Hello! Welcome to episode 110 of I’d Rather Stay In. This week, we’re taking a walk down memory lane and talking about the internet!

Episode transcript

Megan
Welcome to I’d rather stay in with your hosts Megan Myers and Stephie Predmore. This week we’re chatting about the internet. Stay tuned.

Stephie
Do you love listening to I’d rather stay in and want to support the podcast? Well now you can visit our website or the LinkedIn or Instagram profile and click Buy me a coffee or visit buy me a coffee.com/irsipodcast. For the price of a cup of coffee, you can help us cover the costs of creating this podcast. There are no monthly memberships and you could support us at whatever level you like whenever you like. Whether you buy us one coffee, many coffees or simply continue listening as always, are so grateful for your support Hi, hello.

Megan
Hello.

Stephie
What’s up?

Megan
We just had a really good pizza.

Stephie
We did eat a really good pizza. You you fed me pizza. My true is love language.

Megan
Yeah, I’m making pizzas for work. And so I was like good timing. And I can make a pizza, taste it and then get the podcast on like on the same day

Stephie
a pizza that your kids would not like? Yes, typically.

Megan
Yes. So I didn’t want to have to deal with like another round of like, complaints. You

Stephie
there’s asparagus on this pizza set it to me and I was very happy to eat it. Yeah, that was that was lovely. We love we love being able to get multiple things knocked out at

Megan
once. Right? Right and have vegetable on it. So like it was healthy. I’m

Stephie
so over so healthy. So, so healthy. And Alex and I are gonna go out for anniversary tonight. And we’re gonna go to the Korean barbecue place. And so I’ll eat lots of pickled veg tonight. So look at me, I’m so so well, they ignore the bacon and like the pork belly that will be consumed later. It’s fine.

Megan
And the fact that like everything is like served in tiny little bowls, so you kind of end up eating more of it anyway because you don’t

Stephie
realize it but you know, pickled stuff is really good for you and true documentation like that. I do get it is just we are we are all about the health here. Yeah, you know, whatever. You and I took a little jaunt down to St. Louis. Last week, we did. We went to IKEA and we went to world market and we went to Trader Joe’s all things that we do not here have here. It was great in our two Horse Town. It was great.

Megan
It was a really nice time. I also was thinking about it this morning. And thinking about all the things that I did not buy and having a little bit of regrets about it. But it’s fine. It just gives me excuse to go back at some point. It’s true.

Stephie
It’s true. I definitely definitely spent more money at IKEA than I intended. But I don’t really have any regrets because it’s IKEA. And I got some great baskets for my crafting. I’m obsessed fact

Megan
it’s one of the things that I’m reading is that I did not get that one really big basket that you got because it’s a great,

Stephie
it’s so big and it fits so much yarn. And then I got a basket that is like, perfect for putting my my in progress projects in. And it’s like the perfect size. And those are just like really excellent purchases. And I’ve just been very pleased with myself for the last week. You know, it’s just little things in life.

Megan
If I can sort out part of my life, the rest of my life will magically sort itself.

Stephie
I mean, yes, I just kept telling you that I have a philosophy that if I just buy enough baskets, my life will become organized. And just like perfect. And that is clearly you told me that is not true. And yet I still bought these two baskets. But that is a small section of my life that is more organized now. So yes,

Megan
I do appreciate you ask. It’s

Stephie
not just random basket by him. But intentional basket buying is a okay, it’s out. There. So this week, I thought we could talk about the internet’s um, I would because I was listening to I was listening to another podcast earlier. And they were talking about, like the rise of email. And I got to thinking about the fact that like, I don’t know about you, but I had to be taught how to use the internet because like, it wasn’t, like wasn’t a thing until like a certain point in childhood. So I very distinctly remember like sitting down and learning what the internet was and like, what is a link? And how do you know something is a link and to click the link and blah, blah, blah, and like how our kids are just never going to have to go through that. And so I thought we could just talk about our memories of the internet and how it’s changed our world and you Know how we now can have a podcast on the on the internet in your pocket in your pocket? Yeah. So what are your memories of the internet as a kid again,

Megan
so I am older than you.

Stephie
She’s an old,

Megan
I’m an old, I am technically, Gen X the very, very last year,

Stephie
we hold on tightly to that she doesn’t want to be considered a millennial. But that

Megan
means you and I have very different like early memories of the internet because it came out so like, you know, a reference. We at my house had prodigy, okay, Prodigy was like America Online, but it was not America Online. And with both prodigy and America Online, you had a software that you would load and then you would dial in to the internet, and it would go. And you could use your phone because nobody had other phone lines or internet lines. And you were connected. But it wasn’t quite the internet. It was the like, yeah, so America Online, and prodigy both had their own programs. So it would be sort of as though you were logging directly on to Facebook. And that was the only thing you could do. There were many things you could do with in that much like Facebook. But it wasn’t the World Wide Web. Exactly. Yeah. And so we had that. But the funny thing was, so if you are my age around, you will remember that America Online, and prodigy was send out like 1000s and 1000s of these discs. Yes, I had forgotten that you got the little floppy floppy disks or CD ROMs.

