Ode to Technology

Aaron has been in Singapore and Malaysia this past week. He is coming home tonight (yea!). Anyway, he had to wake up for his flight last Monday at 5:30 am. After he left, he didn't turn off the alarm on his alarm clock. Well, he shut if off, but it was still set to go off at 5:30 the next morning - which it did. Now, I've done this before, so I wasn't annoyed. But, it was 5:30 am and since I was not familiar with this clock - which is over on his side of the bed, I couldn't figure out how to turn it off in the dark. So, I unplugged it. This is one of those strange alarm clocks that sets itself. You just plug it in, and away it goes, the numbers running until it magically stops at the correct time. Well, it almost has it's own brain because I was awoken the next morning to beeping at 5:30 am. I guess it has some feature that keeps is going EVEN IF IT IS UNPLUGGED. I manually turned off the alarm and resumed my 7:15 wakeup for the rest of the week.

Then, this morning, I awoke to a frigid house. I went to look at the thermostat. We have a nice programmable one that changes the temperature automatically for different days and times. It was blinking "low batt". Now, this is partially my fault because it has been blinking that intermittently with the regular display for a couple of weeks now. It was one of those things I was going to get to tomorrow. But now, it just said "low batt." I found some batteries, plugged it back in, and found out my house was about 56 degrees. Pretty good considering that it was 18 degrees outside. If the thermostat can't communicate with the furnace, it just doesn't come on.

So, all those things that make our life easier and better - fancy alarm clocks and programmable thermostats, just happened to make my life a little more difficult this week. But, I guess I shouldn't complain. Because technology does make my life easier, in ways that I probably don't even realize.

The Glitch

David has been telling everyone that on Wednesday night, there was going to be a glitch. "A glitch?" I asked wondering what he could be talking about. He gets very excited about what he learns about at school and it was very cute when he explained to me. "Mom, it's when the earth and the sun and the moon are in a PERFECT line, it's very cool". So, I figured out he was talking about an eclipse, but I didn't really believe him that it was going to happen on Wednesday night. Sometimes he will learn about something at school and slightly misunderstand it. A few weeks ago he told me a teacher at his school was on the show "The Biggest Loser". I was a little puzzled because I watch the show and there was no one from Omaha. Then Rachel told me that the teachers at their school were having their own "Biggest loser" type competition. So, I just thought they were having a unit on astronomy and they learned what an eclipse was and therefore, he thought it was happening that night. I hadn't heard anything on the news or the radio and I figured he was just getting overly excited about something he heard about at school. On Wednesday night I had to go to a meeting. Aaron is out of town, so when I picked up the babysitter, David told her about the glitch as well. I told her he was talking about an eclipse, but there wasn't really going to be one tonight. When I was at my meeting, someone started talking about the eclipse, and we all went outside and looked at it. I felt a little bad that I didn't believe my 7 year old. I called home and they all went up to Rachel's east facing bedroom and saw the eclipse. It actually takes about an hour for it to be complete. I'm so glad that he didn't miss it. He was so excited. I'm glad because I know he is retaining things that he learns at school.

Wind Chilled

I think that we can consider ourselves true Nebraskans now. Today school was canceled because it was too cold. Unfortunately, I didn't get the memo and I bundled all my kids in the car only to find the school parking lot empty. I guess I just didn't think to check the news for school closings because of cold temperatures. It was very cold. That weather forecast isn't even accurate - it was -7 this morning with wind chills of 20 to 30 below. I can't wait until it gets up to 30 degrees at the end of the week. My kids will think that it is already spring! I can't wait for this winter to be over.