Why i think Smart phones are Dumb.

I'm adding louielouie's video: this is my very diverse hometown of Tacoma. And it shows all the famous places in our area, some that are within a mile of where my parents live. Warning: it's a rap, so the F-word is a big part of the chorus and lyrics. But the rap is good. I like the dude's car.

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In the old days you called your friends on the land line, only they weren't called land lines back then, it was 'the phone'. If you were unable to visit them in person, face to face, you dialed them up, they answered and you had a conversation in real time.


It was still communication. Live.

Then the computer came around and we all got email, on our home desktop computers, where we could sit happily with a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, play some music while conversing with our friends in writing. This became the better way of communication because, hey, it was a busy world and this way we were not interrupting whatever fun thing they were doing WITHOUT US and they could get back to us then they had more time.

And if you happened to be a good typist (as i am - 80 wpm) then you could actually make your friends a little crazy with your verbosity and keyboarding skills in an email that goes on and on because it only took you 5 minutes to type while it took them 12 minutes to read. (Which is still not a lot of time actually, when you think of how much time you used to spend actually talking on the phone to a live body.) AND if some time had passed since you last saw them, then you could at least attach a photo of yourself in the email so they remember what you looked like.

So the communication got shorter with email, no matter how fast you typed or how slow a reader they were.

But it was still communication, at least.

THEN came along the Smart Phones. Everyone seems to be getting email and texts on Smart Phones. (Not to mention those damn Tweets).

Everything about communication just now got even shorter and more distant. Not only do we no longer listen to a voice, we have to keep it within a few words.

So i find myself no longer emailing as much these days. It is not because i don't have things to tell you or want to tell you or that i don't want to stay in touch. It's because what i have to say is not conducive to SmartPhones and people on the run.

I believe technology is hurting relationships. There is a certain irony in today's Facebook World that we can have hundreds of 'friends' we never see or talk to, but that's a whole 'nother post.

Metoprolol Musings.

Menu of the Day:

iTunes: Berry's Dream by The Old Silver Band. (Also my most recent purchase)

Drinking: Fresca and orange juice.

Book: Bad Girls. louie, did you give me this book to read about a woman in prison because she killed her kids? I just finished it. Weird.

Photo: Today we office girls went to the union headquarters for Toni's last day to have cake with the other staff. On the way i saw this truck.(I wasn't driving.) It cracked me up because I always say Toni taught me to cuss. I sent it to her in an email.

What i am procrastinating about: Rehearsing my speech for Saturday. I need to figure out how long it is.

The worst thing that happened. Toni's last day in the office was yesterday. It was a sad and emotional day for all of us.

Video: In honor of Father's Day - a really cool Jackie Greene song.

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1. I like this beta blocker for making me very calm. It will help on Saturday. I was 'practicing' today to make sure it's not too much and it isn't.

2. It's not as much fun as Xanax, though. I really wish that stuff was a vitamin.

3. I am pretty sure i bought too much wine for this party on Saturday. I figured 3 glasses per person and did the math from there.

4. My new favorite cd: John Butler Trio's new one. (Thank you, eque. I just love it!)

5. I have this habit of when i get something new i wear it out. Like a new blouse, or new shoes, and a new cd, new way of wearing my hair. Then i get sick of it all, the blouse goes to the back of my closet, i get sick of the cd and i can't be bothered with my hair. Are y'all like that?

6. Is it my aspbergers? LOLOLOL....

7. Forget wrinkles, we all expect to get them as we age - I think the worst thing about getting older is eyebrows. Mine make me crazy and they would take up quite a bit of acreage on my face if i didn't tweeze them not once, but twice a day.

8. I don't have a book to read.

9. I should say, i don't have a book i WANT to read. I have books. I just like buying new ones and reading those instead of what is in my stacks.

10. I hate when i don't have a book to read.

11. My husband LOVES to watch Modern Marvels on TV and for some reason this makes me smile.

12. I got nothing else. When blog postings don't move, i like moving the blog. Even if i don't have anything to say.

Menu of the Day, even though i am not even eating dinner.

MENU OF THE DAY:

In my glass: That wonderful Darby blend. Even though this drizzly day means it is truly more of a red wine day. (BY God, i am forcing summer to get here by drinking white wine and wearing open toed shoes, even if it is only 62 degrees!)

Music: I had to make a playlist for Toni's retirement party which i am in charge of and right now it's John Hiatt's Master of Disaster.

What i am procrastinating about: i am the first speech of the night for this party on June 19th. I have been making notes on post-it notes (and sometimes napkins) for MONTHS. (Probably since the holidays). And i finally put them all in one place, rubber-banded them together and now they are lost. I keep thinking they will turn up, but it's been over a week.

Why i am not totally worried: Now that i sorta believe i have some tendencies to Aspbergers (earlier blog post) i think just making the list means i already have a memory for what i have written.

The coolest thing this week: i turned my blog post about the students i tutor into a Letter to the Editor. It wasn't easy making it 250 words but i did it. And they put it up online this afternoon so i think it's printed in the paper tomorrow too. and so far the Comments are good. (Usually the people who post online are assholes and hateful.)

