The family that googles together...

Yes, there are 6 people in this room and 5 of them are on their laptops, two of them are sitting less than a fist-width distance apart from each other. And, if you can believe it, they are looking at the same thing. This was the morning after my aunt's retirement party last weekend. Now, granted most of us had consumed a variety of adult beverages the night before and so just becoming vertical against the strength of gravity was a great accomplishment. They certainly cannot be expected to have the focus to all look at the same screen. So, everyone is plugged into their respective outlets, except for Nick, who owns a laptop but refused to participate for fear of looking like...well, silly, I suppose. Those British - they are either John Cleese-slapstick funny or dry as toast. There's no in between. But his laptop was less than 6 feet away, sitting on the dining room table. Unfortunately, Aunt B's living room is so vast, that I couldn't fit it all into the picture. Anyway, we were hunting for the perfect beach house for our Soon-to-be-annual-Mother-Daughter trip next month (AKA Sand and Wine Fest 09). But this is not a new scene with us. Last Thanksgiving, there were 8 of us sitting in her living room, 8 of us on our laptops, 6 of us Facebooking each other. Ah..yes, this is where the breakdown of conversation begins - in the home. Who says we can't regress back to hanging out in our million dollar caves, grunting as we punch keys and swill from a bottle? It can happen. And it's all documented on Facebook. We didn't find the perfect home that day, but you can't say that we didn't all give it the ole college try.