I'm App to Forget

In the seventh hour of my eight-hour work shift today I noticed I wasn't wearing my pedometer.  I uttered a minor expletive and knew I'd forgotten to put it on this morning.  I keep it in my purse and usually I remember much earlier in the day if I have neglected to attach it to myself.  For those who have followed this blog you know I wear the pedometer for my employer's Virgin Health Miles program.  I log my steps and my exercise to encourage fitness.  In addition to better health there are also financial rewards.  At the end of one year in the program we will receive up to $500!  I will need to increase my efforts to get that much but I'm already up to $150. I'm sure I'll make the next level which is $325.  Today's memory lapse is a frustrating little setback.  I've been tempted to attach the pedometer to my two year old grandson to get extra steps but I would never do that.  I'm not a cheater.

We are becoming a people hooked on electronics.  I can't remember the percentage but I read somewhere that a large number of people rarely get three feet of distance between them and their smart phones.  I'd have to say that I'm rarely without mine. My I Phone is critically important  for the urgent trivia question, showing off pictures of my five grandkids, and googling unfamiliar medications or diseases I run across at work. I love Shazam to identify a song I hear when I can't remember the name or the artist.  I also use Shazam to tag good workout songs that I can download from I Tunes. I load all my exercise music onto my phone so I don't need a separate MP3 player.

Of course having a camera phone makes it easy to show everyone on facebook what your dinner at The Cheesecake Factory looks like. I have large boxes of pictures that I never put into any albums.  I don't see that my children will have that problem because we rarely get any hard copies of pictures of their kids.  They just load the photos into an electronic frame or a computer slide show.

I know lots of GPS addicts.  I never get to go far enough from home to get lost though.  I'm a little reluctant when I hear that some people have been misdirected into paths of moving trains with fatal results.  In the NY metropolitan area there are many "parkways" which are roads for cars only.  Rarely does a day go by without a traffic report mentioning a semi that "wandered" onto a parkway and got stuck under a low bridge.  My feeling is that there are two probable reasons for this.  One is drivers who can't read the signs due to illiteracy or non-English comprehension and the other reason is misguided GPS information.  Truck drivers are supposed to use commercial GPS but obviously compliance is not absolute.

Its funny to remember that I used to put dimes into my penny loafers in case I might need one to make a call from a pay phone.

  We used to wait for a week to see photos we'd taken.  Our  rolls of Kodak film had only 12 pictures and we seldom used all twelve shots in a whole day.  We've still got a closet full of vinyl recordings but we haven't played any for years.  I recall traveling with those crazy huge maps that the gas stations used to give away for free. (They were impossible to fold back to the original shape).  How did people get cash before ATM's?  I know I used to write a check at the grocery store and get an extra $5.  The only other way was cash a check at the bank.  When it was open.  Amazing.  Now I rarely even write checks.

Now I've just proved to everyone how old I am.  To my younger readers I should warn you that while I may seem archaic the rapidity of the changing technology means that your kids will be light years ahead of you.  2015 is only three years away.  I need a hover conversion for my DeLorean!

Love to all,
Marlena of Mohegan.