Warmth! Sweet warmth! Last night was toasty and snuggly

and I slept like the dead. I think I'm getting a handle on these heating zones - although the sun is shining brilliantly today and helping to warm up the workspace...No more penguin colonies in my bedroom.
But - isn't there always a damn but?
Not the big butt problem, which many of us are all too familiar with,
not the cigarette butt problem, which HOPEFULLY most of us have conquered,
and not the buttes of the western mountains which is actually pronounced beaut... I don't get it.

Anyway, now I can't seem to get the damper on the fireplace correctly closed. I see a call to a friend's husband coming on.

Today I have to tell you about Skype and my Christmas present from my kids: a web cam. This device needs to be CAPITALIZED: A WEB CAM. Not only did I get to see my son in N.J., but he took the camera around his apartment so I could actually SEE it. So cool. I admit, it was hard to SEE him and not be able to TOUCH him. (Except when he, true to character, mooned me.) I got to show him the new painting I'm working on and he even had me hold up Emma, who misses him so much that when she even hears his voice, she pees a little bit on the floor.

That empty arms feeling came back when I watched my Kiley playing. The video stream sometimes is a bit pixelated (is that even a word?) into little cubes but Kiley's web cam is in her playroom. I feel like June at Bye Bye Pie who watches her dog Tallulah on the doggie day care's web cam while she is at work - it is incredibly addictive.
I almost killed myself and the dog last night when I heard the little bubble sound that means the web cam is calling.
Emma and I were under some blanket throws, reading (She was already a little stressed because she was reading "Call of The Wild") and we got all tangled up and fell off the couch and I crawled away a bit and literally unrolled the dog from the throw. Somehow I lost a shoe in the whole misadventure and Emma has decided to blame the blanket for the terrifying incident. She's been giving it dirty looks and haughty shoulder-shrugs all morning.

On the camera, Kiley crawls around, pulls books off the shelves, throws up a little bit on herself, grabs handsfuls of the cat's hair, pulls herself up on the furniture. It's the best movie I have seen...bar none (Except for THE AFRICAN QUEEN which will forever been on my top shelf along with RUDY, REAR WINDOW, THE MAJESTIC, and SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION).

And the best part is: She sees me!!! She waves and says "HI" and laughs at me when I laugh at her. We even had a round of fake coughing going last night.
It's a magic bridge, a way to stay connected.
Do you remember talking to someone not so long ago, and wishing for phone-a-vision?
When I think of all the Jetsons' space-age inventions, they are already here!
I have a coffee thing that makes me a cup o' Joe in three minutes.
The inside of my refrig makes ice.
A microwave still defies logic.
And don't even get me started on cell phones, lap tops and digital cameras.
I used to have to wait for the bus to pull into town to ferry my newspaper film to the main office. Now, I can send photos directly from the scene.
I was at a fire scene last November, and from the side of the road I was able to write my story and post the pics, and one of the firefighters was able to read it on my paper's web site from his phone before we even left the fire! My car even tells me when it is icy out, not to mention that it can sense when the passenger is my 12-pound dog or my grown up daughter and turn on the airbag.
The Internet defies common sense: I can ask it if dogs get headaches or find a recipe for cauliflower and curry; I can find old high school friends or conduct interviews for work; I can enlarge my penis (according to the 11,386 email offers I get daily) or collect my $5.6 million in winnings from the ex-wife of the cousin of the brother of the deposed leader of Nigeria.

And to think: I learned to type on a manual typewriter from Mrs. Russell, who strangely sounded like Morgan Freeman but looked like Don Knotts in a business suit and sensible shoes. The adding machines still had arms on the sides that you had to pull down. And we still made calls from phone booths. In fact, I got high school detention for writing my boyfriend's telephone number on the blotter in the school's phone booth. What a wild child....

Sometimes this technological explosion is a bit scary - where will it lead? I'm not sure I would be comfortable with it invading my bathroom and hearing a disembodied voice intone "Queenie, you just missed a spot of soap on your back" while I'm in the shower. But it would be nice to have an early warning system that let's you know you are out of paper BEFORE you really need it.