Instant gratification

I am definitely a product of my culture. Instant gratification is my thing. I tap my foot and wait impatiently for 33 seconds while cheese melts on nachos in the microwave. (If you push 3-3 instead of 3-0, it's faster.) I want a web page to load instantly or I move on to the next one. I take a picture on my digital camera and immediately evaluate it on the miniature screen. I'm a harsh judge-- there will be no closed eyes in my photo collection.

I had a pleasant experience with (almost) instant gratification yesterday. I've been hoarding digital photos in the computer for years, but I missed that tangible, flip-the-pages fun of looking through an album. Tabitha loves looking through old scrapbooks, which is the only kind we have since I went digital. It was time to turn cyber pictures into prints.

I uploaded about 250 pictures from our trip around the west last fall. I had the choice to have prints mailed to me or pick them up at the corner drugstore. The price being the same, of course I chose the quicker option. Within an hour I had an email telling me my pictures were ready!

I spent a very fulfilling evening sorting through memories. "Look at this one! Oh, remember that?" As if I hadn't seen the same images a hundred times on my 17" screen. It's just not the same. It's like the difference between reading an ebook and holding a real book in my hands.

So, I'm looking forward to many happy evenings cropping and cutting and sorting and arranging and journaling and putting all those memories down in a format that I and my children can enjoy together again and again.

Funny how the things worth savoring are worth spending time on-- not like microwaved nachos.