Things are starting to get back to normal around here, but in a very quiet way. I haven't heard many voices, but I have been endlessly judged. I have been the recipient of a lot of pointed stares from pouting faces, apparently because "you know what you did." Yes, I do. I went away for five days. Quelle horreur. Everyone around here seems to have the ability to make those eerie big eye faces, like the paintings from my childhood (that is now a movie? did I see a trailer for that or was it a dream?). Rabbit has been the neediest and most determined to make me pay for my absence, but this big black bear in footy pajamas is accusing me of neglect as well. The dogs didn't even bark when I picked them up from camp. They just sat quietly in the car on the way home, their silence tripling the sense of guilt that I had for making them live in a space the size of a small walk-in closet for a weekend.
I'm a little on edge from my big brother moment today. Most people try to keep at least one friend who is good at computers around to run to when we have problems. I'm just lucky enough that my friend is better at it than yours. Unfortunately, he's so good at it that he usually confuses me within the first three sentences of his instructions on how to solve my computer crises. But in conversation today, he first assured me that he could recover the pictures that my damaged SD card has hidden from me, as long as I stop using it until I let him have the card and the device to sort through. Then he told me to try the Google+ app, because it has probably been backing up my photos for as long as I had a Gmail account. So I opened the app that I never use on the phone (or just about anywhere, because I haven't found space in my life for it yet), and there they were. I don't know whether just the missing 3100 are there, or thousands more on top of that that I thought I had deleted. I'm a little afraid to look. I don't have any incriminating pictures I need to worry about (I don't take nude photos of myself or anyone else - I'm not stupid), but I sometimes take ten pictures just to get one I like. And I know I've used the camera to investigate a suspicious mole at least once. Stuff like that does NOT need to be backed up to a cloud. Ever. So I'm glad that all my photos are not lost, but the dread of loss is now replaced with the creepy feeling that I can never be anonymous, and that is much worse.
I've already felt like there are computer algorithms that can sense words being spoken by or near me, and produce content that matches. Even worse, I have lost count of the number of times I have been writing this very blog, been stuck for a moment, and the word I am seeking is spoken on the television. Tonight, as I was editing the content for tonight in my head, deciding what to repeat and what to keep to myself, I was watching Person of Interest. Part of the story line involved a damaged SIM card and the search for deleted texts. One of the lead characters (Finch) suggests to search the cloud for the missing data. He said all of our data never goes away. "We have finally achieved immortality... Even when our bodies die, our personal data lives on in cyberspace forever, whether you like it or not." I want to ruminate on that a little, but I'm thinking I come down on the "not" side of that one.
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