Finding Doogie

Yesterday I took the boys to Grandma's house as they are very close to their grandparents and were dying to sleepover. This sounded like a good idea in theory since it would give me a rare day to myself, but it didn't quite work that way. After a few short hours of golf cart joyriding, swimming with the seniors, and beating Grandma in Connect Four and Othello, and they soon became bored as there are no video games or friends in retirement paradise. I tried to make a quick get away, anxious to start my own plans but didn't leave empty handed. Evan became teary eyed during the hug goodbye for the first time in sleepover history and I couldn't let nugget go on missing his cats at home. Timmy, however, was fine with the prospect of the two of us leaving and all but started the car up for me.


We returned the following day only to find that Pa had taken over entertain Timmy duty. Normally I'm fine with this since my father is, at heart, a big, kid himself but that afternoon was different. They had just returned from playing pool, poker, and swimming at the clubhouse when I noticed that my father had made a poor error in judgement. No, he didn't let the guys at poker table give his grandson a stoagie but he did forget to apply sunscreen. My son's back was not noticeably red then, but my mom radar could see the faint pink splotches covering his shoulders and back-- an omen of pain to come. I wanted to make my father directly aware of his mistake but knew he just didn't think about things like that as, growing up, my mother was always the one taking care of us kids.


Sensing some tension, he tried to smooth over the situation by finding his supply of aloe, (he is obsessed with this plant), and showing me the newest thing he had discovered. Usually this is some strange piece of exercise equipment he saw on an infomercial, an unnecessary kitchen gadget, or new recipe he concocted comprised of multitude of pantry ingredients that he thought would go together well. Imagine my surprise when he actually showed me a new search engine. The fact that he can navigate online as he is not very computer savvy, let alone knew of a new website that I hadn't even heard of, was mind blowing. To say I underestimated the old man was an understatement.


The site, at http://www.bing.com/ was created by Microsoft and is ten times better than google. To begin with, you can find everything there from news and shopping to videos on every TV show and song known to man world wide. Moreover, these clips aren't brief snippets but the entire episode. I could take a stroll down memory lane and watch Doogie Howser again or check out music videos that I didn't even know existed!!! And it's fast too. You can move the cursor from clip to clip and it plays instantly. I haven't fully explored it all, but from what I can tell, it's definitely worth looking at.


Speaking of Doogie, remember when he would type on his computer every night the life lesson he had learned that day? I have to give props to the boy genius. He might not have been smart enough to tell Wanda to come in through his bedroom window but he was the original blogger.