On glasses, the decline of the VCR, the Civil War, and Indiana truck stops

Hot dog! After losing her glasses well over a month ago, YaYa called me at work to tell me she found them today! Allegedly they were in her purse all along, which I wonder about, seeing as I searched it pretty thoroughly. But no matter - still a grand announcement!

[upon reviewing the above: my Lord I'm a dorky boring putz. I'd have ended it all twenty years ago if I'd seen this coming]

I can't be too mad at the kid about the glasses. Lis and I are missing two important items of our own. I'm missing a Nirvana bootleg of the 1992 Reading Festival (published as D.U.M.B.) that Lis bought me for my birthday in 1995, less then a month after we met.

Lisa is missing a cheap silver and turquoise 'promise' ring I bought her in Andersonville, Georgia in October of that year. There's a heck of a story behind the ring, from the hillbilly store owner I bought it from (oh, to find the picture I have of him!), to my presentation of it a mere day after Lisa threatened to strand me at a Indiana truck stop unless I committed to her right then and there.

I had been. . . doo dee doo . .not 'the best boyfriend ever' for some of that year. By then that part of our relationship was over and we were again a couple. But while we were back together I publicly refused to acknowledge the fact, instead telling people we were just 'friends'. She'd had just about enough of that,thank you, and rightfully so. Anyhow, long story.

But Indiana?  I had done nothing, have done nothing in my life to warrant such a dire fate.

[cue irate emails from Nutwood Junction ;)]

The ring is AWOL, victim of the kids destructive raids on our jewelry boxes over the last year. The destruction of their contents, or more aptly their redistribution throughout the house, is a vile and un amusing action on behalf of the Spawn, and one they have learned to regret. [I ask that no one show mercy in the comments section. They knew better and did it anyway.]

So the ring is missing.

It was cheap, maybe $25, and would probably have cost me $10 less if I hadn't been a blatant Yankee in the heart of the Confederacy [hometown of a statue honoring the only convicted and executed war criminal of the Civil War]. 

Lisa had long ago stopped wearing it because it was tight on her finger, clashed with the wedding set, and (although she'd never tell me) I think it turned her finger green.

So it  was no financial or cosmetic loss, and it was a 'promise' I delivered on, so it holds no grand emotional baggage except memories.

Still, I hope to find it, and the CD, someday.

** ** **

On to less solemn tales.

You know that animated 'story' that YaYa sent me to post a few days ago? Someone wrote and asked me how I incorporated the .wav file into it, as I guess it must be hard to do. My response: all I did was cut and paste YaYa's work. I called and asked my 6 year old the how of the process and she said she'd have to walk me through it when she returns from her Brownie campout this weekend.

Next thing you know she'll be programming my VCR.

But come to think of it, I don't owna VCR anymore. The kids have a pair, and I guess I still have one (relagated to our bedroom), but we're now a DVD family, what with a 400 disc changer sitting atop the TV.

BUT  - oh, how I like this segue! - I have finally mastered the art of dubbing our VHS tapes to DVD.

Many moons ago I bought this very same computer with the promise to my wife that all the extra doodads were essential to dub our tapes. As the fates foresaw, I never got around to it.

So two years ago or so I bought a DVD recorder/VCR with the same idea. I never got past the 'play' 'fast forward' 'subtitle' functions.

But tonight, with the local library clamboring for me to return a VHS movie I'd borrowed, I figured it all out and burned the movie to DVD.

What does this mean? It means 27 New Kids on the Block tapes soon to be available digitally baby!

The 'test' movie is Dark of the Sun, starring Rod Taylor and Jim Brown. My maternal grandpa and I watched the movie twenty-six/twenty-seven years ago and I've spent years trying to remember the name based on what a 7 year old remembered of the plot.

I'll try to watch it again and write a review (from an adult perspective) soon.