Well here I am in my third day of forced hibernation. Don’t know how the bears last as long as they do. Here it is only three days and I’m beginning to go a little stir crazy. I can’t even humor myself on the computer for long because it’s too damn cold. A few minutes down in the cellar office and my fingers start to get numb. A quick check of my email, I answer the important ones, check out the nasties and I’m off for the warmth of my cozy recliner in the family room. I suppose I could back my clean (washed it before all this weather) Enclave out of the garage and venture out. But for what? To slip and slide around the streets doing what? My usual retired activity is an almost daily trip to the grocery store. Why daily? My produce is fresh, the breads are just baked, I get a chance to say hello to all the friends I’ve made and I get a tiny bit of exercise walking around the store. So I sacrifice the trip, keep my car clean and try to figure what to do with another long winter day.
A couple things have saved me from some of the boredom. Without the store trips some food supplies have begun to run low forcing me to be more creative with the daily cooking ritual. That’s been a fun challenge and has helped clean out a great deal of accumulated odd items. Stuff in those Christmas baskets have now been turned into dinner and will not sit in the cabinets gathering dust. I’d like to say that we’ve thinned out the wine supply, but the inventory is too deep. Will have to wait for some company for that chore.
The second thing helping me to maintain sanity has been my new, constant companion, Mr. Kindle. Purchase in late September I have already read thirty five novels. Not little punky skinny ones, regular size and even a few Stephen King whoppers. Amazons computers are so funny. I read a bunch of mysteries written by women, and now every time I log on to them to check out books, ninety percent of their recommendations for me are novels by woman authors. No complaints on my part concerning the suggestions their compute makes for me, but it’s a little creepy. Here’s some electronic device checking out my reading habits and deciding what other books I should read. With the millions of Kindle owners ordering books, what kind of monster computer is making all these choices for us? And they recommend twenty four each time I look at it.
For m, the advances in computerization, communication, internet and all the rest is just mind boggling. I purchased my first computer in the seventies, a giant Burroughs machine with back up and program discs the size of a large Domino Pizza. What a difference. The things kids carry around in their pockets and purses probably have the capacity of a thousand of that first relic I owned. The past thirty years or so have so dramatically changed our world, almost to the point where we feel we could no longer live or function without these new tools or in some cases toys. Unfortunately a lot of negatives have also come along with the good. That’s for a future Blog.
