members.

Yeah, have you ever been mud-boggin? For those of you who don’t know about it, you go out into mud bogs (surprise!) in your truck and freewheel around until you get stuck. When you do, you get someone near you to haul you out. That’s it. That’s all there is. But it’s a riot.

Those monster truck rallies have their birthplace in the mud bogs. And it’s the boggers who made all the advancements. They’re the ones who thought to jack up the chassis and put on those tires that were intended for excavation equipment. They added the floodlights to the top (for night-time adventurers) and managed to get a lot of these vehicles declared street-legal.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the gang bangers. These guys added music, hydraulics, and neon. Color changing paint came from this quarter – and is so cool that it has migrated beyond the bouncing car and onto minivans and Volkswagon Beetles.

What’s best about the tricked-out-trend is that it takes a lot of money. So, in order to put the money in the extras, a lot of times these guys start with the cheapest cars they can get. I saw a Toyota del Sol go hopping down the back roads of Las Vegas one night. And, God bless it, it was frog green too. I would have thought that was intentional, but the horn played “La Cucaracha” so I’m not really so sure. The people behind me at the light honked at me to go, but I couldn’t: I was spellbound and sat, stationary, until it hopped out of sight.

On another day, several of us got stuck on the 405 in LA. Next to us was a Hyundai Accent. It had a spoiler on the back (thank God! Because it was clearly in danger of achieving lift-off if not for the downward pressure of that spoiler. (And the fact that it was in LA and likely to never go over forty miles per hour. But whatever.)) The spoiler was a huge whale-tail of a thing too. Honestly, it looked like some giant toddler was going to come stomping down the freeway and pick up this car by the spoiler to carry it back to his toybox.

The spoiler – and the Christmas lights strung inside the car – weren’t all. This car was painted lavender. Sparkly lavender. And, no, it didn’t come that way. The Accent has never come in this shade particular of purple, AND the spoiler was painted to match. This was planned.

I wanted to laugh, but my window was open and the guy driving it looked like he not only had an unregistered gun, but like he would use it if I laughed at his car. I can handle being taken out by a gang member on the LA freeways. But I kept my mouth shut. I can’t die at the hand of man driving a sparkly lavender Accent.

So I popped in my Schoolhouse Rock CD and sang along, thinking of prepositions and personal jetpacks.

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We had several late nights, involving deep discussions and beer. This had been one of those on-again/off-again relationships. Alex definitely gave more than he got. During the long course of the relationship, there had been a handful of low points involving yelling and tears (all on Alex’s part.)

Being a good friend, I had told him repeatedly to give it up. But, like most people, though he said ‘I really should’ he went right back to his old ways. Change is hard. And kudos to Alex for finally calling it off and putting everything in a box to take to Goodwill.

Or so I thought. Just this last Sunday, I caught him on his couch wearing a new San Diego Chargers jersey and yelling at the TV just as loud as always.

I grabbed a beer and joined him, then I said: “Why? Why do you do this? The Titans are better for you and they’re here in town. You can watch live, and don’t have to get non-HD channels and watch after the game is over.” But Alex just kept watching and yelling.

We all have relationships like this in our lives. And a lot of us have them at this time of year. Never mind that what we call ‘football’ not only isn’t ‘football’ to the rest of the world, it’s non-existent. We hoard our time for it, make the players into demi-gods and glare at anyone who dares to suggest otherwise. Welcome to Amer-i-cuh.

It seems this year, we won’t even have Hank Jr. asking us if we are prepped for Monday night. ESPN found his Hitler/Netanyahu comment on Fox News a bit too off-color. Points go to Hank, Jr for polysyllabic words and referencing a non-American political leader. But the pairing with Hitler indicates that Junior doesn’t have a good timeline of history . . . at all . . . nor a concept of tact on a national stage. But I digress.

My favorite option for a replacement of the iconic Monday night songlet is the new version by The Daily Show’s “Amy and Amy P”. With their one guitar and Indigo-Girls-like voices they sing “Are you ready for some football? If not, perhaps we could find a more amenable time.”

