Confessions of a Grandma

Sometimes I laugh at inappropriate things.  Today it was a bomb scare reported in the Burlington Free Press. It seems that some one who works for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services in St. Albans, VT, had a birthday yesterday.  Some thoughtful person sent the birthday boy or girl a greeting card.  Well, you know how fussy the U.S. Postal Service has gotten about size and weight.  The sender put the card in a FedEx documents envelope and blithely sent it off. Packages get x-rayed at this office.   Since the birthday card was one that had recording capability, the x-ray showed wires.  Wires make government workers suspicious of bombs (and wisely so, I'll add).  Alarms went off, emergency agencies were alerted, the building was evacuated, and workers were sent home for the day. A bomb disposal robot was sent in.  It retrieved the envelope and the crisis was over.  Isn't technology grand?

Is it possible for technology to go too far?? Have you heard about the electronic cigarette?? It looks like a cigarrette. It works on a battery so the end glows just like a lit cigarette. No real smoke, but it produces a mist that simulates smoke and delivers a "safe" (according to the manufacturer) dose of your deadly poisons. Cheaper than real cigarettes. You can use them anywhere, even where smoking is not permitted (it's not burning so no smoke, just mist). So environmentally friendly you can call it green. Not for those under the age of 18...or 21, if that is the legal age of majority. Good grief.

Now that it is getting close to going home time, I'm learning that it is pretty universal that the snow bird wives are going to be making "to do" lists as they travel back north. (So get over it, Mike. It's not a peculiarity of mine alone.) Two years ago I went home and completely reorganized my laundry room and painted the kitchen. Last year, I organized myself a sewing space, put a fence around the front garden, and expanded a garden in the back yard. Mike was recruited to help with the 2009 projects. Now for this year, I'm thinking about some interior painting to the upstairs of our raised ranch house...but really...only in the thinking stage. It might take a year or two to accomplish. The thing is, I can get all these fairly recent home magazines at the Venice library in the Friends of the Library used book store and I do like to watch HGTV (although I think it is no where near as good as it used to be a few years ago, and that's another blog for some day...