Life as a Spectator Sport

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Friday, March 09, 2007

You know you have too many electronic gadgets . . .

When something beeps and you have no earthly idea what it is.

It turned out to be the Nokia phone that I got for Clarence. On this last trip, I had twenty-some inspections in the same area, so we were in the same hotel for three nights. I suggested to him that he could stay in the hotel while I did the inspections, and to my enormous relief, he agreed. But I wanted some way that he could call me if he needed to, without having to make a long distance call from the room. So I got him a prepaid cell phone, and that's what was beeping.

I knew the sound was familiar, but I could not place it for the life of me. Then I realized suddenly why it was familiar--because that's what my old Nokia phone sounded like when the battery was dying. With that recollection, I dug through the stuff we brought back from Norfolk, found Clarence's phone and plugged it in. No more beeps.

It's been a slow week. One big batch of inspections finished and only two other stores to do, one of which I got yesterday. I know what that means: the field offices are concentrating on getting new work ready. March of each year is when a particular type of inspection is done, and I expect they will start spitting those stores out any minute now.

In the meantime, I have time to knit. I was determined to finish something today, and may get the Baby Surprise done by tonight. I have more UFO's right now than ever before. Three socks (that's not including the one I started and frogged). A felted tote, a baby sweater, and a knitted afghan that only needs four more squares to be done. That one was started about fifteen years ago, and disappeared into the huge pile of boxes in storage. A couple of weeks ago, I was looking for something else and happened across it, complete with one square still on the needles, and also--very important--with the instruction book. So pictures of that will turn up here pretty soon. Oh, and there's a half finished crocheted Granny Square afghan, which was supposed to be using up the rest of my small remaining stash of acrylic yarns, but which ended up requiring the purchase of more of the nasty stuff because I was running out of colors.

So it's back to my knitting, and to my slow progress in assembling my spinning wheel. Should have had that done weeks ago, but I keep finding areas of wood that need more finishing. I want this one to be perfect.
posted by Liz @ 3:39 PM     |


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"If you're lucky not to live in the gutters of a slum, but still can't afford to take vacations in the Alps, you're part of that enormous middle class who lives life through the medium of the television, further separated from "real" life by air conditioner, by automobile, by dishwasher, microwave and ice-in-the-door refrigerator, by automatic washer and dryer, and all the other appliances and conveniences that make it possible for America to live life at second hand. I'm not sure why Americans decided that televised drama was better than the real thing, that cardboard microwave food containers were an adequate substitute for real dishes, and their contents for real food, or that cooking, dishwashing and face-to-face conversation wasn't worth the effort and time it required. Someone fed this nation a plastic crate of out-of-season tomatoes and told us it was life and we took them at their word, and we're so much the poorer for it that it's hard to know where to start to list the shortcomings."


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