High Tech, Low Tech, and On-line Afflictions

Tis the season of Sample Sales, or so it seems when the mailers start arriving announcing this 40% off (but it's in downtown LA) or that 80% off, but not until two weeks from now when I’ve completely forgotten about it and f*#k it anyway, where’s the instant grat? I subscribe to Daily Candy and Top Button, the latter being exclusively an online sample sale site. There is also a mother at my younger daughter’s school whose clothing line I happen to love that has her sample sale around this time too.

It’s taken me a long time to become a savvy shopper when it came to these 'deals’.  I was the sucker that clipped the coupon for something at the market I would normally never eat. I would be under the illusion my family might try the yogurt covered zucchini chips for 50% off. Invariably it would linger past its expiration date and get thrown out. This always jettisoned me into the  ‘I’m gonna be homeless someday, why oh why did I waste my money like that??” fear fantasy.  I would vow never to make that mistake again and I finally learned that the only coupons worth clipping for me are batteries and toothbrushes.  Do I really need that 35¢ off the second four pack of Charmin? Hell no!

My junior year of college I worked as a spy. At the age of 21, I liked to refer to myself as The Youngest Spy in the World. There was no real way of knowing if this was true or not.

There was no Facebook.

This was 1989. Before the Internet. Before hostesses stopped asking “Smoking or non?” and before toothbrushes started looking like sneakers. 

Today, kids probably have more opportunities to become spies at an earlier age because kids now do everything at an earlier age. They go through puberty earlier, they experiment with sex at an earlier age and they probably get hired as secret agents earlier, too. Which means I probably no longer hold the unique distinction as being the guy who was once The Youngest Spy in the World.

Jeff and I go to the gym early every morning. Since it’s still dark out when we leave, it’s been pretty chilly lately. This morning when I turned the key in the ignition, the dashboard starting flashing. It also began to beep—a subtle bing, like the musical “fasten your seatbelt” bing that you hear on airplanes. “Great,” I sighed, “something else is broken.”

Jeff, never one to presume the worst, leaned over, looked intently at the dashboard, and said matter-of-factly, “Nothing’s broken.” “It’s not?” “No. It’s just a snowflake,” he said. “What’s just a snowflake?” I asked. “On the dashboard. Look at the temperature,” he said. It read 39 degrees. And there it was—a cute little snowflake.

Apparently Volkswagen was thoughtful enough to alert its drivers when it’s cold outside. Having driven the car only in Southern California, we had never seen it before. If this keeps up, I’m gonna have to ask my mom to let me borrow some of those gloves and scarves I gave to her when we moved here.

I can’t imagine being separated from my iPhone for even a day. Its intuitive features have become essential to my life.  But, now, with the application “Big Oven” I feel like my favorite room in the house, a kitchen, has been added to my screen. This is the BEST app that iTunes has to offer.  Of course, that is only my opinion.

Big Oven is a FREE app for iPhone users only, don’t ask me why it’s free but it is.

How about a little tour? Big Oven says they have 160,000 recipes and in another place on the site there are 170,000, who knows?  We all know how recipes collect and reproduce. (Unlike Al Gore, you’ll never get to the end!) My favorite feature is a random recipe that comes up and if it doesn’t interest you, you shake your iPhone and another one loads. Heck, I could do that all day and probably for years and never see the same recipe twice. Random recipes like Green Goodess Dressing.  Shake it again and up pops a recipe for Almond-stuffed pork chops and then a quick shake and now a recipe for Peanut Butter Cookies.  How very cool!