Stephie
Eventually, they changed to CDs, they would just

Megan
send them out to everybody. And then we have free trial of this thing because you had to pay a monthly subscription. And so we would get prodigy for a while for until we had to pay for it for maybe a couple of months,

Stephie
and then wait for the next and

Megan
get a new free thing to log on. was a horrible like cycle. I feel like a lot of people probably Yeah, let’s be real. But then and so I spent a lot of time when I was on. And then we eventually got like the real internet.

Stephie
Wait, okay, how old were you when you got you know, energy? Do you remember? I

Megan
don’t remember actually how old I was. I do know that. By the time I was like 17 I had a website. Okay, and so that was 1997 Okay, because I had I made a whole website for like our senior my friend and senior group graduated have like nonsense photos and song MIDI files. Oh ha ridiculous. Early internet early internet nonsense. Yes. Um, but before that I had a geo cities. Oh, yeah, I had a geo cities page by there was also another one that was similar to Geo cities, but I don’t remember what it was called. But it might have had that by the time I was 16. Yeah. 15 years. 16. So we must have had prodigy when I was 12, 13. Yeah. But also, when we got the real internet, I spent a lot of time on a sports chat room. Sure, for whatever

Stephie
reason, as you say, you are so sportsy

Megan
I don’t even know CBS had all these chat rooms. And they were all IRC channels, whatever. And I spent a lot of time on this random, maybe might have been like a Wisconsin Sports channel or whatever. And I became friends with this guy who lived like an hour away was also my

Stephie
soul. Oh, man. Yeah.

Megan
It’s crazy time. They’re in early internet. Be myself and my mom both had like ridiculous early internet.

Stephie
Everyone like, you ready? Yes. Gifts. And like, all the things. Everyone’s usernames were ridiculous. Your email addresses were always ridiculous. Yes.

Megan
My email or my username was a techie meg because I worked tech in theater.

Stephie
I love it. Mine was drama queen short. So for obvious reasons. Yeah, I remember I think I was so I remember. Like I have a high you have to think back to like what house we were living in various times. That’s how I like can kind of gauge how old I was when these things happened. And I remember I was probably like seven or eight when I had, like, we didn’t have the internet our house yet. But I had a family member who was probably like a senior in college at the time. Like, take me to our local library. And like, we got on the internet and like, showed me like, this is the internet. And these are the like, this is how you use, you know, links. And, you know, this is how you like search for things or like whatever and like whatever limited capacity that was at that time, and then I was probably, but it was like, probably another year or two before we got internet at our house. And I don’t remember. I don’t remember if it was like AOL, or if it was the like, actual, like World Wide Web or whatever. But I remember like, I remember my mom talking about the fact that like, when, you know, they were trying to get everybody to like get the internet at their house. She was like, What is this? This is what is I don’t know, What is this nonsense? And then like, when my parents finally were like, oh, yeah, maybe this is the thing that we should get. She was like, why did we do this sooner? This is amazing. Oh, yeah. Because like my mom, especially when she got email, she was like, oh my god, this is the most amazing thing is her best friend like, oh, write really long letter. Oh my god, they would email each other every single day. Like she. It’s funny, because I know we joke like people of our generation. joke a lot about our parents just being like, in the dark ages. And like, I don’t know how to use the internet. My mom was not that person. She was an early like an early email adopter. Like she was on Facebook before anyone else’s mom’s like, she was like social media. This is great. I love this stuff. So she was the one that was like, yeah, the internet is awesome. You can learn so much. So yeah, I mean, I remember being probably like, nine or 10 and having like email and the internet and being able to like go on and like do limited things for like school projects and stuff.

Megan
And that was like 98 Yeah, yeah. So

Stephie
So yeah, I think that that’s that’s about when when we got it at our house. But yeah, I definitely had just forgotten that. Like, he would just get those AOL discs in the match and like and of course at that point, like Gmail wasn’t a thing. So you had like everyone’s email addresses were run through like ran like your internet like provider. Yeah, whatever. Or like random B bla bla bla at like,

Megan
Road Runner dot Exactly. Love a mod I can’t.

Stephie
Exactly. So I think I was in I was in college before I had my first Gmail address. Because I, I think I had like a Yahoo email address in high school. And then when I was in college, I just used my like, college. Edu. Yeah, whatever. And then, when I was a senior, like, second semester, my senior year, I got an Android phone. And so you had to have a Gmail account, or like a Google account or whatever, for the phone. And so that’s when I got my first Gmail account. And that’s like, still my, because it’s just it was just my first name. Last Name. Right. So like, that’s still my, like, primary email address. I finally added a second one that is my like, married name, but it still funnels through to the same inbox. But yeah, like that was my first Gmail address. I just used my.edu email for four years or whatever. But yeah, I don’t know. It’s but it’s just it’s funny, because also, social media was only sort of barely a thing really, like when I was like, Myspace became a thing at the end of high school for me. And then, like, Facebook was just rolling out for people who weren’t like in college at that point. So I got Facebook right before I went to college, but then, you know, Instagram didn’t come out until, like, right, like at the end of college? Yeah, me. And so it’s just so funny to think about how different like, everything is now like, I’ve even even think about like, okay, like my study abroad experience. Like, I didn’t have the internet on my phone. I just had this like, crappy little, like, Spain cell phone just to basically make emergency calls or whatever. So like, I mean, I could obviously get on line when I was like, at my house or whatever, and like email and Skype and all of those things, but I couldn’t like look up directions or like, I don’t know, whatever. So my phone. It’s like there’s all of these things that are just so different than minuses. It’s really funny to think about

