25 years of dot com.

Twenty-five years ago today, the first dot-com Internet domain was registered.  It certainly didn't make a ripple in my world; I was probably more concerned about my son's impending graduation.  In fact, the Internet didn't mean a thing to me until 1998, when we bought our first computer.  
I have no idea how the Internet works.  How is it that I can type words onto a computer monitor that, with the touch of a key, are out there at that very second for the whole world to see (OK, 150 people, but who's counting)?  There's no wire transferring the words.  The words are stored somewhere, but how?  Where?  You can't touch them or see them as pages filed in a storage box.  It's all invisible.
It's possible to instant-message somebody on the other side of the world and have a conversation in real time.  Incredible.
We can do a Google search (or in my case, a Swagbucks search) and get information about any subject; of course, we must sort through it all and decide which information is from the proper source.  
When I'm sick, I can hunt up my symptoms and have some idea what might possibly be wrong with me before I head to the doctor.  I've learned, though, to never mention to my doctor that I looked something up on the Internet.  He'll say with a groan, "Oh yes, the INTERNET," as though it's his number one nemesis.    
The World Wide Web will forever be a mystery to me.  More than that, a miracle.  When I was a kid, I remember wishing I could make myself invisible; now I can, because you're reading my thoughts here, but you don't see me, do you?  I'm invisible!  
I'd love to tell you I don't believe in the Internet because, after all, I can't touch it or see it or feel it.  Surely it doesn't exist.  How can it be?  It isn't logical.  Common sense tells me something like this is impossible.  I wonder if anybody has ever published a book explaining why the Internet isn't real.  If such a book existed, I'm sure somebody would buy it and believe it.  I can imagine the slogans they'd come up with:  "The Internet is the Opiate of the People," for example.  
But just like certain other invisible forces in my life, I know the Internet is real because I see the results of its existence every day.  When I speak to it, I get the answers I'm looking for (always making sure the answers are coming from the proper source, of course). 

Who Has Seen the Wind?

Neither I nor you. 

But when the leaves hang trembling,

The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?  

Neither you nor I,  

But when the trees bow down their heads, 

The wind is passing by.

Christina Rossetti

Old diaries

I'm working on starting a private blog where I can vent about a few things that would get me in trouble here; it'll be mainly for some relatives and perhaps a very few longtime AOL friends; it really isn't anything that would interest most of my readers.
I wanted to get a time frame on certain happenings I want to discuss in that blog, and went looking through old diaries; turns out they were no help, since I had stopped journaling before the events for which I was looking occurred.  But I did find some stuff that took me back in time; so I got lost in the eighties for a while.

For several years I would make an annual purchase of a rather fancy daybook to use as my diary.  By the time I glued photos and stuck clippings in them, they weren't so fancy any more.  But they were what I wrote in during my most intense record-keeping period, and they are the ones I usually peruse most frequently because they're the ones with the pictures and clippings.  

I used odds-and-ends books as diaries before I discovered the fancy ones; since these aren't fancy, and don't have room for clippings and pictures, I seldom look through them.  This morning, though, I opened up the 1983 one.  Wow, what a year.  
For two-and-a-half years, we had rented out our old house here and lived near Oak Grove, closer to Cliff's job at the butcher shop.  In 1983 we moved back home; Cliff wasn't happy away from this place, so when the renters moved out that spring, we returned.  
1983 was the only year my son played high school football, and there was quite a bit of mention about his training.  My daughter didn't seem to stay home much back then:  she was always spending the night with one friend or another.      
The thing that really shocked me was that I complained about Cliff's attitude at times.  In later diaries, I was pretty careful (most of the time) to keep negative stuff about my husband to a minimum.  Why?  Because I knew some day I would die, and if Cliff read complaints I had penned about him, it would hurt his feelings.  
I'm not talking about anything major.  He was in a difficult place with his job at that time, and of course his discontent with work spread over to his family.  He hated living at Oak Grove, so that didn't help things either.  Actually, my griping on those pages comes across more as pathetic whining.  
So I looked at these mildly negative statements I'd written down for posterity and asked myself, "Should I tear out pages like this?  Or should I take whiteout to them?  Should I perhaps throw away the whole diary?"  
No, I won't do any of those things.  I'll remind Cliff here, in this public journal, that in 1983 I was still manifesting PMS regularly.  I'll tell him we all have bad days and bad years.  
So, Cliff, remember this if you ever read these old diaries.  I've always loved you.  I know if you'd been keeping a diary, you would have had many occasions to gripe about my behavior.  This goes for any other relatives, also.  My daughter was once reading an old journal of mine and found a petty gripe I had written about a relative I love dearly.  To all who may read my diaries after I'm gone, don't feel bad if I once wrote something negative about you.  I'm not even that person any more.   Remember, too, that those writings were originally meant for my eyes only. 
As Ree would say, "I'm just keepin' it real."