Yeah, I admit, technology is passing me by. I make an effort to keep up, as witnessed by this effort, but I'm afraid I just don't have it in me. I prefer holding hands, long walks on the beach...screeeech. See there? I dragged the needle across the vinyl of my narrative. But I spelled the sound. It took more or less nine letters. Of the alphabet. You remember the alphabet.  21 consanants, depending on your relationship with 'y',  and five vowels. I'll pass on explaining what vinyl is.

  In a couple weeks I'll be 47 and I'm already a relic. When my youngest employee, a mere 21 years younger than I,  saw my pride-and-joy, my baby, my Consew 206RB-5, he/she was mesmerized by the drama of it all. This old guy cranking out 24 feet of leather 'wristbands' every five minutes or so.  As I spoke with him/her and finished the ends with a thick needle and equally thick thread by hand, without skipping a beat, I became etched in stone. A relic.

  Meanwhile he/she impressed me with the desire to learn.  Paying equal or more attention to this little cell phone looking thing as to the potential employer. Hey, kid! Pay attention! You have to oil the machine here, here, here, here and here every hour or so. Oh, jeez.

  You might think someone who refers to employees as he/she would be pretty hip. Zooming into the 21st century at an ultra-sonic progressive speed. Hardly.

  I'm just barely truckin' along. Get this: I just discovered satellite radio on my laptop last night. No foolin'. How many years have I spent messing around on the internet and I could have had background music the whole time? And here I was going to YouTube to find one song. I knew that my laptop was better than those of the kids on the trains and airplanes by the way they eyeballed it. Yeah, I'm a tool.

  What brought this up was that I was sort of following a non-story, again on the internet, not on a little palm thingymajig, being tweeted about. Senator Lugar giving the tea party heck. All I've seen so far is that people are all a-twitter about it. Like they were with Sherrod. Pardon my skepticism but I think technology may be putting us ahead of reality. Originally I had a 'sometimes' there, but I believe it may be more often than that.

  In the meantime here I sit moving along at about 110 miles an hour somewhere in southern Oregon, listening to the Bee Gees. It's been skipping. Is that the movement, the mountains, or what?

Now here's Dionne Warwick. Must be California.