A New Way To Communicate

I'm back, with apologies. For a few weeks I've become what I didn't want to be - a blogger who doesn't blog. I'm trying to do better and I'm starting with something really cool that I've just been learning how to do, and that's talk to people via Skype. What a concept!

It started when my niece was leaving to do her junior year, spring semester in Santiago, Chile. My dad told me that everyone in the family was planning to communicate with her using Skype, which is a free website where you "talk" to each other via the internet, at no charge. That alone is intriguing, but what's really cool is that if both parties have a webcam for their computer, you can see each other onscreen while you talk, just like the old video phones in the Jetsons when I was a little girl. So Friday I went and bought a tiny little webcam and now I'm in business. I've had video chats with my dad and my sister, as well as a voice-only chat with a friend who doesn't have a webcam yet. Down in Santiago, Laura has laryngitis so we haven't talked yet, but we're going to as soon as her voice comes back. I'm also hoping to be able to video-chat with Lorraine in Dubai. We've sure come a long way since the days when I had to have special extra-lightweight stationery and a designated "air mail" stamp to send a letter to my friend who lives in New Zealand.

To update a few previous posts, I'm hanging in there at school, and I even got an A on my first quiz. Last week I was on Spring Break, which for some reason struck me as being pretty funny. The Bachelor controversy appears to have died down, and I'm "sort of" watching Melissa on Dancing With The Stars. Things are quiet with Octomom, although I'm certain there's more trauma and drama to come on that story. We're a couple of weeks into Spring although you wouldn't know it here in Chicagoland. There was snow on the ground yesterday, so much so that they postponed the White Sox home opener until this afternoon. Bummer. I'm ready for a nice 80 degree day, that's for sure.

That's all for now, and I promise it won't be three more weeks before I post again.