Megan
We did not have cell phones until, I mean, I didn’t have a cell phone because I was resistant to cell phones for a really long pursuer. Of course. I don’t want to be reached at all

Stephie
time. Horrible that absolutely scans.

Megan
And so I didn’t get a phone until I was 20 Wani, who was after I started doing Bob. So I was like, I might have been 23 When I got my first phone. Yeah. And it was not I mean, it was basic bitch phone. Yeah, you had to like what I can do. t nine texting. Yes. Texting the worst.

Stephie
You really had to want to say what you really, and you are charged

Megan
for text that used to be real careful. You couldn’t do that, like text, text, text, all your thoughts. Um, but when I went to college, we had this fancy new thing at college called the Ethernet. Oh, and every room was hooked up to the Ethernet. And it was a big deal because everyone had to go and buy an Ethernet cable and all these things, you would have an Ethernet card for your computer. And you probably had to install it because computers didn’t come with that. Because people didn’t have like MacBooks where like you install anything. And I remember the day after I moved in to my dorm room, I had everything all plugged in and everything was all set up. And because I was used to dial up internet, I could not figure out how to get on the internet. You’re like what do I do? But with Ethernet you just on the internet. It’s just there you just already on when you turn your computer on. And I had to go ask somebody down the hall and be like, I need help. And they were like you’re an idiot.

Stephie
It’s literally the easiest thing ever.

Megan
And then we did get Facebook when I was a junior maybe? I don’t actually remember because I what year it was because I went school and there was a time off and then I went back. Sure. So when I was actually a junior, who knows. It was like when I was 22 23 Maybe when we got in Facebook, but like for the school. Yeah. And so we were early, you know, part of the only group because we’re in college right to have it as an edu address or an IRA. Remember people that I used to work with at the newspaper they would use. Some people still do this, but they would use Facebook, how people use kind of us used to use Instagram at the beginning where they would put every picture that they took of like the night before they put like 300 Pictures Yes. Of everything that they did. Yes. It’s gonna live forever. What do you do? Like, it’s just pictures of them being drunk in various like, Yes, three seconds later, because they have a phone camera or whatever camera they were. They’re all very excited about it. And that

Stephie
was my main digital camera. And they uploaded the picture. Yeah, that like little Canon Powershot. Yeah, strapped around your wrist and you went out at night? Yes,

Megan
that’s my main memory Facebook and. And then I got my gmail address. Right before Bob and I got married. It was when it was like still rolling out. Yeah, obviously, you had to have an invite, I think. And I was like, I will just claim my married name. And so I have first name last name, which in theory is great. I get so many emails for other Megan Myers is because sometimes they’re emailing things for themselves. Like people apply for jobs using my email. People just make typos, obviously, which happens a lot. But people apply for jobs. I get like shipping notices for things that they buy receipts. I’ve gotten stuff about kids schools, actually, one a couple months ago, I got an email from a school about a kid named Reese which is the name of my son in another in another state or another school district in another state. And I researched it and There literally is another person with my name and my son’s names in another school just

Stephie
oh my god. Parallel universe.

Megan
They are in the same grade. Oh my god. I was very confused for like maybe this could be for my kid but maybe you know, obviously it’s not. But I guess I get so many emails to my email address. Just because I have a first name last name email. That’s funny instead of a crazy You email that other people have or like, a more uncommon name combination like you have,

Stephie
right? That’s funny. Yeah. The there’s a another Megan Myers and Reese Myers. out there somewhere is very funny to me.

Megan
Yeah, that was wild. There’s plenty of Megan Myers but like the combo combo,

Stephie
that’s a very specific combo, was it and it was spelled the same. Oh my god, that is wild. That is wild. Um, actually, so I was actually going to ask, so before you guys had like, internet like your house, did you have a computer before then?

Megan
I believe we got a I mean, we did have a computer. We had a Commodore 64. To begin with. I’m pretty sure. I want to say that’s what we had. And you can play solitaire, right? And so we had it. I do remember. So it was a Commodore 64 Because now it’s memories flooding. You can play solitaire. And so we had and other games. So we had one of those in sweeper? I don’t think so. I think Minesweeper was for Mac actually. Oh, really? Yeah. And we had PC. Oh, my speaker wasn’t an Aggie,

Stephie
like it was on there too. But maybe it was later, um,

Megan
we had a collection of card games. So there was one you could play. Gin Rummy and Old Main and all these other ones. And then they had one that had, I don’t know, 20 different versions of solitaire.

