Life before The Internets
I can imagine years from now when I'm old and grey talking to a group of kids and telling them I remember what it was like before the internet and seeing them stare back at me as with a look of amazement as if I said I walked with the dinosaurs. I was born in 1973 before there was a PC in every home, before Bill Gates had taken over the world, before Google and before the internet. Sure you can argue that there were packet-switching networks around since the 1960's, but the internet we know and love really didn't come into existence until the early 1990's.
I can remember writing school reports using the Encyclopedia Britannica. My mother was duped into buying a set sometime in the 1970's and all of my reports were frozen in time based on the information in those books. Countries had divided, others had formed, but I would write my papers based on the stagnant information from that set of encyclopedias and that was just fine with my teachers since everyone else used the same musty books.
Life went on, I went to college and TCP/IP protocols became a part of my life. Oh I was on the cutting edge; I bought a 9600 baud rate modem and could jump on the internet in 5-10 minutes with my dial-up connection. The sites weren't as advanced as they are today, but that didn't stop me from searching the web using Magellan, Lycos, Infoseek and Web Crawler…remember them? I could search for news about my favorite bands and find out when they were playing in my town.
I remember booking my first travel on the internet. It was great to see all of the options and prices without calling the airline and waiting on hold for an hour. I can recall entering in my contact and credit card information and hoping that it would work. And work it did. Now, buying things online is second nature and there isn't a week that goes by that there isn't a package waiting for me when I get home.
Now, virtually everything I do is via the internet. I wake up in the morning and read the news online, check the weather, listen to music, watch videos, find the recipe for the perfect mojito, read plot theories concerning my favorite show Lost and watch TV shows I forgot to Tivo. Ebay, Wikipedia, My Space, Drudge, Digg and You Tube have become part of my life. While waiting for a conference call to start today someone made a comment about John Candy and I was able to find a soundboard with John Candy clips within seconds and respond in his voice to the delight of everyone waiting in conference call hell.
Sure PerezHilton.com isn't going to change the world, but I can't imagine going back to a time when information was updated on a yearly basis. I like the immediate gratification of looking something up and knowing I was right that New York is the state that has produced the most presidents or that rash looks like poison ivy. Don't believe me…look it up.
Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2008 @ 11:05 PM by Carolyn Norris
NYC Apartment Search
I moved to New York City right after college. I wanted to have the New York City experience and figured it was best to do while I was lean on funds and before I was too complacent in my life to take the challenge.
I moved to New York City as a 21 year old thousandaire. I had a friend who had a place in Alphabet City for $100 a month, so you know it was a swank place. Actually it was a condemned building and with no heat or hot water. The apartment was nine feet wide by twenty feet long. It had a working gas stove that provided the heat and a hot bath was accomplished after heating several pots of boiling water and dumping them into the bathtub which was situated smack in the middle of the room. As bad as the accommodations were my friend said I had to leave because he had a girlfriend who wasn’t cool with the situation.
I went to a cattle call of a waitressing audition and got the gig over 1000 other applicants by being as rude to the owner as he was to me. He asked how long I had been a bleach bottle blond and I responded with probably as long as you have been covering up your grey hair. I was gainfully employed making $200 a day and was able to go in search of an apartment.
In any other city this would have been a day long search, but not New York City. I got the Village Voice and circled everything within a 30 minute radius of Greenwich Village where I worked. The first stop was a great apartment on the water, too bad the guy was a perve. He started out by asking me if it would be OK if he had to come into the bathroom to fetch something while I was taking a shower. The inquisition became distinctly more perverted once I answered yes to the first question. I mouthed the word no to the next girl who was coming to view the apartment after I left.
At the next place the guy didn’t like my karma, but at the third apartment the guy liked my karma well enough to ask me out. The fourth apartment was with a female roommate and I was encouraged until I found out that she dressed up as a heart and gave people hugs for a living.
