Skype-ing

Okay, so maybe I am a little late on some aspects of technology. But I honestly had NO idea of what Skype was (is). Well, it turns out that it is free software that you download and install (free - sometimes a good idea, sometimes not, where hackers and lurkers exist on the internet). And it allows you to view AND converse with another. There is a bit of a delay, for both the audio and the visual, and if one party does not have great connections or line speed, it can sometimes be painfully slow and out of sync (which we have all witnessed when we watch old movies and the characters lips do not match quite exactly what we are hearing).

Anyway, I have a new "friend" that I "met" via internet dating. He is a kinda small-town guy (so was the last one and I found out that THAT aspect was not a guarantee of faithfulness, at all). He seems very sincere and also has some connections (that old "Six Degrees of Separation" thing) which may help me to determine his character and so on. Enough about that.

He told me about Skype and now we are using that a lot. Sometimes we just use the video portion, mute the sound, and use our cell phones at the same time. It was SO odd, the first time we saw each other. You could tell that we were checkin' each other out. I laughed a lot (he did, too) and our conversation seemed to go pretty well. So well, in fact, that we talked for 5 hours! Like damned teenagers. I am so afraid to let my heart go again, and frankly, I told him that. And he told me that he would NOT do that to me - that he wants to honestly pursue this relationship and give it a fair time to see where it goes. I guess I can't ask for any more than that.

Anyway - if you want to converse with ANYONE - and not pay long-distance charges or worry about cost overruns on your cell minutes - I would heartily endorse Skype-ing. I don't know if this is the same way that families back in the States are conversing with their loved ones in Iraq and Afghanistan, although if not using this, then they might be using something similar. It requires (naturally) that you have a camera on your pc, and since I recently purchased a new laptop - voila! Be careful how you look in the morning, if they want you to hop onto that right away! I'm just sayin' .....

Later.