Just in case you thought you were ready, you might not be. College football uniforms are a-changing . . . and it is nuts. You may need dark glasses, even in your own home. Oregon led the way – and in my opinion, their unis are kinda cool. I like the black and day-glo . . . especially when compared to some of the other schools.

A handful now have patterns on the sleeves . . . patterns reminiscent of what your parents wore in the seventies when it was cool to smoke a joint and design football uniforms. Oh wait. That was never cool. There’s a clip on Youtube of the Ohio Bobcats checking out their new jerseys. (You know someone is trying to put one over on you when your GM makes a video set to a Johnny Cash song to reveal the new design.) At first you can’t tell if the players like the new threads or are high on cocaine. After a moment, it appears that both things are true. Clearly, the players are indeed high, because – though they like the black color – they have totally missed that the fit makes them look more like strippers than players and the sleeves resemble an M.C. Escher painting. Go, Bobcats!

Another team wore neon pink shoes . . . I can’t remember who the team is, because I couldn’t read the jerseys. I was so distracted by the bright shoes popping around the field. I was ready for some football, but this is . . . like Strawberry Shortcake cartoons on crack. On the upside, the players did seem to show an abundance of what is known in the animal world as ‘confusion camouflage’. Zebras are probably the best example: though the zebra itself can’t hide anywhere, when you get a bunch together (which is how zebras roll), you can’t distinguish where one ends and another begins. This is thought to confuse lions, cheetahs, other African hunters and apparently, college football players.

So on second thought, I’m NOT ready for some football. But I will be. I have to go to the store and replace my beer with hard liquor. Or drugs. Yes, drugs. Back in thirty minutes.

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My kids were hung up on infomercials because they were susceptible – they BELIEVED. “Eggies” started a full bore discussion about how commercials play with your mind. I had to remind my kids that not only was peeling hard boiled eggs not hard, but they actually thought it was fun. Still they begged for infomercial items. So as an experiment we ordered a “Magic Tap” – it’s a push-button spout on top of your milk jug. (No more heavy lifting or spilled milk!)

I made my kids go through the online ordering process with me. I made them click all the buttons and watched their horror as they were offered acne medicines, spot removers, table cloth clips and other useless/unrelated items. We declined a second Magic Tap for just an additional $9.99 and had to confirm the order only knowing that we had ‘standard’ shipping and handling. It wouldn’t say how much that was – which I think is illegal.

The kids were shocked to find that the shipping was $13.95 for the $9.99 item. I wasn’t.

They waited for the magic item to arrive. And waited. And waited. Instead we got a letter that they were out of stock and out of business. I wasn’t disappointed though. It was $23.98 well spent. Lesson learned and all that. My kids now mock infomercials.

Still, there’s more out there. If we look at two ads side by side, we can see the problem.

Let’s first look at the ad for the Kia Soul. In this ad, Giant Hamsters drive a Kia through a desolate wasteland populated by killer robots. Giant Hamsters crank their sound system, everyone starts dancing and is suddenly very happy. Because of the car.

Now, you’re a moron if you think for one second giant hamsters are going to show up and start doing the running man when you buy a Kia Soul. Kia knows this. It’s just kinda funny you know, giant dancing hamsters.

Now let’s contrast. WhoNu is a nu brand of cookie on the market. And they claim to have: as much fiber as a bowl of oatmeal. As much vitamin C as a cup of blueberries. As much Vitamin E as 2 cups of carrot juice. And that aint all. (for a complete list go to their website: http://www.whonucookies.com/Nutrition.aspx) The problem is that the top of that webpage – go look at it! – says “WhoNu? Cookies have:” then it shows pictures of all of these things. There are seven (SEVEN!) healthy, natural, real food items in the pictures of what WhoNu cookies have. It looks like the cookies were made with all these healthy things. The ad insinuates that as well.