I finally found a place on McDougal right by NYU. The guy was a little weird, less than 5 feet tall and wanted to be called Eric rather than Paul the name on the lease. He didn’t want me to have any guys over which was fine with me since I didn’t have boyfriend. I moved my stuff in and he wouldn’t let any of my guy friends over the threshold of the door. By no guys over he meant no guys, not even friends…warning bell! He wanted to help me unpack my lingerie and I declined and locked my door before going to bed that night. It was a good thing I did because I saw the knob on my door moving in the middle of the night and when he couldn’t get in the shower in the adjacent bathroom ran all night. I awoke to find a peephole from the bathroom to my bedroom. I was horrified and went to work the next day and told my friend Betts who said I could live with her for the next t week. I enlisted every tall guy I knew to move my stuff out of the apartment to small Paul as I referred to him.
Under the gun to get an apartment in a week I got the Village Voice as soon as it came out. I saw an apartment in the Village a block away form were I worked. The apartment was great and the girl seemed normal. She was an actress who hailed from Texas, when I found out that she went to SMU with a friend of mine, I broke down and told her the sordid story of my search for an apartment. She started crying and told me to move in immediately. We became instant best friends and moved from sublet to sublet together the entire time I lived in NYC.
Posted on Sunday, March 30, 2008 @ 10:11 PM by Carolyn Norris
California Mustang Dreamin'
I remember the first time I saw a Mustang. I was five years old and I
was leaving the doctors office with my mom and a girl in a red
convertible Mustang drove past. Her long blonde hair was blowing in the
breeze, she had a huge smile and music was blasting from the speakers.
She couldn't have been more than 17 or 18 which seemed very old to me at
the time. I thought it was the coolest car I had ever seen and wanted to
be that girl when I grew up.
My first car was the farthest thing from the Mustang. My parents got a good deal on a used Toyota Corolla in brown of all colors. It was slow and boxy and I left some meat in the trunk once by accident and the smell of rotted flesh never left the car. I drove that car until the doors literally fell off.
I moved from one sensible car to another, deviating to a small pickup truck when I bought my first house. It was practical for my seemingly daily trips to Home Depot, but it was not the car of my dreams.
All of my friends at work were pressuring me to get a new car. They were tired of looking like a circus contortion act when they got out of my VW Beetle at lunch. It was a slow day at work this February and I was checking out the Carmax site when I saw "The Car". It was a red 2007 Mustang with only 25 miles on it. It wasn't a convertible, but it was about $10,000 cheaper than the 2008 model with the same mileage. I showed everyone who walked past my desk "The Car". Tim was the voice of reason when he said "why don't you get the damn car". Luckily my boss is a muscle car enthusiast and a member of the lunch contortion act, he agreed with Tim and I left early from work in pursuit of the Mustang.
I pulled the Blue Book value of my VW, went to the Credit Union and secured a loan in record time, drove down to the dealership and yes my car was still available! Unfortunately the car was in Texas and I am in California. The new car anticipation would have to wait until they shipped the car to me. 2 weeks they said, then 3 and finally 4 weeks later I got the call that my car had arrived!
I sped down to the dealership and there it was! The car was red, shiny and mine… at least after an hour of paperwork. I have to make sure I get my car insurance sorted for this jewel, "The Car", which is yet more admin, but I'm checking out the guys from Beat That Quote (love that name) to sort that out.
30 years after I first saw the girl in the red Mustang, I drove home with the windows down, my long blonde hair blowing in the breeze, a huge smile on my face and music blasting from the speakers. Who knows, maybe a young girl saw me and thought I want to be that woman when I grow up.
Posted on Friday, March 21, 2008 @ 7:08 AM by Carolyn Norris
Nothing Lost, Nothing Gained
We’ve all done it, logged onto Classmates.com to see if a former high school sweetheart was registered. For me it was a guy named Jon. He was tall and blonde with beautiful blue eyes and a little gap between his front teeth. He was smart, but a bit of a bad boy, he rode a motorcycle, wore a leather jacket, smoked Kool cigarettes and had the cutest little sway in his back that gave him a bounce in his step like John Travolta.
The first time I went to the site I saw he was listed, but was too chicken to contact him. A few years went by and I received a message from the site that someone had sent me an email, was it Jon? No, it was a friend of mine named Travis who had just sent a note to see how I was doing. I thought what the hell, I’ll just send Jon a message via the site and if he wants to talk to me he will and if he doesn’t then nothing ventured, nothing gained.