Stephie
Our kids will never know the joy of picking the solitaire cards and then looking for the little animation. A little like crab that on the beach, one.

Megan
Finish the Solitaire and you can do auto finish because you’ve gotten all the things lined up. Yes. And we also use it a lot for a lovely program called the print shop. Oh, do you know about this? I don’t. It is a very rudimentary version of like, I would say not Photoshop more like a modern day. Canva. Okay, like, if you go even further InDesign, okay, because you could make your own greeting cards. Oh, yep. Pick out your fonts and they have clipart. And then you could print it on your dot matrix printer. And yeah, it would be shit. But everybody loves everybody loved it. I love banners too.

Stephie
Yes, I remember that. I don’t know if that’s the exact program that we had or not. But we had something if not that it was very similar. Yes,

Megan
there was a print shop. And then there was the print shop too that had like more fonts and more clipart more fancy thing to print black and white, but then you could color over it with marker. But it wasn’t very practical. It was weird, because we use it for

Stephie
banners all the time. Should have a special banner paper. No, they

Megan
don’t make special banner paper. That’s the thing. They leave it out. And then you’d have to take tape and tape the seams so that it wouldn’t rip apart.

Stephie
Like lighted up perfectly.

Megan
Well, it prints. I mean, this is also showing your age on a dot matrix computer. It’s the papers connected. Oh, yeah. But there’s just perforation. Oh, yes. So yeah, that’s what it was. You have to make sure because invariably would rip. So you have obviously tape it before you hang out a wall or whatever. Yes. Yeah, it’s great. Great. But we my mom and I love the internet so much that we had to get a second phone line. Because we were on it because no call the phone would always be busy.

Stephie
You were it was just it was just like foreshadowing that you are going to spend your life making money on the internet later. Because you couldn’t

Megan
you know, you wouldn’t go to a voicemail system. You had an actual answering machine if you weren’t there. So they called it would just be busy. Yeah, yeah.

Stephie
Forever. For hours and hours. And, like no one was dying on the other end of the line. Like someone really needed to get a hold of me you were fucked.

Megan
Right. And they finally realized like, oh, we have teenage children we we need to

Stephie
have two phones. Yes. Yeah, I remember because it didn’t like I didn’t think about the facts because again, I was like, pretty young, but I didn’t think about the fact that like before the internet like it wasn’t as common to have just like personal computers. But we did have one because my dad was in school at the time. Like he his job was like paying for him to get his degree. So I think that that’s ultimately like probably why we had a computer so we had like word processing and then like some like basic computer games and stuff for me because I was little and so but yeah, you know, back in the days when you had to like go out and buy the program and put it all out load it onto the computer. And like, if you wanted a new one he had to go buy the new version couldn’t just automatically download from the cloud.

Megan
Oh, yeah. And I’m also old enough that I was around for the progression of like, the floppy disks. Hmm. To the smaller hard disk to the zip drive down. Oh, yes. For backups. Yes. And then also to the CD ROMs and the CD ROMs that were burnable.

Stephie
Yeah, yes, yes. Well, it’s, uh, you know, it’s funny because, like, on, like, save buttons. It’s a floppy disk. And you think about like that, or like, like actual, like, telephones, like, you hang a telephone icon at the telephone icon looks like a tail phone. And like, those are things that our kids are going to be like, I don’t even know what that is.

Megan
I think they’ve seen them on TV and movies and stuff, I guess. So they kind of know.

Stephie
But like, that’s their only frame of reference, which is horrifying. Why do we say hang up the phone because you actually have to hang the phone up like all of these and like

Megan
their grandparents, their grandparents do have have house phone. So at least once a day grandparents has house phone, so they have seen a house phone, but it’s also it’s cordless, so that there’s still computers that still haven’t seen a regular phone? Yeah. Okay. I have had Reese asked me before about, like, because he has asked about phones. And he said so what do you do if you get a call from you know, a friend and you want to go talk to them. I said, Well, you have to sit there next to the phone and talk to them. Unless you have a really long cord

Stephie
up and watch Parent Trap heights in the closet.

Megan
We had a pretty long cord so that I was able to pick up I could take the phone from the wall cord. Yeah, partway. And then I could take the stretchy cord the rest of the way. So I could sit in the stairwell. Yeah, which was still like right next to the living room. But it was private.

