Where are we?

We woke up this morning to a low temperature of 34 degrees. Are we really in the Arizona desert? Tell me it isn't so. But it is. Today's high of 62 was 8 degrees below normal. The low was 11 degrees below average. Brrrrr. I guess we've become Arizonans, not Coloradans. A couple of years ago, we would have thought this was a warm day.

Later in the day, we went Christmas shopping. As we walked through the Chandler Fashion Center Mall, trying to get some inside exercise as well as some gifts, we really thought we were walking through Park Meadows Mall which is just about a mile from the house we own in Centennial. The shops were all similar, the halls full of suburban shoppers. We realized we haven't used a shopping mall to get our walk in for at least a year. And we haven't even shopped in a mall for perhaps that long. Wal-Mart and Target are our usually venues for just about everything.

I even felt out of touch with the gifts available. Have you ever heard of a spy pen? I hadn't. It is a ball point pen with a video camera that will work even when the pen is in your shirt pocket. The memory card has 3 gigs of sound and picture storage. Brookstone sells the pen for $79. Wouldn't 007 and M be surprised?

We wandered into a Mac store and took our first hands-on look at an I-pad. Amazing! But at $499 to $699, even without the 3G network, I think I'll pass for now. And Mac makes a very small and light notebook computer. I think it is smaller than the old folder I carried around with a legal pad inside. We first considered a computer for our business in 1981 or 82 and passed because the cost was $11,000. Two or three years later, we bought a personal computer for $3,000. Today they are available for $600 or less. Our last one cost less than $1,000 and must be 100s of times faster and better. I guess there are lots of things about that good old days that really aren't all that good, aren't there?