Abby and Maddy have been super into the movie Sing 2 lately. I think they watched it at least 8 times on our road trip. It got them through the last hours on our longer days of driving, when the sun went down, and they were tired of reading. But it wasn’t until last week that they got us to sit down and watch it with them.
It’s actually a really cute movie. One of those hook-the-parents in by including some of their favorite singers from the 80s and 90s. In this case, it was Bono from U2. And of course, after we watched the movie with them, we went digging into our music archives to show the girls who U2 really is. They got to experience some of their best music videos and songs, including Where the Streets Have No Name and Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses. For me it brought back some old memories.
Back in the 90s, Kim and I used to chat over dial-up on our computers. I know you remember the sound: chhh-cachhh-chhh followed by ‘You’ve Got Mail’ if it was AOL. We used the internal system at UF called grove to text chat one summer. I’d come home super-late from my job at Little Caesar’s and I’d dial in, sometimes stuffing a pillow in front of the computer to try to quiet the connecting noise so that it wouldn’t wake up my roommates. The music I remember listening to over and over during our late-night chats was from the albums Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, and so when I heard the familiar guitar riff start up in Sing 2, all of these memories came flooding back. I tried to explain the dial-up process to Abby and Maddy. Dialing in, waiting to connect, looking at a monochrome screen to see messages. No emojis, filters, or pics. They looked at me like I was old and crazy.
But that’s OK. Someday when we all have phone implants in our brains, they can tell their kids about texting on a handheld phone back in the 20s. As for me, I’m going to keep singing U2 and remembering late nights on dial-up with my now-wife.
This week, you don’t need any kind of electronics to have a great time in the garden, because it’s veggie season! Veggie starts and fall seeds have arrived and it is time to get outside and start planting your gardens. If you need a little help, see our Teaching Thursday post for a few dos and don’ts of veggie gardening in Florida or attend our Veggie Gardening seminar (see our Upcoming Events). I’ll teach you all about growing veggies and show you how to use an Earthbox to maximize harvests. Instead of You’ve Got Mail, you’ll be saying You’ve Got Kale . . . I see you rolling your eyes.