Stephie
I was on the phone with my grandmother not too long ago. And Eden was I don’t know getting in shenanigans while I was on the phone. And she was like, grandmommie was saying she was like, she’s like they always get she’s like, they always say that they know when you’re on the phone and like you’re not fully paying attention. And she’s like, you know, back in my day, you were like stuck, you can only go so far, because you were literally trapped to the wall. And they always knew exactly how far you could reach, you get just out of your reach or where the court could reach. Okay, so obviously, you have older kids, how has like teaching them to navigate the Internet, Ben,

Megan
it’s interesting, because my kids are six years apart in age, and that you can tell the difference even with that now, and then you would think that they’re kind of the same generation. So you wouldn’t think that it’d be so different. But the younger one, like God does everything, immediately, I feel like he knew how to type really early. He knows how to navigate YouTube, and play all the internet games and do all play in Minecraft earlier and do all of these things just intuitively. Not related to the internet, but also he’s really good at video games. And he has been for a while he just like intuitively knows how to do everything on these video games beats me every time so much better than me. But it was, it’s interesting, because I think for Max, they aren’t doing as much in school stuff because he’s only in third grade, prefer research a lot more things where I have to kind of explain not necessarily how they work, but more what they’re for. Okay, I think so. He’ll know certain things like how to code something using Python for Minecraft, which I would not know how to do. Yeah. But he doesn’t necessarily know how to do something in Google Sheets, okay. Or he doesn’t know how to use a program like Canva just because he wasn’t sure. And for he didn’t really understand. He understood how to use Google. But he didn’t really understand that Google is just a search engine

Stephie
and not actual internet internet.

Megan
Yeah, like Google is not the internet just technically

Stephie
search and no one gives a fuck about them

Megan
and it’s they I mean they definitely know how to use it very intuitively. So I don’t think there’s anything where it’s necessarily or like Oh, I’m an old person I don’t know how to do the things you’re doing right luckily mostly but that’s mostly because I spend you know my whole day working on the internet right? But he does really Reese has a cell phone but he definitely does not really understand that people do not have phones and you didn’t you couldn’t just call people and you didn’t have the internet in your pocket. Right. If you wanted to look something up or if you needed directions to something but you did not

Stephie
print the Mapquest direction you did not even have your if the Mapquest directions took you the wrong way down a one way street like it used to do in this town all the time in college are screwed. I cannot tell you how many times I was told to turn the wrong way down these one way streets and I was like, motherfucker.

Megan
I remember one time before I had a cell phone before my friend had a cell phone. I was going to drive to his house to his apartment. And I wrote down directions I looked them up I wrote them down. I don’t think I’d maybe I didn’t have a printer or something. So I couldn’t print real directions. And then headed off to go this apartment I got lost for at least an hour. Oh yeah, driving around a little neat. I wasn’t even far away. I just could not find his place because the internet directions were so bad back then. And if you didn’t know exactly what all the little it

Stephie
was just a map well and if you didn’t know like because it would say it was still say like in two and a half miles turn right onto this road. But if you didn’t know how far two and a half miles was then you were like, yeah, go 78 miles. How am I supposed to know when I’ve got 78 miles

Megan
it would match westerly know if things if it was you this road will veer to the right or there’s a why and you have to go one way. There’s a construction detour. Oh my god. I remember whenever we would go anywhere, and we would only when I was a kid, we would basically only go either to my grandparents house or to my aunt’s house and it was either two hours one way or like two and a half hours the other way. So not super far. But we would always like get the road construction. Every time like my I think there’s a cannot reroute. There’s one thing about

Stephie
your like pulling out your car map and you’re like, Ah, no. Oh my god, oh,

Megan
my kids love a car map. Because they’re just like not at this point. Whenever we would drive from Texas to Minnesota, we had an atlas Atlas and they love looking at the road out way.

Stephie
Yeah, I have always been notoriously bad at reading maps, like, yeah, very bad. And so my mother would be like, I need you to pull up the map and tell him and I’m like, I don’t didn’t help that is not very well, because you know, I’m not good at this. This is not my skill set. I don’t know what I’m looking at.

Megan
Well, the problem is then you’d have to buy a map every single year. Data roads, yes. And then you have to try and figure it out whether the road was if there’s a new road if it was a new road, if it was an old road, like it was a lot. There’s a lot that really

Stephie
does make our lives so much easier.

Megan
There’s some weird thing I feel about men, my, my dad, my dad, your dad, Bob’s dad age where they were all aside from the maps themselves. They all really loved the map programs. So it wasn’t just Mapquest because Mapquest was on the internet but you could buy a program called Rand McNally’s maps whatever and it was the like on your computer maps and man loved he loved planning trips on never went anywhere. And yeah, love making little trip itineraries on his little man was like his version of Pinterest. Yes, he really liked what I would train tycoon whatever. Yeah. So some kind of thing.

Stephie
I was, uh, I was at my aunt and uncle’s recently and I had they don’t have like, Great Wi Fi out there because they live out in the middle of nowhere. So their house does have Wi Fi but it isn’t super strong. And so I had the foresight to like download a few Disney plus movies in the app just pull up for Eden in case she just like, really checked out of everything was like I want to watch Mallanna and so I like I had pulled one up and my uncle was like, he was like you guys So easy. And I was like, Yeah, I mean, I’m not gonna argue that point. Like, I have Elmo in my pocket. Like, literally, if she has a meltdown in the middle of the store, I can be like, here’s Elmo, I’m not dealing with this right now. This is how I choose hate to deal. Like, I have Spotify, if we’re in the car, and she’s like, I want to listen to incognito. I’m gonna be like, Fine, like, pull it up. No big deal. Whatever. I’m like, yeah, the internet does make my life a little bit easier as parent in that way. I’m not gonna lie.

