Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Welcome Family and Friends, to my Shiny New Blog

Our family consists of me (Grammy); the love of my life for 51 years, husband for 48 (Grampy); 2 daughters (L and R); 2 sons-in-law (B and D); 6 wonderful grandchildren (S, B, R, C, L and A); brothers, in-laws, cousins and 1,000s of ancestors.

I can hear you all (especially you sons-in-law) saying, “Why does the most technically inept woman on the face of the planet want a blog?” Good question. I’m in over my head, I’m sure. But grandson S, my ‘tech guy’ set this up for me, so with his help, I’m going to try.

Photo: Jan 1964. We're 21.

Reverse Family Tradition
In writing for the Internet, I have many great family examples to follow. In fact, it’s a reverse family tradition. Five of my descendants and a son-in-law write and speak actively on the Net.

* One son-in-law’s blog has run for over 3 years. A blog reviewer wrote this about it: Distilled news, funny anecdotes and images, all with an optimistic and practical viewpoint. …enjoy his regular blogging and thoughtful insights. His anecdotes paint a picture that you easily get lost in.

* Daughter R, as part of her job, writes and publishes an on-line and printed newsletter each month.

* Grandson S has several clever, hilarious (just like him) videos on YouTube and an amazing (also like him) blog.

* Granddaughter B has had an intelligent, entertaining (just like she is) podcast for 3 1/2 years.

* Granddaughter C had an endearingly lovely, fun (just like her) 15-episode podcast with her witty Dad 3 years ago.

* Granddaughter L told her Dad that she wants a podcast after her next birthday.

* One son-in-law and the 4 oldest grandchildren Twitter regularly, 3 speak Utterz and one or two of them Twinkle.

I hope I haven’t left anything out. The only lack I see is theirs don’t have corny jokes, but I intend to make up for that!

My Topics
In each blog post I plan to write about some of the following:
Olden Times (Grampy’s stories)
Featured Relative(s) of the Month (birthday celebrants)
Riddle of the Day (for the kid in all of us) Riddle at the top, answer at the bottom.
Here’s today’s: What can run all day and never get tired?
The Wayback Machine (step in and travel back in time)
The Good Old Days (poems, etc) See below for the first.
An Ancestory (an ancestor story)

The Good Old Days
Remember When (author unknown)
The milkman used to go from door to door
And it was just a few cents more than going to the store.
The mailman knew each house by name and where things were sent
There were no loads of mail addressed “to present occupant”.

When the music that you played whenever you wanted jive
Was from a vinyl, big-holed record called a forty-five.
The record player had a post to keep them all in line
Then the records would drop down, playing one at a time.

For 20 cents a gallon you could travel near or far
In fact, across the country in your $2000 car.
Oh, the simple life we lived still seems like so much fun.
How can you explain a game, just kick the can and run?

And boys would put baseball cards in bicycle spokes,
And for a nickel red machines sold little bottled Cokes.
Life then seemed so much easier and slower in some ways,
I love the new technology but miss those good old days.

So time moves on, and so do we, and nothing stays the same
But I sure love to reminisce and walk down Memory Lane.

Riddle answer: water, also a clock (thanks, L!!)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought the answer to the riddle was "a clock"!
I'm looking forward to your wit and wisdom in future blogs...
L
p.s. don't forget who's b-day is this month for the featured relative - yours!

Anonymous said...

Wonderful introduction to a great blog!
I enjoyed the poem that provided a lot of information about 'the Good Old Days' and how things were back then. And of course the riddle was great too!
I'm so excited that you have decided to blog about your experiences in life, and I know I'll enjoy reading every single one to come :)

Anonymous said...

This is so interesting and fun!
Congratulations on your new blog.
Happy Birthday.
Love, anonymous Grampy

D.R. Cootey said...

Great first entry! Looking forward to more.

What on earth am I going to do a podcast about with L? I sort of put her off back when C was doing the podcast with me. I told her she couldn't do one until she was 10. I have only now begun to realize what I have wrought!

D

Anonymous said...

Welcome to the internet! It really can be a lot of fun. I'm looking forward to reading all your future posts. I enjoyed that poem. I loved all the wonderful details that brought it to life. Being from a different generation, here are my "Good Old Days"

Early Saturday mornings spent watching quality cartoons,

Reading the latest Goosebumps book from the school library

Playing M.A.S.H. with all my friends and fighting over who got to marry Daniel Radcliffe

My favorite Tamagotchi collection on the wall. We had over 20

Playing in the giant dandylion field at school and playing 4 Square with a giant red rubber ball that BOUNCED like nobody's business

When Lunchables were the biggest thing ever and I was always jealous of the kids who could afford them.

When Lois and Clark was on and we recorded each episode on VHS

And spending every Saturday afternoon at Hastur Hobbies trading Pokemon cards and competing in card tournaments. :D

I miss the Good Old Days too!

Love,
B