Category Archives: Plinky.com questions

Today’s Plinky.com prompt was, “Remember the days before you got the Internet at home?” Here’s my response and the Flickr.com pic I selected to illustrate it. ;o)

Old computers

Getting to access the world-wide anything was a game changer. I grew up in rural Mississippi in the ’60s and ’70s, with just four channels on TV (two of them “snowy” … and you can tell someone’s age by whether he/she knows what I mean). The TV was supplemented by a set of encyclopedias for researching school projects, a library card, and a mother who was generous at the bookstore and comic book store cash registers. Those were the days when it struck fear into your soul to remember at 5:05 p.m. (after the library had closed) that there was a school project due tomorrow. That’s why Mom bought the Encylopedia Brittanica, which kept “current” by issuing updates in an annual yearbook edition. Fancy!

That was just how things worked. Not everyone had even those limited resources. And I just didn’t know how much more of a world was out there. There was school, church, home, relatives’ houses, and not a lot else. A small but okay world.

The first personal computer in my house was a Tandy my first husband had, which loaded from a cassette tape and had just 16K in memory. My first was a hand-me-down gigantic word processor my father-in-law phased out of his office. It seemed like SUCH an improvement over my typewriter though.

The first real computer that was ALL MINE and new was a Macintosh Plus with the wee little 9-inch screen, and it took me online for the first time. I would spend hours on bulletin boards long after my first child was tucked in for the night. And that was all she wrote; I was hooked. My next was a custom-built PC. I’ve waffled back and forth between the PC and Apple worlds ever since.

Today, I’m totally devoted to the online culture — Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Google Reader, and so much more. They will have to pry my laptop from my liver-spotted arms some day. I just hope my nursing home has WiFi.

Today’s Plinky.com prompt was, “What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?” Here’s my response and the Flickr.com pic I selected to illustrate it. ;o) (Note — these are not his dogtags — just a representational stock image.)

Dog Tags 2

My step-grandfather was a aircraft gunner, and a long time after my mother’s dementia kicked into high gear and she moved into a nursing home, I was cleaning up some papers of hers when I ran across his dog tags. I cherish them. He was a quiet, wiry little man who lived his whole life in humility and service to others. I didn’t really understand or appreciate who he was for many years, but I do now.

Today’s Plinky.com prompt was, “Would you ever consider opening your own restaurant, bar, or cafe?” Here’s my response and the Flickr.com pic I selected to illustrate it. ;o)

cafe alf resco

I’m not particularly enamored of trying to run a pub or eatery because of the headaches involved — management of low-paid staff, spoilage of products, heavy cleaning, stringent work to maintain sanitary requirements, small profit margins, and the relentless schedule of openings, operations, and closings. But If I opened any one of these, it would probably be a cafe with a simple menu of sandwiches, soups, quiches, pastries, coffee, soft drinks and desserts. No alcohol license needed, and a relaxed atmosphere with local art on the wall and regular events like trivia night and music to draw in the locals.

I would shoot to make it something like the Bottletree Bakery in Oxford, Miss., which I loved when I lived there. Another spot of local indy awesomeness is Square Beans in Collierville, Tenn. — great food, savvy social media promotions and nice people. They’d be my heros if I ran a start-up. ;o)