I Need More Practice

My sister and I have a challenge going to write something, every day, for ten minutes. Here's mine from yesterday....

Since I have only ten minutes left in the day, I guess I’ll do my daily ten minutes of writing now.

Last night was the wrong night to have a bad case of insomnia as I had to roll out of bed and get to the church on time this morning to set up audio and video for the closing program of Vacation Bible School. It was also the wrong week for my bad back to flare up but fortunately, I took my daughter with me to help with any heavy lifting and/or fetch me my ice pack, whichever came first. During a break in the action we enjoyed visiting with a young man who had grown up with my daughter in our church and is now a student at Baylor and member of the Baylor Religious Hour Choir. That prompted me to tell him a few of my dad’s favorite stories of his student days at Baylor and impress on him the need to take that little drive from Waco to Belton to meet my father who would be delighted to meet one of the the current generation of Baylor ministerial students and share more memories with him.

The VBS program went off without a hitch. The ibuprofen kicked in about halfway through the morning and exercise seemed to help loosen up my stiff back.

I made it to 5pm before I fizzled, gave up the fight, and took a little nap before supper. That reminded me of the way my mother used to take naps. She’d come in from work and say, “I’m going to just lie down for ten minutes before I start cooking supper.” I used to wonder how much good ten minutes could really do. After all, it usually took me at least a half hour just to fall asleep. But she would fall asleep, sometimes not even disturbed by the phone ringing next to her bed. Then exactly ten minutes later she would emerge, fresh as a daisy, and dive into dinner preparations.

My mother… the original power napper.

Before I got to my power nap today I had edited video of the VBS program so it could be uploaded to youtube later… added a few rows of knots to my current macrame project… did a little computer research during lunch… and scanned an estimate of car repairs to be submitted to the state in hopes they might still decide to help with the costs incurred when one of their highway reflectors took a flying leap into the grill of my husband’s car and traveled through the air conditioner, transmission and oil pan, taking out a tire and popping open the trunk as it exited out the back.

My power nap took an hour. 

That’s almost as much sleep as I got last night. 

I think I need more practice.

New Horizons In Technology

I am nothing if not cutting edge. I come by it honestly, too. When I was a little girl my dad started a new business and turned half of our garage into an office. I'd come in from school and help him sort punch cards for his database of subscribers and operate a mechanical collator to help with his mailings. He had a wonderful gadget for dictating letters that would record his voice to thin plastic disk just like those single 78s you'd get at the record store only a little thinner and kind of floppy.

That was cutting edge in 1965!

I've always been curious about what's new in technology. I'll read up on the latest gadgets and all their features and figure out which ones would be right for me. That way I'll know exactly what to buy when my Publisher's Clearinghouse check comes in.

Hey, it could happen.

My husband and I bought the very first Apple Macintosh computer in 1984 with its whopping 128k of RAM and its single 400k floppy drive. Who needs a hard drive anyway? We had matching Palm IIIe PDAs before most of our friends had anything like that. We could often be seen beaming important contact information or documents back and forth to each other.

That's not to say we've ever made a habit out of buying the first and the best new items on the market. Except for the Macintosh, which we knew would last us for years. And we did, indeed, use it for years, long after upgrades and newer models had passed us by.

Now I've given up the Palm Zire 72 I've been using for years and I'm getting used to the Palm TX that once belonged to my husband (he graduated to an Ipod Touch he got for Christmas). The Palm TX has a faster processor, larger screen, and more memory. One thing I'm really enjoying about it is the portable bluetooth keyboard my husband had for this. Now I can sit in my rocking chair, put my feet up on my footstool and write my blog entries (like this one) much more comfortably than sitting at my desktop computer. It doesn't matter if it's not cutting edge, as long as it gets the job done.


Who knows, maybe I'll be inclined to write more often. I might even get started on one of those books I've still got tucked away in my head....

Hey, it could happen!