A Face Is Worth A Thousand Words

While I have been known to be technologically challenged I gotta tell you I am a HUGE fan of video chatting. This technology just blows my mind.

I don't have very many friends or family near me any longer, so this is the best (and cheaper than a plane ticket!) way of staying in touch.

I'm old enough to remember that the way I used to have contact with my sister Cathie was via snail mail. Once a week, I'd write a letter to her. There was no spell check, and sometimes I couldn't remember what I told her in my last letter and would repeat it in the next one.

From there we went to email. A little faster and even better, I had a record of what I had written about.

Then, on to cell phones. At least I didn't have to worry about my long distance bill any longer! If the written word was good, the phone call was even better. But now . . . . we . . . . have . . . . VIDEO CHAT!!

I have video chatted, in real time, with my sister Cathie in Ojai California, with my best friend in Kissimmee Florida, with my niece and her family in Rochester New York, and thanks to a sleepless night for my brother, a great video chat from China! Talk about reaching out to touch some one. Way awesome.

Now let's talk about my good friends, David and Edna who have now moved to San Diego California. Again, numerous emails go back and forth as well as phone calls. I finally talked them into a trip to their local Best Buy for a video camera. Too bad we didn't tape ME trying to be THEIR technical support to get them hooked up. Yes, we had to call Ron in for an assist! With Ron's help, we got the two of them up and running and videoing.

It's been a blast to get rid of those 2500 miles, give or take, and be able to hold a real conversation with the four of us. So now who could we convert next?

Edna's parents, Nick and Sally, live here in Ohio. While Nick does do some things on the computer, he's even less savvy with it than I am. I thought with David and Edna now so far away, her parents might appreciate being able to see their baby face to face as well.

Ron just set up Nick's brand new computer recently, so I knew they were set with hardware, other than the camera. When David provided the camera, we headed over to Nick and Sally's. Ron was installation of hardware and I was software support.

Now, I have to tell you something about these people. They are absolutely the bomb! I didn't think when we made plans to head over to set them up for video chatting that they were providing dinner. You all know how I feel about free food! I am ALL for it!

We sat down to dinner, and Nick said that Sally wanted to cook American food for us, but he thought we could have American food any time. So, Sally cooked their Arabic food for us. I gotta tell you, one dish was better than the next! I am glad Nick got to overrule Sally on that one!

I'm not going to pretend I knew the name of any of the dishes or every thing that was in each dish, but in layman's terms, we had some sort of stuffed squash, stuffed eggplant, a rice dish and a sauce with tomatoes that went over ALL of it! There was also a side dish of these spicy pickled veggies with carrots, celery, pepperoncini and I don't know what else. Just hearing that was spicy, I didn't taste that one, but Ron loved it!

So, we had a great dinner, complete with some good wine! I tried to be a good guest and got up to start doing to dishes. Nick would have none of it. Ok, fine. At least I can stack the dishes for him. NOT! According to Nick, if you stack the dirty dishes, then you have to wash BOTH sides of the dish instead of just the side you used. C'mon now, is this man GENIUS or what?!?!?

So after dinner, we got to work.

Well, Ron got to work, I watched. He got the hardware all set up and then I went in and wrote out step by step instructions for Nick on how to get into Gmail and then how to start a video chat. (By the way, sorry Nick. I seem to have stolen your pen after writing them directions! Not to worry, I'll take good care of it!)

Now all we had to do was wait for the California people to get home from work. Darn that time difference! Finally, a few phone calls to help everyone get on the same page and we were up and running!

As soon as both ends were set up and everyone could see everyone, there wasn't many a dry eye in the place.

Ron and I excused ourselves and let the family catch up face to face.

Video chatting - a face really is worth a thousand words.