Yes, the ad says (like the small words do on the web page) that the cookies “contain as much X (nutrient) as Y (healthy food)” but if you aren’t paying attention it’s easy to get confused, to think that stuff is IN your cookies. I hate blueberries – if I could get the benefits by eating cookies I would.

But these are no dancing hamsters. These are herrings.

The cookies have as much Vitamin C as blueberries. But blueberries aren’t valued for their vitamin C – really. Think about it – if you wanted vitamin C you’d eat oranges. (blueberries are valued for their wide range of antioxidants, anthocyanins, and low glycemic index.) The cookies also have as much vitamin E as carrot juice. But you eat carrots for the beta carotene (which converts to vitamin A not E!). And if you want Iron (the cookies have as much as spinach) well then . . . Spinach is the great joke of the health food world. It doesn’t have as much iron as was often thought. What it had was a misplaced decimal point.

So even if you caught on wholly that the foods aren’t in the cookies, you probably missed that the vitamin comparisons aren’t as good as they look. (some of these are akin to saying “As much Vitamin B as a can of coke!”). So do some digging. Compare the nutrition labels between these and real oreos. Yes, there are 2 more grams of fiber and more vitamins, but remember vitamins aren’t anywhere near as useful when not consumed with the foods that contain them naturally. The fat and calories are identical per serving. But get this – a serving of WhoNu cookies is 3 cookies. A serving of Oreos appears to be about 3.5 cookies. So PER COOKIE Oreos have slightly fewer calories and fat grams. (Now the oreos are slightly lighter (~9.5 grams/cookie) than a WhoNu (~12g/cookie) but you count by cookie and you enjoy by cookie.

I swear to you, I’m fed up with slick advertising that gets around the clause that you can’t legally lie about food with some crafty sleight of hand. In fact, I’m buying the next cookie that someone advertises with dancing hamsters! Wait, there’s a knock at my door! There are elves that came out of that creepy tree and they want me to buy cookies from them. Wait up elves! I’m coming!

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Here, the previous owners were meticulous. They left us a contact list with all the services they used – plumbers, animal control, handymen, you name it. They showed us a stack of operator manuals for every major appliance in the house and a few minor ones (the ceiling fans?) There were two rolls of spare carpeting in the garage, along with the (usual?) collection of plywood and such. They even left samples of the countertops with stickers from the manufacturer and the installer on the back!

But best of all, in the front hall closet was a stack of paint cans. Though unlabeled, they had the usual paint smudges on the lids. I was ecstatic! All of these things were found or pointed out to us after we bought the house. Who could ask for a more organized hand off???

All was well except for the wallpaper. And there was some serious bad juju with the wallpaper. Think floral with bright colors. And then add some floral. Wait, there aren’t any stripes . . . we can have floral stripes. Just to clarify, every time we peeled wallpaper we found we were not so much removing as excavating. In one spot we found four different layers each telling a tale of an era gone by and each more hideous than the layer on top.

Later, when I was putting together my office (in which I am now working), I realized that I was in dire need of shelves. I’m one of those people who just has stuff. Lots of different piles of papers, etc. I’m not a pack rat, but I think I qualify as a pack mouse. Shelves were a necessity. So my father and I – who like to spend a weekend and build something – made shelves. We used molding as a support, and then my father left town, leaving me to paint the molding to match the walls and therefore show off the lovely stain on the shelves.

I marched to the front hallway. As we did our own work on the house we were adding our own cans of paint to the collection. I sorted though a few and realized right away that we didn’t need that lime green anymore. It had been in the room with the cranberry colored carpet . . . and it was thankfully all gone. My office was already a simple, pleasing shade of Ecru. (If you don’t know Ecru, think beige.) And it will likely remain Ecru for a while as there are still a good handful of non-pleasing walls in this house.

I found my beige, shook the can til my arms hurt, and began painting.

Right away, I saw that it wasn’t the right shade. There are two kinds of walls that the previous owners left us: Wallpapered and Ecru. Apparently, there was more than one Ecru.

