ZimWex Family Blog

A new idea.

So, over the weekend, I put this as an autoreply on my email:

I am trying(!) not to check my emails on Sundays.  If you need to reach me tonight or tomorrow during the day, call me at home! Otherwise, I will get back to you on Sunday evening or Monday morning...Amy

And, this on my facebook:

will now try not to check fb for 24 hours. See you tomorrow night!

I am happy to report that....

it worked.

I didn't MISS anything significant.  While I might wonder whether or not Kathy will end up making that hamentashen, and I might be simply BOWLED OVER by the amount of people who were excited to watch Downton* Abbey last night, and, SURPRISE!** Kristy McNichol came out, all of those fb revelations were able to wait until the next evening.  

As for email, besides a significant amount of Girl Scout Cookie orders***, there wasn't too much that was too urgent.

So, for one brief day, I seemed not to be a slave to the iphone, ipad, laptop combo...

I only cheated once, when I needed the phone number of a restaurant.  Which is MUCH harder to get from the phonebook and seems sort of silly.  Nonetheless, I was attempting to be "pure" in this technology holiday, so I grabbed a phone book.  It was the yellow pages.**** Only when I didn't find a number there, did I decide to bend my own rules and look up the number on the phone, which was significantly easier.  Otherwise, the phone stayed either at home, or unchecked in my bag. 

So, as of now, it looks like the self-deprivation will continue next week...Stay tuned.

AZ

*V. confusing spelling. 

**sarcasm. Sometimes hard to show in writing. I don't typically favor all caps and an exclamation point to make sarcastic points.  For some reason, in this case it just felt right.

***future post will expand on this..

****I have never really understood how to find restaurants in the yellow pages.  Too confusing.

I miss talking to taxi drivers.

I didn't realize it until yesterday, but I do.

What with the cellphone (on both ends), the pda, and, most importantly, TAXI TV*, what was once common place, idle chatter with the taxi driver, has become almost non-existent.

Now don't get me wrong.  Conversations with the taxi driver can be alternately:

 annoying (the pushy conversation when you are obviously not interested)

confusing (often though not always due to a language barrier)

irritating(the defensive driver who is either a. convinced that your address does not exist, or b. indignant that you would think you needed to give him/her directions)

socially awkward (as when being asked consistently about your husband from driver who does not seem like he would be too down with same sex marriage) 

Everyonce in a while, however, they are genuinely interesting, uplifting, or comical.

Today I had the nicest driver who I just happened to ask how he was doing.

We started a conversation on Ghana (where he is from) and his life in New York.  Nothing revelatory, but one of these nice talks where you talk to someone from a different background and learn a little something.

And so I wonder, how do you all feel?  Do you miss the conversation? Or are you glad to be done with it?

Also, who else are we missing out on talking to now that we spend all our times looking at those little screens?  

AZ

* don't get me started on the non-PG content that appears regularly on Taxi TV, with which my children are of course, obsessed!

Do I have time to blog?

The answer is of course, no, I don't.

But I like doing it.

And I usually blow off something else that I "should" be doing in order to write.

But this week I am kind of having a problem.

That problem lies in a new piece of software, with which I am particularly obsessed.   Now most of you know that I am never really obsessed with software.   And, yes, this beautiful piece of software comes to me from, who else, my lovely wife.  

But I am obsessed with list-making.  As a Virgo to the core, I am unable to make it through the day without a good list.  Lately, however, I have found list-making a little more frustrating.  As I no longer carry around quite so much paper, I have taken to making lists on my iPhone in the "notes" section.  This is not especially gratifying, as when you complete a task, you cannot cross it out or check it off.  You can merely delete it, which is not nearly as satisfying.

Which is why I am so pleased to present...drum roll please....

THINGS!!!!

A fabulous software program for list-making, which lets you organize by project, put in timelines, syncs to your PDA, and most importantly, check things off!  It has really revolutionized my own organization*.

You must check it out. Unless you have a PC.  In which case, you should really have a talk with T.  But I bet they have Things for PC, though I don't know.  If you do check it out, be sure and tell me what you think.

The only problem is, I now am so aware of the things that I have to do that I have am finding it hard to sit down and write.  I am so obsessed with checking things off that I can't really do anything else.  Which I'm not sure is all that good for me.  But those checkmarks....

AZ

*which was pretty darn good to begin with.

Something I don't understand.

How can people have telephones on in the theater? Huh?

How many times do we have to be told to turn them off?

How many signs need to be hanging on the walls?

And, most importantly, how many phones need to ring in one performance for you to reach into your bag and check that your phone is also off????Hmmmm?

Come on, people.

AZ

ps Joe Turner's Come and Gone was excellent and I will post more on that later..

I was an actress, after all.

Why?

To express myself? To tell stories? No!!

Because I liked to hear the applause, of course.

What am I getting at here?

I would like to hear from y'all.