I hit send and went to bed, the next day was crazy busy at work and I forgot about sending the message until I received an email back from him saying that he had thought of me a million times over the years. My heart was aflutter! I sent a message back with my cell phone number and he called the same day. I couldn’t believe I was actually talking to him. My heart was pounding; I was at work trying to sound, cool, calm and collected while we discussed what we had both been up to over the years. I had a work call that I had to attend and had to cut the call short.
I sent him an email a few days later and attached a few pictures of myself. A week or so went by and no response. He’s not interested I thought, oh well at least we got to catch up. Then I got an email from him; he was vacationing in Jamaica and didn’t have email access. He sent me pictures of himself and he was still a hottie. His hair was a little darker, but he still had the same cute gapped tooth smile and those beautiful blue eyes.
We started calling and emailing each other on a daily basis and after a few months we decided we had to see each other in person. He had to visit a client in my city and would be in town for a few hours, so we decided to have lunch together. The anticipation was so intense. I opened my front door and saw the most beautiful man in the world. He looked like he had a golden aura surrounding him and he was grinning from ear to ear. He hugged me and kissed me and it was as if no time had transpired. We have been seeing each other for over a year now and my heart still skips a beat every time I see him.
Come on send that message to the person that you’ve thought of over the years. What do you have to lose?
Posted on Tuesday, March 18, 2008 @ 10:13 PM by Carolyn Norris
Reunion
I have a reunion coming up and one of my classmates did a great job of putting a website together. He scanned all of our senior pictures, created a guestbook to pass notes to our fellow classmates; there is a bio section where you can write a brief life description and post before and after photos there is even an in memoriam page dedicated to our fellow school mates that died way too soon. There was also a page labeled help us locate. I scanned the page and notice one of my best friends Lisa C. was on the list. She has an unusual last name so I Googled her and found a metaphysical site with a picture of her on the contact page. I was sure it was her, olive skin, light brown hair and striking blue eyes. I sent the link to a mutual friend for confirmation and he agreed it was her.
I sent an email and received a reply within hours. It was her! I gave her my phone number and we talked for hours, it felt like no time had passed. We were still giggling and talking about boys, who were now men. She was living in Florida and I was going to be there in two weeks, so we decided to have a mini-reunion.
She picked me up at my sister’s house and we drove over to Lance’s house. Lance is a few years older than us and we were all inseparable in high school. Lance decided to have a party in honor of our reunion and invited another friend named Scott from high school to join us. Lance makes Woody Allen look like Buddhist monk. To say that Lance is neurotic is a gross understatement, but that is what we all love about him. The party was throwing him into a tizzy and he was washing the garage floor as we drove up. I don’t even have a garage and if I did I don’t think I would ever wash it, but that’s Lance.
Scott was back in school and had a test the next morning, but drove all the way from Tampa to Naples just to see everyone. We had a great time and after all of the guests had left Lisa, Lance and I stayed up until 6am talking and listening to music.
The next day we went to Marco Island where Lance and Lisa used to live and drove around. Everything had changed so much, even the beach that we used to party at was gone and replaced with a fancy boardwalk. We decided to go to the old Indian burial grounds figuring they couldn’t build a condo there. We were right; it was exactly as we remembered it. We sat on the foundation of the old observation tower and mused about life for a few hours.
Since that time, I’ve connected with other friends from high school. My senior prom date Todd called me. He’s married, has three kids and still lives on the island. JoLynn has lived all over the world and is currently living in Norway doing marine research. We also talked for hours and I can’t wait to see her. I also connected with a friend that didn’t fair as well. Nancy had elective surgery on her back six years ago and has been paralyzed ever since. Ed put out an announcement on the website about her situation and she has been inundated with calls of support from former classmates.
I encourage anyone with an upcoming reunion to create a website. It’s a great way to connect before the event and stay connected long afterward.
Posted on Monday, March 10, 2008 @ 10:04 PM by Carolyn Norris
Maybe Today, Maybe Tomorrow
My friend Jacki is a Brit and she invited 20 of her closest friends from England and the States to join her in a villa in Tuscany to celebrate her 40th birthday. Julie and I flew into Rome together. We had a connecting flight in Paris and we had to sprint to the opposite side of CDG airport to make our flight. We were the only ones on our flight that were fast enough to make the connection, unfortunately our luggage wasn’t. No worries, we met up with Jacki, Gil, Angie and Karen in Rome and were told our luggage would be sent to our hotel. Julie’s suitcase arrived and we went sightseeing at the Coliseum and had diner outside by the Trevi fountain. When I got back to the hotel the luggage still hadn’t arrived and I gave them the address of the villa and we hopped on the train the next morning and took a beautiful ride through the Italian countryside.