So I did what any sane person would do and went back to the front closet. I found the other beige, returned to my office, shook the can and painted. Somehow it was the wrong beige again.
Really? There were more than two beiges in my house? I walk around the whole building and honestly, I only see one shade. I guess the lighting is different in each room and so on, but they really all look the same. The shades I had painted on my wall in broad, sure strokes were slightly different.

I raided the closet and found seven paint cans with beige. Seven. I painted test patches on my wall to find the right one. And all seven were different. Luckily, number six matched. Yes, I had to number them to keep track as clearly there were too many to just choose one and wait until it dried.

I found the right Ecru, and my walls are now faultless. (Mind you, I had to repaint the parts I had started with each time I arrogantly pulled out a paint can and thought “It’s beige, where can I go wrong?”) I showed other people the paint cans. A few could look at the smudges on the lid and see the differences, but most couldn’t. I labeled number six as “A.J.’s Office” and the next time I needed an Ecru I left it out of the mix. (Number four did the trick there.)

At some point, on a whim I went through the house and counted the remaining Ecru rooms. There were only four. So why do I have five cans of beige left?

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On the sticker were three words: the title of an old novel I had started writing but never finished. My brain started working. This story had been shelved for later, in favor of a newer, betterer story that I suddenly had to start. But I still remember how it goes. All three books of it! And this story wasn’t anywhere on my current computer.

I knew I was holding in my hand 180 pages of old writing of mine. If you’re a writer you may be able to understand how I got 180 pages in and then abandoned the story. Excited at reading it (and maybe getting a chance to pat myself on the back for how far I had come?) I started looking at my new computer. As you can guess, there was nowhere to put this little 3 ¼” gem I had come across.

As I sat there, sad and lamenting the state of advanced technology, I came across another disk, with another batch of writing on it. Something from late college years. This time, I don’t think it mattered that I couldn’t plug the disk in anywhere; I’m pretty sure this was composed in Word Perfect.

How much of what we love and cherish is bound up as data in formats we can no longer read? My Dad has slides of his years in Korea, and he had to repair the slide projector just to show my kids. (Yes, we got him a slide-to-digital converter one birthday, but it didn’t do the pictures justice.) How many of us have old family movies, wedding videos, birthdays on VHS? Maybe you have some on High-8 or even reel-to-reel . . .

The thing is, it’s all still there. Your mom and dad laughing and happy. You as a wrinkly baby. It’s stuck in a cipher we know but can’t crack. And it only gets worse . . . kids in school are getting typing classes earlier than ever (it’s no longer optional like when some of us were younger!) With the advent of universal typing classes for the kiddies is the loss of cursive. Yes, Generation D will likely not be able to read the letters their grandparents wrote. WWII will be found in textbooks and the neatly folded love notes from back in the glory days of the US Postal Service will be as useless as if they were in Chinese.

Still there are little rays of hope . . . things you may find dusty in the basement next to that old Atari Pong, and if you are lucky you can get it working again. Sometimes, you get luckier.

When we moved into this house five years ago, we liked that the previous owners had kept all the fixtures and hardware up to date. There were gleaming white ovens, beautiful hardwood floors, and newish ceiling fans everywhere. (Their age showed in their taste in wallpapers. Okay, it also showed in the fact that they had a taste for wallpaper.) But in all that nice Corian glory was an anomaly.

A yellowing, under-the-counter radio was mounted in the kitchen. It had a dial knob for stations, a cassette player and was woefully out of date. Since it got morning radio shows, we left it, vowing to get it replaced right along with the wallpaper. But then a funny thing happened. We opened a box that we had hauled from LA and realized that this box had stayed – unopened – in our garage in our previous home for the whole seven years we had lived there.

It was like a strange time capsule. It went even further back than seven years, because it was full of things we had intended to park in the garage. There in the bottom, in the far back corner, was a pile of cassette tapes.