About this Photo: i had no photo for this post so i put this one up. louielouie is a very good seamstress. (Is that not the correct term? Cause it sounds like "stewardess". So maybe "Seam attendant" is what i am looking for? "Seam steward?" Anyway before she took over as Director of Voc Ed (is that your title, louie?) she was a Home and Family Life teacher and we used to get together and sew on Saturdays at each other's house back in the 1980s before our divorces. She made this apron i am modeling and many other things including my favorite pajama bottoms (which have been posted here earlier). Sp when she asked me to email her photos of her work so she could keep a file on them, i had Brian take out the camera so i could pose wearing them. (You Facebookers will know that i added that my pearls are real Mikimotos.)

About those Mikimoto pearls: my first of the two ex-husbands bought those for me in 1983 or so when we had no money but we had a loan to build a house. he used the draw for the house to buy them and the check bounced. I found out they cost over $1000. Which was weird to me that i would own such jewelry because if you added ALL of my clothes in the closet during that time it wouldn't cost that much money. (I was NOT the type to wear expensive pearls, but to this day i love having them even if i don't wear them, because they are an heirloom that i will hand down to my niece Ashely, (Ms. Hippie's sister) who was also my goddaughter and Maid of Honor when i married Brian.

What just occurred to me: Kylee/ms hippie, you have to make sure that Ashley doesn't pawn them. LOL.


Something that made me laugh today: I was at Barnes and Noble at lunch which is near a playground to an elementary school. As i got out of my car there was a huge clap of thunder. and the kids out in the playground all in unison let out this giant high pitched scream.

Another cool thing! My HTML Dreamweaver class was cancelled. So i am now learning Joomla web design and i am loving it. A communications guy yesterday spent the day training me one-on-one yesterday and i think web design is going to be the challenge i have been looking for to keep me interested in my job.

Ok, y'all....what's on YOUR menu?

Today. June 6th.

Today would be Josh's 25th birthday. He is the second son of my brother Troy (who was also a second son) & Brian's younger brother.

Photo: i took this photo in January of 2009. I sent it to him in an email and told him he looked like Jake Gyllenhaal. He was so handsome.

YouTube: For his memorial last Labor Day my Brian and I made a video and it included this song at the very end (along with quotes from Mitch Hedburg and Demetri Martin scrolling through as credits because Josh liked their humor.) I can't hear any of those songs anymore without thinking of Josh. We also included "Above the Bones" by Mishka and Ben Harper's version of "Beautiful Boy". (This Mraz song is the least sad to me.)







I wasn't going to do this, but then i was running and just thinking about him and i felt like i just needed to do something as a tribute, so here it is. i just felt better doing something to honor his birthday.

Here is what i was remembering about him today:

1. When he was a little guy and you went to his house he always wanted to show you his room.

2. He had this turtle that he wanted you to meet when you came over. (I wish i could remember his turtle's name. Maybe his brother remembers, i'll have to ask Brian.) Anyway, i loved how he pronounced 'turtle'. . . He said 'toitle'.

3. He once asked me in his room to show me a video game when he was about 8 years old. In looking around his room i noticed a cd or a video with a Parental Advisory sticker and asked him about it. 'Oh, do your parents know about this?" He answered that it wasn't THAT bad, it just had some bad language. I said to him, "Josh, you wouldn't use bad words would you?" and he gave me that sideways look and kind of squinted his eyes and sheepishly said, "Well .... I do kind of like to say the F-word sometimes, but don't tell my parents." ( I can still see that look he gave me when he told me this.)

4. I loved babysitting him and Kylee the most as little kids because they were so easy and so good-natured. And really beautiful little kids in a way that made people gravitate toward them. Josh was more of a homebody type. He would sit close to you when the other kids were playing. I remember clearly, him watching through the window while his brother and cousins were making a snowman outside. I asked him why he didn't go outside too. He said it was too cold. He was quite content to just watch.

5. My second ex-husband had a full beard that was going gray, and a bit of a pot belly ( he was 11 years older than i was). One Mother's Day (the point to make here is that it wasn't even during the holidays) were were all going out to brunch with my family. Josh was about 3 years old and it was the first time he had met Don. He looked right up at him and asked him in his cute little 3 year old voice: "Are you Santa Claus?".... I howled at this because Don was fairly conceited about his looks and his weight was an issue for him at the time.

6. I have written this story before: Josh didn't like frou frou cheerleadery type of girls. But he did go out with one he said who has always talking on her cell phone and he hated that. He told us that when he picked her up she was already on the phone within minutes. He said as they were driving to where they were going she kept talking on it. Finally during a break in one of her calls he said to her, "That's a pretty cool cell phone, can i see it?" and she handed it over. He snapped it shut and threw it in the back seat of the car. I thought it was such a super cool move.

7. Josh was never much of a drinker. He didn't smoke. And his brother Brian tells me that he never did drugs because Brian made sure of that. Josh was a very level and calm kind of guy. He was the kind of guy you needed around if a party got out of hand or someone was getting too rowdy because he would calmly know how to diffuse what could otherwise be escalated.