Megan
Oh, yeah, the fact that they can just turn on Netflix, and watch whatever they want, at any time. But no commercials,

Stephie
they didn’t have to even wait for the CD ROM, or the DVDs from Netflix to come in the mail.

Megan
Didn’t have to wait for the DVDs to come. You didn’t have to rewind anything. They they didn’t really understand commercials for a really long time. Because we don’t have cable and we I don’t think we ever really had cable. And when the kids were around, and so they would only watch videos on DVD. Netflix, or, you know, like PBS Kids and PBS Kids is have commercials now there it just has stuff at the end. Uh huh. And so I think one, you know, whenever we would go to the grandparents house, and they would not understand that shows have commercials.

Stephie
And you’d have to sit through them. Yeah.

Megan
And they would be you’d be watching some show and they would have to go to the bathroom, you need to pause it and like, I can’t pause it because this is the TV. You just have to wait for a commercial or go in miss it. Whatever way it is your options. And there’s why I don’t get it.

Stephie
I know you don’t because the sprinting that will happen from like, Okay, I need to pee and get a snack and like, I’m gonna go pee, you go get the snacks you go get the drink. Everyone meet back here before the commercial is over. Go.

Megan
Yeah, you would have to like strategically plan it out. Either you would get your you would either split it up like that. Or you would play your route T one time. And then the next break, you get a snack on the next break, you get your drink, or you’d

Stephie
like heavier route, like okay, I’m gonna run through the kitchen. And I know the chips are on the counter. So grab them on my way back. It was it was 100% strategy, because also if you missed something that happened in the episode, you couldn’t just watch it later on Hulu. You you just you just you just missed out and then you had to maybe wait for a rerun. Yeah, and and who knew when that was going to be?

Megan
I mean, I did actually know the reruns schedule after a while. Usually, like, a certain time period where they play the reruns, but they don’t play all the reruns, right, obviously, because there are only maybe like, you know, six week breaks in between, right for you know, when they stop when they do the the fall finale. And then they start up in spring again. So there’s only you know, January half of February or whatever, right, so they can’t show all 11 episodes that you’ve already missed. Right? Exactly.

Stephie
So the best ones

Megan
with the best ratings are the ones that were most important to the plotline. Cool thing.

Stephie
So yeah, and if you couldn’t watch the episode that week, you were just going to be out of the loop and the conversations

Megan
man cool. The worst.

Stephie
Everyone else was just I

Megan
grew up during the time when friends came out the first time first time

Stephie
has come out multiple times, right? That’s fine. Yes.

Megan
Yes, I think it premiered when I was like 14, perhaps and so we were all obviously obsessed with it and as a nation, but teenage girls, of course and so you had to watch it.

Stephie
And if you must see you didn’t know watch when Ross said Rachel’s name instead of Emily’s name.

Megan
You didn’t watch must see TV if you didn’t watch TGIF so you can talk about it with all your friends. What were you even doing? There was nothing else to do. So really? What else were you? Like legitimately? Legitimately there was not Instagram you could not spend your day making tic TOCs

Stephie
oh my gosh, yeah, I this is this is a fun walk down memory lane. Things our kids will not understand.

Megan
They’re there’s so many things outside of the realm of the internet that they will not understand. But the internet is a pretty huge one because I don’t think that we quite realized how much of our life it would would be dependent on it.

Stephie
It’s such as So many aspects of our lives. Yeah, like, I mean truly every single possible way that something can almost can. It’s how you know, it’s how we communicate. It’s how we find information if we’re able to connect to people across the globe, like you can become friends with someone without ever meeting them in person because of the internet. People like us literally make our entire livings because of the internet. Yeah, like there’s, you know, your things that are related to health care. And you’re like, well, being that you can track because of the internet or do because of the internet. Like there’s it’s just truly wild when you really think about, like, if the internet just completely collapsed. How much of our society would just be like, booked?

Megan
Yeah, it would be, it’d be weird. It’d be super strange.

Stephie
And like, obviously, people have lived for ages and ages and ages without the Internet. And did like perfectly fine. But you we just have become like, so dependent on it. Yeah, that even when you go somewhere, and there’s like, no Wi Fi, you’re like, I’m bored. What am I supposed to do read a book? Yeah, I mean, like, I mean, I know people that do sometimes, like, I’m gonna go somewhere where there’s no Wi Fi. So I can disconnect for the weekend, or I’m gonna turn my phone off or not have internet for a weekend. I just want to like, disconnect. Like, you have to detox from it or something. Yeah. So I don’t know. It’s just, it’s interesting to think about.