Some of you don't read all that many other blogs, I know.

Particularly if you don't,  know this:

We bloggers (ha!! very funny) like to have comments.  And you all are not so comment-y.

The blog, as I understand it, is supposed to be a conversation...so lets have it! I know for those of you who get this via email this requires an extra step, and y'all* are busy people.

But...if you feel like commenting, comment!

I welcome it.

AZ

*I have inexplicably developed a Southern accent while writing tonight...

Mommy and Ima, Esq. or DS part III

The contract has been typed.

The money has been withdrawn from Jerry's bank account.

And the DS has been purchased.

Thanks for all of your advice.

I ended up feeling pretty good about the way that we handled it.

Our intentionally-legalistic (It seemed like fun) contract has anticipated most situations, so that we are not caught in a constant can I or can't I use it conversation.

We bought him one game and he bought one for himself.  (also, okay sweet boy, he bought a game that Ella could use when she borrows it, because he knew she was feeling left out....)*

He is pretty excited.  Although his friend who came to visit last week did let me know that it was lame that Jerry has his time limited.  Thanks, friend.

Jerry looked like this this afternoon.

Another milestone.

AZ

*Its good that he has at least one of these moments for every five where he whacks her with a toy sword or otherwise invades her personal space...

cell phone gods.

Though I thought they had left me, it seems they were just teasing.

When I went to the apple store yesterday to try and fix my cell phone, the genius at the genius bar* offered to replace it for me, even though dropping it was obviously my fault.  This is the second time that has happened in five months.  I had the same good luck the first time.

Do you think that apple tells the geniuses that they are supposed to give people free phones when they break, while all the time saying that "they're really not supposed to do this...".  Or do I just look especially helpless, hopeless, or down on my luck?

Whatever it is, I'll take it.

AZ

*how fun would it be to go to a job where you were called a genius?

first, the good news.

We went to a taping of the Colbert Report tonight.  We bought tickets at last year's nursery school auction*.  It was a great date night for T and I, mostly because it was unlike anything else that we usually do.Looks like you can get tickets here  if you don't happen to be going to any nursery school auctions anytime soon.  Whole experience was lots of fun.  Warm-up comic, Q & A with Colbert OUT of character, lots of instructions to laugh and clap VERY loudly**, and then a pretty funny show with Tom Brokaw as one guest, and the editor of the New Republic as the other guest.  We were thoroughly entertained.

And for the bad news?

In my enthusiasm to get a photograph for this very blog (before the show began, as there were no photographs after that), I whipped out my camera a little too quickly and dropped it with gusto*** onto the floor.  Lets be honest, this is not the first time that this has happened. Or even the tenth or the twentieth.  So far I have felt that the cell phone gods have been looking out for me because they don't want me to have to suffer the wrath of an irate wife convinced of her superiority in all technological matters to have to navigate the Genius Bar at the apple store.  Today however, perhaps I had it too good, being at the Colbert Report and all.  So I picked up the phone and it was all white with some weird blue stripes all over it.  I would have taken a picture of it, but.....

So you win some, you lose some.

Wouldn't be the end of the world for me to go a day or two without the iphone. ****

AZ

*a subject which certainly warrants a future posting.

**T at a distinct advantage here.

***first use of word gusto in the Zimwex Family Blog.  But almost certainly not the last.  

****it possibly could be. I don't know. I've never tried it.  By  never I mean since my first iphone purchase last summer.  My memories of life before that day are somewhat hazy.

DS Update.

So if there are DS naysayers out there, none of you came forward.

Only a few of you commented, and you all seemed to think that the DS was less evil then I feared and thought that we should allow Jerry to buy one.

So after a long bout of procrastination, we finally informed Jerry of our decision last night.  He was a little tiny bit excited.

The contract (courtesy our friend Dave's suggestion) is yet to come, but our plan is to work it out this week.

Will share it as soon as we have it!

Thanks, blogosphere.  You really can solve any problem.

Love, 

Me

Advice, please.

Jerry wants a DS. (ie, for those technologically impaired*, a handheld video game device-thingy).

These are the points in his favor. 

1. He has money to buy it (birthday money saved over the years)

2. He says he will use it interchangeably with computer time (ie it will not ADD to time he spends on the computer).

Points against:

1. I hate these kinds of devices

2. Jerry has a hard time turning these kinds of things off when asked......

We are in a bit of a quandary.  I have thought for a while that I didn't want to get something like this**, as it just encouraged more video gaming and less of other things.  On the other hand, if we keep the DS in our possession and only whip it our for cars, planes, and selected times, maybe its not that bad.  And he wants to use his own money.

Any thoughts from the blogosphere?***

AZ

*like me, as you can see from my definition.

**sort of have an inherently negative gut reaction to kids playing it, sort of like my reaction to toddlers on the street with pacifiers.  

**first time I've used that...I like it.