8. He wanted to be a Marine for a long time which worried all of us immensely especially after Nine-Eleven. His room was orderly. He and i used to joke about how we like things in straight, like pictures or levelor blinds. He said when he was driving the forklift to arrange cases of Coke or something that he just HAD to make the stacks very even. I totally got it.

9. He loved movies and could recite many lines from them. His cell phone ring tone used to be an Office Space bit. My Brian and Josh used to go to movies often together.

10. When he was about 11 or 12 years old I took Josh and Ashley to Borders once so he could buy a cd. He was trying to choose between Verve Pipe's cd with the song The Freshman which he really liked and a new group called Hansen because he liked the song MMMMBop. We used to laugh about how lame Hansen was as he got older when his taste in music got better.

11. He and his older brother Brian were very close. They didn't fight like many brothers do. They actually looked out for each other and sometimes it would seem to me that Josh was the older brother to Brian. They didn't complain to me about the other as sisters are inclined to do about each other. (Kylee, you know what i mean! LOL.)

12. Josh loved Lost. He and his best friend Brandon and Brandon's girlfriend came over to our house for a spaghetti dinner one night and i loaned them my first boxed season of Lost because they had not seen it. It was a great night and we sat outside on the patio i think until 1 in the morning. (Those kids stay up so late!) I emailed him the next day and said, "tell the truth, i bet you all stayed up til 4 or 5 in the morning watching Lost. He responded that the did exactly that and how did i know that? (I knew because i had done the same thing.)

13. My oldest of the nieces and nephews is my sister's daughter Jessica. She couldn't pronounce my name correctly as a toddler and it came out as "Aunt Joo". The name stuck. But Kylee and Ashley liked feeling older so they never ever called my "Aunt" anything. I was always just "Jo" to them and i like that too. But Josh always called me "Aunt Joo" through his teen years and in his 20's. It cracked me up.

14. One time he sent me an email after i sent him some photos by email of his birthday party. The email said: "Aunt Joo, you take fucking awesome photos." And it made me laugh because maybe "aunt" and "fucking" don't belong in the same email.

But i liked it because it reminded me of how he trusted me at 8 to tell me that he liked saying the F-word. And i never did tell his parents.

15. Josh was so cool. And so handsome, but not in a way that he played it up, which made him even cuter to girls. He was really smart and intuitive, but not in the way you could put on a school test.

16. If you were a mother, you would want your daughter to date him. If you were an employer, you would want to hire him. If you were a Marine platoon leader, you would want him in your charge. If you were a parent, you would want him as your kid. If you were an aunt, you would want him as your kid too.

17. I just wish he knew all that and believed it about himself.

What Makes Sense in the World...

Menu of the Day:

YouTube: This is a deleted scene from Pirate Radio that has one of the funniest and coolest dance scenes (To the tune of Stones' Get off of My Cloud). It's worth watching all the way through. The subject line here comes from this scene.

Music: Chris Pureka, Silo

Book: I just finished Hippie/Kylee's The Kitchen Readings about Hunter S. Thompson. I read it within 24 hours. I loved it. Brian's reading it now. Now i'm reading that Jodi Picoult House Rules book about a kid with Asbergers.

In my glass: Fresca with a splash of cranberry juice.

The best thing that happened: I finally found a makeup foundation that works with my skin. I've been searching since i found out at Christmas that they were discontinuing my Estee Lauder color. I tried their compact creme foundation and i love it alot! Also going to the Mandolin Cafe on Sunday and listening to open mic with Brian, my brothers and Kylee was a best thing. And Lee Dwyze winning American Idol was AOK with me.

What i keep forgetting: I forget.

Quote: What's the point in a secret if you can't tell someone? -- Pirate Radio

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1. These will be fairly short because i am not feeling witty or energetic at all.

2. I think it has something to do with 10 days of rain and clouds in a row. I took 2 hour naps every day of our long weekend.

3. I was going to put away my winter clothes and get out the summer things but i still need my winter things.

4. Who was it that said the coldest winter was the summer they spent in the Pacific Northwest? Or something to that effect. I think it was a famous person.

5. Why do i live here?

6. Don't laugh, but i actually bought another can of paint of paint today. ONLY a quart. Brian and i both decided i need to lighten the color of the one terra cotta-y colored kitchen wall so i'm using the lighter color i have used elsewhere in the kitchen. But i still love the terra cotta color in the halls.

7. You would think i live in a 5,000 sq foot home for all the painting i've been doing. But it's tiny, only 1000 sq feet.

8. I am SHOCKED by Al and Tipper's separation! Shocked i tell you! Who would have thunk the Clintons would stay together and they would break up?

9. I had nothing to do with their split, even though i used to refer myself as the "Gore Whore" back in 2000.

10. If i were going to do a politician, it certainly wouldn't be Al. i think i would pick Rahm Emanuel or Harold Ford Jr., though technically HFJr isn't employed as a politician anymore.

11. I almost can't watch Anderson Cooper in the Gulf anymore. It's sickening to see what is happening to my poor homeborn state of Louisiana.

12. If you were asked the question, What does make sense in the world? How would you respond?