Keeping Up With The 21st Century (sort of)

I'm getting to the age where I can't keep up with technological advances. My brain is slowing down and technology is advancing exponentially, just like my 10th grade math teacher Mr. Henningsgard told us it would.  I've been thinking about buying a smart phone and I get sweaty palms just by doing some comparison shopping.  I don't even know what's smart about these phones.  And I'll tell you the most embarrassing thing of all...I don't even get what "aps" do. 

And what about music?  I'm not a relic or anything but I actually remember the days of vinyl.  I have a nice little collection of albums stored upright in a cool place so they don't warp.  Oh sure, I went the way of 8-tracks, cassettes, and have even been getting duplicates of my favorite albums on CD because we don't have a turntable hooked up to our stereo system.  But iTunes?  What is that?  And these flippin' iPods?  I admit it's amazing those little, tiny, size-of-a-credit-card music player thingys can store so many songs but I can't get those little buds to stay in my ears. 

Time keeps moving forward and I seem to be lagging further and further behind.  But get this ~ Auntie B (aka Santa) gave a Christmas present to the entire family this year with some of the profits of her business.  It's an amazing piece of technology.  That's right, I took my sweaty little hands and marched into a store and asked, "do you have one of those machines that will magically turn my record albums into CDs?"  The guys said, "why yes, step right this way."  And so I did.

Installing, connecting, and getting my head around the whole thing took a while, but guess what?  I figured it out!  And now the magic begins. 

The '70s and '80s live again!

But this magical music machine isn't just for me.  One person who's really excited about this is my mom.  I've already begun transferring her old 45s to digital.  (If you're too young to know what a 45 is, well this entire post probably doesn't interest or excite you in the least.  A 45 is a little record that has one song on each side of it and is played at 45 revolutions a minute on a record player.) 

She's got quite a variety and she's indicated which ones she really wants like To Each His Own, Moonlight In Vermont and Unforgettable ~ she was such a romantic!  Even though she's flagged her absolute favorites, I think I'll transfer them all just for fun and because, as amazing and shocking as it seems, I can.  I feel like such a Techno Queen!

So today I'm recommending, if you love your old record albums, that you get one of these contraptions.  It will pay for itself with the transfer of about eleven albums, and the nostalgia it stirs up is priceless.