Some were mix tapes of mine from junior high! Some were commercial, some pirated (remember Echo and the Bunnymen?!) and a very few old Maxell Golds that my dad had recorded. One of them is the Beatles’ Abby Road that he put on tape for me as a toddler so I wouldn’t handle his precious record.

Five years later, and that old, yellowed radio is still there. In the cupboard above it is that stack of cassettes, all neatly in their little plastic jewel cases. I listen to all of them – some of them just to wonder what I was thinking when I bought it. But the other night my kids were doing the dishes – poorly – and I went to see why they weren’t getting much done.

Maybe it’s because they were playing one of the old cassettes and dancing around the kitchen. Who would have known that Paradise would be found? And that when it was Wham! would be playing at top volume?

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I LOVE my neighborhood. I picked it, in part for the idyllic scenery it could offer my children. Safe streets, tag at the bus stop, kids on bikes. Only it isn’t quite working out that way.

Half the kids can’t ride bikes! When they should have had tricycles, they had motorized Barbie and Batman cars. One of the older kids has a motorized scooter, and another has a golf cart. Want to know another thing half the kids can’t do? They can’t tie their shoes! Yup, they have Velcro and never had to learn.

When my toy train set broke, we turned it over and looked at the axels. Wooden parts are easy to identify. My kids have GeoTrax, a remote controlled system that – while it IS amazing – is difficult for even me to explain to the kids precisely how it works. This tech-high lifestyle really showed, when a window jammed in our house years ago. My then-two-year-old daughter asked if it needed new batteries. *sigh*

While I was waxing nostalgic for the good old days my aunt called me. I knew it was my aunt because my phone said “Aunt Jenny”. It didn’t even post the number. I don’t know Aunt Jenny’s number. I’m as bad as the kids. If I were lost without my cell phone I could call my house and 2 other people. That’s it. That’s all I know. I know Sis’s cell, but not my brother-in-law’s. I don’t know my FATHER’s cell number. (I DO know his house number, but that’s probably only because it’s the same one I had as a kid.)

So it’s not just the kids, it’s all of us. We’ve all lost skills.

The GPS is killing me. Last year, I taught a course over five days. I drove the same route (designated by GPS) four nights in a row, out and back. On the fifth night, the GPS couldn’t find satellites . . . and I was lost. Before GPS, if I had driven something once, I could do it again. But now, even four nights in a row isn’t enough. Ouch.

If you think I’m bad, I’m concerned about the future of the roadways for a lot of reasons. 1 – the next generation doesn’t look out the windows of their cars. They watch DVDs, TV or play video games in the backseat. When it’s their turn to drive, they will have absolutely no idea where to go. 2 – GPS is making us stupid in more ways than just the loss of navigation skills. It’s only a short time before the companies start selling routes. Yes, McDonalds can buy your drive path. Say there are 2 ways to get somewhere, only 0.5 miles different in length. For a fee, McD’s can route you past their store. Think about it: how would you know? 3 – this new generation is truly Gen D (for digital.) Have you seen what they are driving? (hint: it’s not bikes! Which would be useful and teach about handling and steering!) No, they are driving Tron video game cars and Mario Kart. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them think they get to start over if they wind up in a ditch.

These days, we are surrounded by technology that most of us can’t repair. We get a new cell phone when ours stops working. Most of us can’t cook any more – we eat prepackaged snacks and even meals. We have to go to the gym because we don’t ride bikes any more.

A new friend and I were commenting on the advances in cell phones, particularly the batteries and charging. They charge so much faster than they used to. . . . right? But what I realized was this: how do I know? Just because the phone tells me it’s fully charged and faster, how do I know it isn’t lying? As long as that battery icon shows full green, I’m happy. I have no real way of calculating that my phone is draining in shorter time or not. What a great coup by the phone companies if they couldn’t come up with a faster charging system. Why not just make us think they did?

This is all disturbing. You should really stop reading this on your phone while you let your car parallel park itself and think about what skills you’ve lost. What’s next? You won’t even have to READ this blog. You’ll have it read to you by someone else while you . . . oh . . . wait . . .

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