We're a few weeks into summer, and Illinois served us up a few days of ideal weather. Today the blazing blue skies are still here, and with the humidity cranked up to instant-wet-shirt level as normal, it gets me reflecting on the technology that I'm lucky enough to have been born into.
Electricity rather than fire for light and heat.
High-definition television with thousands of entertainment options at the click of a remote control.
Digital thermostat, air-conditioning, and remote control fan for keeping the temperature cool and dry.
Phone to talk or exchange messages with someone almost anywhere in the world instantaneously.
Camera to take photos and videos.
Laptop computer to check the weather, educate myself on any topic, listen to any music, upload and download pictures and videos, manage our finances, track basketball statistics, write business correspondence, develop web sites, and blog the occasional semi-meaningful thought.
Microwave and conventional ovens, refrigerators, washers/dryers.
Then there's non-electronics "technology." Things like modern furniture, cutlery, cars, planes, medicine.
It's such incredibly easy comfort, which was available to no one 100 years ago and still not to billions of people today.
In other news...
I'm glad that our bodies run on water (which is free) and not, say, motor oil (which is not).
Friday's opening night of Aida at Community Players underscored for me the "Community" part of the name. When I got home I counted more than 20 theater friends that had been either on stage, in the background, or in the audience. A caring, creative, talented, energetic bunch.
The Cubs have a better record than 7 other major league baseball teams. That feels like improvement.
The gift of an analytical mind helped me bore through pages of legal documents to help determine how to manage repair costs for our condominium association through a few amendments to the by-laws.
Ken Burns' documentaries are a gift to us all. I've been watching his storytelling of the history of baseball and World War II. I've got my eye on the Civil War one.
My Facebook friends proved once again to be a resourceful think tank for ideas, this time to get our wedding VHS tapes converted to DVD. By the time all was said and done I had about seven different options, from friends I'd met through extremely different walks of life. Which goes to show the blessings of the kind of people I've been brought into contact with through the years.
This week I launched about three hundred basketball shots, rebounded a hundred more, played three hours of flag football, and had no injuries. That's a fortysomething white-collar gold medal right there. Which reminds me to be thankful for stretching, and Aleve.
In three months we'll be off to California to visit Jack and his softball chronicles. So the horizon, though atmospherically hazy this fine morning, has as much brightness as ever.
Cheers!
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