well, it IS the 21st century...

so today . . . my dad initiated a video chat with me on facebook :)

i have the best parents. i think they can pretty much do anything. but all this new technology can be confusing! just ask me how many times i've been at the "genius bar" in the apple store during the last three months!! but as each new thing comes along, they figure it out. here's how it works...

usually, either rollie or i get a new electronic gadget. ok, usually rollie gets a new electronic gadget, then after listening to him tell me all the amazing things his new electronic gadget will do, i get one. then i convince my mom that she needs one. and my dad sees her playing with her new toy, and after a while, he decides that maybe he would like one too. this process takes a few months, but eventually, we are all playing with the same electronic gadgets.

a side effect of this progression is that since my dad is usually the last one on the train, it takes him longer to figure out how to make his new toy do all the things that we do with ours. luckily, my mom is there to help him out...

this is the way it has always worked. until today. today my dad initiated a video chat on facebook with me. my dad.

last night, while we were farming, he hit the video chat button. i don't know if he did it on purpose or accidentally. since he doesn't touch type, he sometimes inadvertently hits the wrong key, which sometimes causes him big problems. but this time it turned out to be a good thing...

so i was farming along, when i got the message that he was "calling" me. this has never happened to me on facebook before, so i wasn't quite sure what to do. so i hit the video chat button, but then i realized that i was "calling" him. all that this accomplished was to confuse everything! i got another message that i had missed his call, and he had missed mine. now i really didn't know what to do. i didn't know whether to try to call again, or wait for him, or message him, or just turn off the computer and go to bed. and then i got a second message that said he was "calling" me. and then my mom's face appeared, and suddenly we were looking at each other and talking!

isn't technology wonderful :)

so we talked for a while, and she showed my dad the results of his experimentation. but you know how it is when you accidentally do something wonderful and then can't remember how you did it? that's kind of what happened. so we disconnected and my mom showed him how to initiate the video chat if he wanted to. i figured he would never want to. when he is farming, my dad is a man of few words...

and then tonight he did it again. on purpose! and my mom was nowhere in sight!! he just wanted to tell me to move some of my trees so that he could harvest a few hidden crops. he could have typed me a message, but he didn't. he video chatted with me!! all by himself!!!

i'm so impressed. and while my farm didn't function all that well while we were chatting, it was ok, because i could see his face. and it had a big smile on it. i think maybe he was kind of impressed with himself, too! and he should be!!

my electronics confound and frustrate me quite often, but i am so glad for the technologies that we have. remember when video phone calls were so futuristic that we only saw them on the jetson's?? and now they are a reality for anyone with wi-fi and a webcam! and as our families and friends spread out (diandra lives clear across town from me now, you know,) it is nice to be able to see their faces (even if they are kind of pixelated,) and hear their voices (even if the audio is a little bit behind the video,) no matter where we are...

now if someone could just perfect that whole robot maid and instantly cooked meal thing that the jetson's had...