Ya gotta love automated mass greetings.

Today, I celebrate my 37th birthday.
As I checked my email, I saw that I had a birthday greeting from eHarmony.
Of course, this is an automated greeting that is sent on any participants birthday, in hopes to make the recipient feel like they matter.

Now, I have no problem with receiving this type of greeting as ANY greeting will make anyone feel a little better about themselves, their situation, and just that the whole entire world is filled with happy-happy-joy-joy feelings. blech.

I only bring this to light due to the irony that I am faced with by the fact that when I set up a profile (see earlier posting), I was given a less than positive response, and due to the fact that I didn't immediately delete my profile, this site has more than made up for not being able to do what they claim by finding me at LEAST a couple women I MAY have SOME sort of similar interests with, by having HAL send me a heartfelt, and sincere birthday greeting.

Happy Birthday to me

getting older

This year, I turn 37. My children are 8 and 10.
I still consider myself fairly young. But when it comes to physical activity, that's when I begin to feel my age.

A few months ago, my parents gave the boys a pair of tennis rackets and tennis balls to whack back and forth in their back yard. They have a rather large back yard, so neighbors don't need to cringe whenever they go back there.

It was something to pass the time when we'd visit them, and the boys soon formulated a "who-can-hit-the-ball-further" competition. It was like they were practicing for baseball.

I decided to take them to an actual tennis court and show them (kinda) how to play.

It's been years since I've played myself, and I also used to play racketball back in the day.
So I kind of knew what I was doing. Besides, they'd seen tennis being played on tv so how hard could this be?

My older boy didn't do too bad. I could get a few volley's out of him before he'd belt one out of the park. This created this "you hit it....you get it" rule.
My younger one was another story.
Luckily, or not, there are four courts side-by-side which my younger one got the ball to..........every time...................

Now, being 37 and not in the best shape, (wha?? a pear's not a shape??), I didn't really fell like chasing every ball he hit and fortunately we were alone so I didn't find myself yelling "INCOMING".

We've been playing a lot..........and that's where I start feeling my age.
I can begin to see where the term tennis-elbow comes from because as I type this I now have no feeling in mine.

I am fortunate to have understanding children in that all I have to do is say "Dad's elbow is starting to hurt" and they are ok with being done.

I'm guessing they are just happy to go out and do stuff with Dad.
And so am I.

DUDE.................Dad's gettin a Dell!

For as long as I can remember, my folks have been pretty frugal with their money.
When it comes to electronics, they usually get the lowest priced item and then a year later wonder why it only lasted a year.
For example, when cd players first came out, they decided to get a shelf unit consisting of dual cassette, am/fm tuner and a five carousel cd player. Nice huh? Until you find out they got no-name brand unit.
And sure enough, with in a year or two, the cd player stopped working. So then it became a shelf unit that just took up space on the shelf.

As far as the internet goes, they went with WebTv. Here's a modern marvel in electronics.
You hook up this box to your tv that comes with a keyboard (there are wireless models as well).
On plus is space. If you have a small kitchen tv set, one could get a small stand and put the box underneath and then just bring out the keyboard when you wanted to go online.
Another benefit was that you weren't suseptible to virus attacks.
As far as "online" goes, having used their WebTv, I can honestly say I was not impressed.
The dial up time seemed like forever, the online time seemed like it locked up constantly, and you actually had to be online to look at anything. Needed to get a number from your address book? Dial er up. Need to recheck an email to see when Aunt Gertrude was coming? Dial er up.
And if you were like my folks, you only had the one phone line.

So imagine my surprise when my mother sent me an email (via WebTv of course), that my Dad was getting a Dell!
Maybe there's hope for my folks livin in the present day yet!

eHarmony

eHarmony claims to be able to match people. They have some "29 dimension" matching system that promises results. I'm only interested in 3-dimensions.
(wait for it....................wait for it............)

So I figure "what the hell" and fill out the in-depth survey, which takes about half an hour.
I'll admit the questions are rather thought provoking and gives one a sense of "ok. maybe this'll get me somewhere ".

So after completing the survey, it takes about a minute (says so by those little progress bars at the bottom of screens that fill left to right).
With baited breathe I await the throngs of women that are about to be slung my way via internet, which in my case is easier than trying the local bar scene. Briefly, smalltown=(putting it as nice as possible)no dice.
Finally, the results pop up AND.....................................


Our matching system was not able to find any new matches for you right now.

However, we are always automatically searching for new matches for you. Several thousand people join eHarmony each day and our matching system evaluates each one of them within 24 hours to see if they are a great match for you.

We will notify you via email when matches are found or you can check your My Matches page at eHarmony whenever you like.

Our matching criteria, based on the 29 dimensions of compatibility, is extremely strict, and is what makes eHarmony a unique and powerful tool in finding your soul mate. We will keep searching and hope to find some wonderful matches for you soon.

So either I'm a bigger loser than I thought, or sites like these only promise what they cannot provide.
The voices in my head tell me to go with the latter.