Megan
I do think it’s interesting that we, I’d wonder if if cellphones hadn’t become such a big thing, how different the internet would have been. Because I think part of the reason of why everything is so interconnected now is because we have this little pocket machine that has everything on it. And that’s one of the reasons why I hated cell phones. Before I got one, I still kind of hate cell phones, to be honest. And it’s not because I don’t want people to call me. Even I don’t. But please don’t. Please don’t. I don’t like the fact that I look at it all the time. Yeah, I don’t like the fact that all of the things are on there. Very easy for me to get to. I think it is a really huge distraction, I know is a distraction for my kid. Sometimes, to the point of it’s been a problem. He’s pretty good about it now. But it was a really, really big problem before. But I think we need to all as a society in general, we need to figure out the balance. Right. And I don’t know if we’ll be able to do that.

Stephie
Right. Yeah, I think we’ve kind of gotten to the point of no return almost with it. Yeah. Yeah. I think you’re right. Because, you know, I think of before I really just had Internet access on my phone all the time, right. I mean, you obviously you had to be on the computer. And so it was definitely more of like, especially for the age that I was I was in school, I was in high school, and then you know, college of like, okay, yes, I’m doing research for school, or like, maybe I’m maybe I’m on YouTube look, because YouTube came out when I was in college, really. And like it started in high school, but really became a thing in college. And so maybe I’m on YouTube. Maybe there’s like a game or something that I’m playing, but for the most part, like what it was there on your computer. When you were by your computer.

Megan
Yeah, you had to intentionally use it. Yeah, yeah. Not just and now it’s just like, I’m sitting here for more than a minute. I’m gonna play hurtle

Stephie
like whatever. Yeah, I’m gonna see what’s on Instagram. I’m gonna see what’s on Yammer.

Megan
I would say one thing about the internet is that my kids, and probably lots of people don’t know how to be bored. Yes, I’m not necessarily bored even but just sit still sit still. Yeah. Yeah. Whenever if my kids asked to use the internet, and I say, you know, you’ve had enough screen time or whatever, you can go do something else. They just lay on the floor and like,

Stephie
what am I supposed to do?

Megan
Like they’re gonna die. And just pout and just sit there and go do something else for like five minutes, right? And then come back and ask again. It was five minutes, my man you do not understand.

Stephie
Right? Like, go play outside. Go read a book. Go build something with Legos. Draw a picture. Write a story.

Megan
There’s so many more games use your imagination. Yeah. I don’t know. Yeah, we’ll see. We’ll see what happens as they get. I’d be I’d be interested to see how it works with Eden because she is six years for Max about so. Yeah, it’ll probably be

Stephie
a little bit different for her to Yeah, it is, is I mean, it’s already sometimes I’ve already like, Oh, geez. But I’m also there are also times where I’m like, You know what, it’s fine. It’s whatever. I don’t

Megan
I don’t know. So we’re all figuring it out as we go.

Stephie
We’re all figuring out as we go. I mean, like, I also think about like, I mean, even as a kid, like, I mean, we had, we did have cable when I was a kid. And so but I mean, I watched a lot of like PBS Kids and stuff. And especially like, I don’t know, I was the only child my mom was home with me, but like, we would do, and we would do stuff, but she wasn’t, she was not a like, Okay, I have the next activity planned. Like, I spent a lot of time like, reading books, or like doing crafts, or whatever, but also maybe watching a TV show while she was like sewing and doing a project or whatever. Yeah, I’m like, honestly, like, cuz I think about like, I don’t know, that even watches anymore, like TV, or has like, more screen time really than I did when I was a kid. And I’m like, I’m pretty fine. I’m relatively fine. But I’m gonna roll with the it makes my life easier and go with that. I don’t know. Maybe it’s lazy parenting, but I don’t really care. It’s fine.

Megan
I mean, it depends. Because it’s not like you’re like, set her in front of TV

Stephie
and right. It’s TV as a babysitter, right? Yeah. From daycare, and she’s had a whole day of just like, it’s all activity and stimulation, activity and stimulation and being around people when she like, comes home, and she like, needs a snack and just wants to watch Elmo and like, zone out for a few minutes. I’m like, I get that kid. I do not blame you. I’m gonna you can do that. Right? That’s cool, whatever, because then she also gets in bed and then like, reads her books. So I’m like, it’s fine. You’re doing just fine. The balance, it is a balance. It’s a balance.

Megan
So lovely. walk down memory lane was a

Stephie
lovely walk down memory lane.

Megan
What’s bringing you joy this week? Um, well, I

Stephie
already talked about my baskets. So I guess I can’t talk about my basket. Although my baskets are bringing me a lot of joy. Oh, so you know, I mean, I guess I will, I’m gonna I’m gonna cheat a little, I’m gonna piggyback off of last week’s story, which was that we were getting my website back up and running. And we did get that launched. And it has just been really nice to like, all these people have just been saying such nice things about the new site design and like, excited that I’m blogging again. And I’m like, Oh, I didn’t know you missed me. Like it was really nice. So I don’t know. It’s just been a nice little surprise to have people be like, Oh, I missed you. I missed your recipes. And I missed your posts. Like, Oh, you did? Okay. Oh, oh. So

Megan
I think that’s it. Interesting thing, because not that people would be saying that, like, fucking rude.

