Saturday, September 15, 2012
Tennessee: Part 2
Some highlights from Gatlinburg and the cabin:
All 25 of us took a lovely drive around Cade's Cove. E and Little Guy and I also got to explore Arrowmont and have a quick visit with Barbara, a very talented woodworker and close friend of my family.
Monday, September 3, 2012
I Should Be 83
When I got back to work after our trip, there was an email waiting for me that said I was eligible for a free upgrade on my work cell phone. I didn't really care too much, since my work cell gets only sporadic use, and it is, after all, for work, not for fun. So I picked a new phone at random from the list of options available (I'm pretty sure I passed up an iPhone 4 in there, so you can tell how invested I was in this decision), and the next Monday a box arrived at my office. I didn't even bother to open the box until Thursday morning (again, you can see how underwhelmed I was by this opportunity), which turned out to be a bit of a problem, since a coworker's new phone had been shipped along with mine, and he had been thinking for the previous three days that his phone was stolen in the mail.
Oops.
Anyway, when I finally got the new phone unwrapped and charged, this is what I was looking at:
Great, it adds a little flair to my desk. But then I had to actually use it.
I should note here that I love technology. If it does fancy stuff with data, images, etc. I'm all for it. But with telecommunications, I prefer an unplugged approach. I don't need to have constant access to my email, and if I need to call someone, I'm only looking for a phone, not a carnival of apps. (This might be related to why I am not exactly speedy with responding to emails and why this blog is not particularly current most of the time)
So. I have a 100% Old Woman relationship with this phone. I do not like sorting through numerous icons that may or may not have obvious uses. I am cranky that there isn't always a keypad visible and that, when I am using the keypad, I can't feel that I've pressed a button. I can't seem to 'slide' the screen right to unlock it, so I occasionally miss calls and have to call people back (feel free to laugh at me here). And the last straw for an Old Woman: I am totally confident that it is extra, EXTRA unsafe to use a smartphone while driving.
Oops.
Anyway, when I finally got the new phone unwrapped and charged, this is what I was looking at:
Great, it adds a little flair to my desk. But then I had to actually use it.
I should note here that I love technology. If it does fancy stuff with data, images, etc. I'm all for it. But with telecommunications, I prefer an unplugged approach. I don't need to have constant access to my email, and if I need to call someone, I'm only looking for a phone, not a carnival of apps. (This might be related to why I am not exactly speedy with responding to emails and why this blog is not particularly current most of the time)
So. I have a 100% Old Woman relationship with this phone. I do not like sorting through numerous icons that may or may not have obvious uses. I am cranky that there isn't always a keypad visible and that, when I am using the keypad, I can't feel that I've pressed a button. I can't seem to 'slide' the screen right to unlock it, so I occasionally miss calls and have to call people back (feel free to laugh at me here). And the last straw for an Old Woman: I am totally confident that it is extra, EXTRA unsafe to use a smartphone while driving.
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Tennessee: Part 1
It's been crazy hot here this summer, and we aren't fans of using the AC in the car for extended periods of time, so we took advantage of the fact that Little Guy wakes us up a couple of times a night and hit the road by about 5:15 AM. We had planned to drive only halfway - about 5 1/2 hours - so we could be out of the car by the hottest part of the day. To that end, we went online to bid on a hotel and managed to get something that was not only really cheap but also turned out to be a mostly legit establishment, with a couple of notable exceptions:
1) It appeared that a family of ducks had taken up permanent residence in the swimming pool.
2) When I asked the woman at the front desk if the hotel had a gym (as we'd been led to believe by their website), she said, "There's a fitness room on the second floor. It's not the greatest; it's just cardio, but there's a treadmill that works. You'll need this key for it." And she handed me the magnetic tag to activate the treadmill. So I took the key upstairs and found the fitness room, which had 5 cardio machines in it, 3 of which were obviously not working (e.g. control panels ripped off). There were 2 treadmills; I was fooled into thinking that the one with the screen lit up would work. It did not. The second treadmill did, in fact, work when I attached the key, but it was really noisy and thumpy, and the key wouldn't really stay attached by itself, so I had to try to hold it in place while running, which made things really awkward. I didn't last long.
The next day, we drove the rest of the way to Knoxville to stay with E's brother's family for a couple of days. Little Guy met the first of many aunts, uncles, and cousins who continued to arrive for the reunion in bunches over the next couple of days.
My dad also drove down from Richmond to meet Little Guy. During his visit, we did a little hike up Clingman's Dome (we forgot our camera) and had brunch at The French Market in Knoxville, which was delicious.
Then we were off to the cabin in Gatlinburg for the reunion.
1) It appeared that a family of ducks had taken up permanent residence in the swimming pool.
2) When I asked the woman at the front desk if the hotel had a gym (as we'd been led to believe by their website), she said, "There's a fitness room on the second floor. It's not the greatest; it's just cardio, but there's a treadmill that works. You'll need this key for it." And she handed me the magnetic tag to activate the treadmill. So I took the key upstairs and found the fitness room, which had 5 cardio machines in it, 3 of which were obviously not working (e.g. control panels ripped off). There were 2 treadmills; I was fooled into thinking that the one with the screen lit up would work. It did not. The second treadmill did, in fact, work when I attached the key, but it was really noisy and thumpy, and the key wouldn't really stay attached by itself, so I had to try to hold it in place while running, which made things really awkward. I didn't last long.
The next day, we drove the rest of the way to Knoxville to stay with E's brother's family for a couple of days. Little Guy met the first of many aunts, uncles, and cousins who continued to arrive for the reunion in bunches over the next couple of days.
My dad also drove down from Richmond to meet Little Guy. During his visit, we did a little hike up Clingman's Dome (we forgot our camera) and had brunch at The French Market in Knoxville, which was delicious.
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