Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Come Surf With Me!

I frittered away another entire day in front of the computer on Sunday. I walked out of my bedroom in the morning, fully expecting to dive into a day of reading and TV watching, never to return (until it was time to go to sleep).

How can one spend a day on the computer you ask? Good question. I asked myself the same thing and went back into the history of "Sunday" on the computer and found my answer. Do you really care? Probably not. If so, stop reading now. I'll come back to this paragraph at the end of my monologue and tell you if there was anything of value within my On-Line Sunday. *This is a very link-laden post, filled with thoughts and links that mean something to me and quite likely is not a universal train of thought. If you feel inclined, follow where my path takes you or (better yet) just forge your own trail today.*

I started the day by doing some banking. This is very necessary on the last day of the month. Good investment of computer time.

Thirty minutes later, I was cruising through Facebook and found an article on ovarian cancer. After Mom's scare last year, I thought this was a good read.

Forty minutes after that, I worked on Sunday's word puzzles. One must keep the neurons in their brain firing. Check!

Seventeen minutes after that, I remembered I wanted to check out a documentary about Robin Williams on Netflix - "Robin Williams Remembered". Very interesting, well done and it focused on his life.

This made me want to go on a Robin Williams movie marathon but Netflix didn't have the movies I was interested in. So I went to Walmart.ca instead and did a little shopping. I got side tracked when I realized I could order Pringles and millions of other grocery and/or household items on-line and not have to leave the house. My shopping cart currently has seven items in it, totalling $64.05 and I have not processed this order. Excellent self control on my part.

I spent the next few hours going back and forth between Walmart shopping online, comparing what I can watch on Netflix, going back to Facebook for more inspiration, researching if I could pay for my purchase with my Walmart reward points (not yet, just in case you're interested) and doing more banking.

I got bored with this line of thinking so I decided to search cheap, all-inclusive vacations to see if there is any vacation that piqued my interest. The short answer to this question is "no". The long version of the same story is that I invested approximately an hour an a half of my day researching possibilities.

I then veered off to check Heather Spohr's "Sunday Surfing 1.31" and checked out a few of her suggested links. An article on empathy piqued my interest since that was a topic of much consideration last week: "Down the Hall: When Empathy is Paramount" and another on "How we used to die; how we die now".

My thoughts were getting to sombre so I thought I'd check in to see what people were "Asking Ro" and those questions and answers led me down a very interesting path. I checked out books that were mentioned, searched Netflix for movies or shows mentioned. Then I found the news that rocked my Sunday on its axis. The Gilmore Girls are planning a four part revival of the Gilmore Girls!

I discovered this news at 3:30 on Sunday afternoon and the rest of my day followed that path. I read everything I could find on the Internet. I followed Twitter feeds and reactivated my never-used Twitter account so I could follow this most exciting announcement as it unfolds (don't get too excited - they are just in the beginning processes of filming right now, so it's going to be a while). It will be four, 90-minute shows, each show representing a season and it will pick up in "real time" - Star Hollows, eight years later. I can't wait!!

The Twitter road led me to follow other people and TV shows of interest to me. Grey's Anatomy, Dancing With the Stars, a handful of movie star sorts, several blog writers I follow and of course trying to unravel the mystery of why I had so many "followers" when I have never ever used this account (more troubleshooting and password changes). Twitter is a mystery to me. I don't fully grasp how to use it but in my brief experience thus far, I am beginning to understand some of the "hash tag" references you hear a lot these days and what "following" means.

Onto other news, I discovered several Gilmore Girls interviews (the Gilmore Girls cast reunion from June, 2015 in full!) on YouTube. I watched everything I could find of interest and kept noticing the other "suggestions" in the drop down box to the right of my YouTube screen. I watched the "Pretty Woman" reunion , 25 years later and Farrah Fawcett interviews kept popping into my line of sight so I followed where that path took me until deep into the night (I'm talking 10:00 p.m. here!).

I woke up Monday morning with "Twitter" on my mind and "Grease - Live" was trending (see, I am sounding like a Twitter pro already!). I couln't wait for my daycare day to wind up so I could see if I could watch it on-line. And I could!! If you live in Canada, you can watch it here:  http://www.ctv.ca/GreaseLIVE.aspx

I accomplished little else with my Sunday and Monday night but my thoughts have expanded outside of this tiny box I live in, even if it was all via another tiny "box", aka: my computer screen.

I chatted intermittently with my son as Sunday progressed, we enjoyed adoring our cats together and talked leisurely as he spent the last day of his semester break relaxing, doing laundry and working on a video project.

I sent an email, had a brief text exchange with my second son, chatted with Mom for a while and simply relished the day I had. Did I waste my day? Were any seeds planted that I can reap another day? Did I expand my horizons?

Perhaps it was not the best investment of a free day at my disposal. But I woke up Monday morning feeling bright and shiny and full of new and different thoughts. So I guess that means the day was not a total write off.

If you have a day at your disposal, come "surf" with me. Your wave may take you off in a completely different direction than mine did. If you decide to click on any one of the links I have provided and you have the inclination to follow where it leads, go for it. Then tell me all about it so I don't feel so alone in the vast ocean of the Internet.

Sail away with wherever this day may take you! Enjoy your ride.

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