Stephie
Jesus. God,

Megan
to quote my husband after you brought us a cake last week, he was like, why didn’t you bring us more? She make us another one. Ridiculous.

Stephie
He goes, I made angel food cake. And I brought them literally a third of the cake because I knew it was Bob’s favorite.

Megan
I had one bite, and he ate the rest of it in like two days.

Stephie
Then I said, Well, maybe if he’s really sweet, and doesn’t annoy you too much. I’ll make him one for his birthday. And since then, every time I’ve seen him, he has been like buttering me up and be like, you’re you’re really awesome. Have I told you how awesome you are? And like, you’re really good at baking cakes. Oh, my God, Bob, I will make you an angel food cake for your birthday chill.

Megan
What? I think it’s interesting that we all just automatically are like, nobody reads my website. But there are so many people that we know, lately that have been selling their websites. Yeah. The people there have been bloggers for you know, we’ve been bloggers for a long time. And so they’ve been blogging just as long as as are longer than us. And they’re giving it all up and selling their websites. And on the one hand, I kind of understand and on the other hand, it’s so confusing to me, because my website is it’s like my little baby. Yeah, it’s who I am. And I can’t imagine someone else owning that or running or doing anything else with it. And I know that if it went away, there would be some people who would be sad about it. So I’m sure for anybody who has a recipe website. There’s people who are like, Oh, I have a friend who recently shut down her website. And everyone was like, Why? Why would you want all your recipes? And she’s like, you can download them now like, but we want them later.

Stephie
Yeah, yeah, I don’t know, it’s been fun because I mean, like, my site has still been live, like all the time even though I haven’t been really, really updating it. And so like the archives are there and like, I know people that like go on and like if still going on and like gotten the recipes and stuff. But yeah, it’s just funny to see people be like, Oh my gosh, you’re gonna be bringing us like new content. And I’m so excited about it. Like, okay, thank you like, well, that’s a nice little ego boost. So yeah, that’s, that’s been making me happy this week. How about you?

Megan
Along the same lines, and also related to the internet. Internet tools have been making me really happy. I love organizing, both in person, in person and digitally. And so I’ve been added all these tools to my website organizational arsenal. And I really appreciate that they’re all there to help us because on the one hand, it’s kind of annoying because you get like a brand new blogger who was like, I have so much traffic and immediately in my blog is amazing, because they already have all the tools ready for them. And they know how to use them. And they because you it

Stephie
those of us that have been doing it a million years have written the

Megan
much like the internet. Yes, we had to learn everything from scratch, right? And didn’t know what we were doing at all. There was no one to teach us because no one knew anything

Stephie
there when the magic was created. The fuck that quote is, yes. Do not cite the dark magic to me. Yes, exactly.

Megan
And so I appreciate it. There’s all these tools to help keep it organized, because there’s so many things, but running a website these days that you need to remember to do. And like I’m really good at putting up a post. I’m really bad at promoting the Oh shit, I forgot to put it on Pinterest. Goddamnit share it with people, so they see it. Right. Um, and so the tools are there to help me they’re there to help you write stuff. They’re just really great tools. And I’m really happy for all them. The only thing that I wish was that they were one tool.

Stephie
I know I want the perfect thing. That’s all what is you know, it’s like we talked when we talked about planners, like we have this long list of things that we want,

Megan
right? All in the one thing, one thing none of them have none of them have

Stephie
every single thing. Yes. So there is there is that is Yeah, that’s a bummer. But I mean,

Megan
on the one hand, I guess it’s good. Because if that thing went away, and then you’d really be fucked by us. It would be nice to have one thing, mostly because you have to pay for all these tools. I would like to pay for one tool.

Stephie
I have so many tabs open at

Megan
one time, Max was looking over my shoulder at my laptop. And he said, you have so many tabs open and I said yeah, I do. He’s like, doesn’t that slow your computer down? I said, Yeah.

Stephie
Stop kid. Again. That site the dark magic?

Megan
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. eight year

Stephie
old. It does slow my computer. Yes. Have you ever heard my computer sound like an airplane taking off? And it’s because of the tabs?

Megan
I need all of them. I need 20 tabs in multiple windows? Yeah. I can’t tell you why. I could close them. I really could. But then if

Stephie
you do, when you when you do close them, you need and then it’s no it’s bad

Megan
and messes my flow like when gute when Chrome unexpectedly ship shuts down. And you can’t get it to restore tabs. And you’re like, what did I even have open? No, because

Stephie
I know I also have them in a specific order. Yeah. There’s a specific order tabs. I know they’re in a certain way where to find them. Yeah. So yeah, it’s very science. Science. Okay. All right, whatever. Anyway, well, until next week, leave us a review on Apple podcasts and listen to us on your favorite platform. You can also follow us on social media at IRSIpodcast or send us an email at I’d rather stay in podcast@gmail.com We’d love to hear from you

Megan
bye

Transcribed by https://otter.ai