The villa was spectacular, a massive stone building on a hilltop surrounded by olive and grape orchards. I chose a room on the second floor that overlooked the pool and had great views of the countryside. The weather was beautiful and I slept with the windows open and had a natural alarm clock of morning doves cooing outside.
Everything was perfect except I still didn’t have my clothes. I’d call Alitalia every day and each day I’d get the same response, maybe today, maybe tomorrow. I was able to wear Jacki’s clothes and decided to go with the Italian flow. Finally on the fourth day I saw a car winding up the hill. My luggage had arrived!
The rest of the group arrived and we lived the Italian lifestyle. Lounging by the pool, sightseeing, drinking wine and having leisurely diners al fresco. All around us were beautiful works of art and architecture. We walked through narrow cobblestone streets that opened up into huge plazas full of people enjoying each others company.
We took daytrips to Florence, Sienna, Pisa and Venice. We toured cathedrals, museums, went for a gondola ride down the Grand Canal, ate gelato and took pictures holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Growing up in the U.S. it was hard to fathom that what we were seeing was real and not a Disney mock up.
On the last night we hired a chef to cook for us in the villa and celebrated Jacki’s birthday with good friends, food and drink. After diner we went outside to enjoy the evening and as if on cue fireworks from the neighboring town lit up the sky. It was as if they had planned it especially for Jacki. What a perfect end to the perfect vacation.
Posted on Friday, March 07, 2008 @ 10:02 PM by Carolyn Norris
Poodlicious
I never thought of myself as a poodle person, until I doggie sat a little poodle named Rusty from Thanksgiving until Christmas a few years ago. Rusty is a toy poodle, which means he is pretty tiny, only about 5 lbs. There are teacup poodles which are even smaller and miniatures that are little larger, plus the standard breed.
I found out that Rusty was 5 pounds of pure personality. Certain words like Rumpelstilskin would make him go nuts, while the word intrigued would make him cock his head and stare into your eyes as if he really was intrigued. I was very sad when I had to give him back after bonding with him for a month. That’s when the idea hit me to get a little poodle of my own.
I searched the internet and found a reputable breeder about an hour and a half away. The next weekend I drove out to her place, just to look around. That’s when I saw him, a tiny little apricot ball of fur. He was the runt of the litter in size, but not personality. He looked like a teeny-tiny Chewbacca from Star Wars and the breeder could tell I was smitten with him. Since he was the runt, she wanted him to stay with her another week and gain a little more weight.
I went back the next week to pick him up and thought it would be nice for him to have a companion while I was away. The breeder had another runt of the litter that was incredibly tiny. He looked like a little white mouse and was the sweetest little dog. He was definitely underweight and needed to stay another 2 weeks with his mother. I took Chewy home and commenced to spoiling him rotten.
I went back in two weeks to pick up the new puppy and could tell something was wrong when I opened the door. The little guy didn’t make it and had died the day before. She said the little puppy that died had a brother and I was apprehensive until she put him in my hand. He was a little cream puff with a white tuft of hair on his head. He was the size of a Twinkie and looked just like one. She was going to keep this little guy for another 2 weeks to make sure he was healthy before I took him home.
When I picked him up she gave me a tube of sucrose paste to feed him in case he didn’t eat enough. I was cleaning out the cupboard the other week and came across the unopened tube and laughed as I threw it away. It’s been five years and I never had to force Twinkie to eat. He is 13 pounds of muscle and a little belly and never misses a meal or treat.
Twinkie and Chewy couldn’t have more different personalities or looks. Chewy is tiny, bossy, looks like a little teddy bear and loves to snuggle. Twinkie is the size of a miniature, timid and loves to play. Twinkie comes in the bathroom with a toy every morning while I dry my hair and we play fetch while Chewy stays snuggled in the blankets.
I am so happy to come home to these two little guys every day and they are just as excited to see me as I am to see them.
Posted on Thursday, March 06, 2008 @ 10:03 PM by Carolyn Norris