A Departure...

Hi, please indulge my little departure here - 

So - we all have our little places we blog from.  If you're on a laptop. it could be most anywhere, but if you're "tied down" like me, it's at your desk at your computer.  Mind you - I am not complaining - we just moved into a new home and I have a pretty nice office in which I conduct my side business.  This is also where I dream up and - for lack of better terms - spew out the the thoughts that cross my mind for this little blog.

OK - so it's not in this bad of shape...

Paying for a new home means you don't really have the money for other new things - like furniture!  We have one 20 year old little couch in our huge new living room.  Again - I'm not complaining, - we will buy furninture for the house as we can, and we're very thankful for our home.

... an it's not quite this ugly...

What this is all leading to is that National Business Furniture - whose products I spec in my "real job" as an Architect - is having a new chair giveaway offering to replace the person who enters a picture of their chair that they feel needs to be replaced because it's on its way out.

So - I'm asking that if you are on Facebook to please take a minute and vote for me.  You can click here and it will take you right to a page that shows my chair, tells its story and lets you vote.  You vote by hitting the little "like" word on the bottom of the post. (You may have to "like" the NFB site, too - I've heard)

Anyway - If you can spare a few minutes, I'd sure appreciate it.  The contest ends on the 28th.  Thank you so much!

Wind-up Watches

Did you know that you can still buy a wind-up watch?  I remember when you couldn’t buy anything BUT a wind-up watch.  It’s hard to effectively convey the amount of responsibility that you felt when you got your first watch. 

First off, most of the watches had glass faces.  Not only did this make them susceptible to getting scratched, it could also crack and /or shatter if you weren’t careful.  And being a kid, you had to really be mindful of your arm now that it had a watch on it!

 

Next – you had to wind it!  If you didn’t do this, it stopped running – and it did so by slowing down – so you would unknowingly be late because you forgot to wind your watch. It was VERY important to remember to wind it at least once a day!

Also – they weren’t cheap.  If you got a watch as a gift, it was a gift of substance.

It was Similar to this...

I remember that one of my first watches was a beautiful silver trimmed Timex with a deep burgundy face that made the black hands really pop.  It had a genuine dark leather wristband to boot!  I felt like a million bucks when I wore it and it helped me feel more confident, too.

el-cheap-o!

I had some great watches growing up, but eventually the world advanced and cheap Casio watches with batteries that were small and lasted forever came in mass supply.  And they were digital with LED crystal displays…and black plastic wristbands.  Winding watches was a thing of the past, akin to if you are reading this on an IBM 286 with a 7" amber monitor.

And, I know I said that you can still buy them, but I would guess you have to look for them… does anyone have one?

Did you have a cool wind-up watch growing up?

– or – have you never even heard of such a thing?

– or – the big question – Do you even wear a watch?  They definitely seem to be vanishing from the wrists of our youth now that phones have evolved…

Recess

When I was a kid, just the word evoked excitement – there were so many fun things to do.  If the weather was nice, you got to go outside!  A break from school!  There were rings to ring, rungs to run, slides to slide down and all sorts of bars to clamor over.  There were balls to throw and kick, girls to chase with hair to pull, and painted lines to hop over, serve into and get played out of.  There was grass to run in, sand to dig in and dirt to slide on.  If you were a loner, there were bugs to crawl after, butterflies to try to capture, and clouds to imagine make shapes in.  There were people to watch, shade to sit in and little rocks to kick.  There was a whole world of adventure and it was just outside our classrooms in the schoolyard.

 

Even if the weather was terrible, we still got recess.  Sometimes we got to go to the gym.  There was basketball, foursquare and the dreaded dodge-ball.  There might have been mats with balance beams, and some other things to crawl around on, or there might have been a stage where we could act like we were putting on a show.  Sometimes we stayed in the classroom.  Often the teacher would have planned ahead and we would have a fun activity that involved us all doing something with our hands while imagining with our minds.

 

I don’t have little kids anymore – mine are 20 and 21 now – but I sure hope that the little kids these days have the same opportunities that I had growing up.  I hope they don’t just sit around texting and playing video games on their phones.  It’s one thing to get outside and get some fresh air, but the exercise of the body and the mind are more important.