You know you are getting old when:

[Harp]

Vicks Vapo rub; Del Monte sliced peaches; Wild Turkey 101. A rye bourbon, heat the peaches,
rub the rub=cover with a University of Illinois fleece=and pour the peaches, chase with the bird.
Turn on radio to 67* AM The Score for subliminal sports all nite long.

 

[MisterCairo]

The kind of non-prescription reading glasses you can buy off the shelf at a local drug store.

After getting laser eye surgery, I require glasses only for reading, so I am constantly getting drug store three-packs of 1.5 strength glasses, as I routinely lose or sit on them...

 

[MisterCairo]

I've never heard of Neo Citron, but I'm otherwise familiar with the hot toddy as a cure (of sorts) for the common cold/flu. You can pretty much substitute any alcohol for Scotch if you wish (my preference is Tequila), but the key is to drink it as hot as you can possibly stand it right before you go to bed, then pull the covers up around your neck and sweat out whatever is ailing you. It doesn't necessarily get rid of the cold/flu, but I've always felt at least a little better the next morning because the lemon juice helps your body retain the water to stave off dehydration, the honey helps to break up the congestion in your lungs, and the alcohol...well, you know.

This kind of medicated stuff.

https://www.neocitran.ca

I too experiment with different beverages, if they go well with lemon and honey. Rum is my number two choice, then Glayva or Drambuie.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Yup. VapoRub and a little watered-down hot rum with honey. I was treated with that, even when I was a kid. I’m fairly sure that modern young parents would frown on it.

Regarding drugstore reading glasses, I’ve got spares liberally sprinkled around the house and office. And I think that no two have exactly the same magnification.

 

[Zombie_61]

This kind of medicated stuff.

https://www.neocitran.ca

Ah, okay. I don't know if they sell that down here because I've never looked for it specifically. For several years now my wife and I have been taking a natural supplement that was suggested to us that allegedly helps to strengthen the immune system. Since taking it we've gone from at least one or two colds per year to...well, I honestly can't remember the last time either of us had a cold--it's been five years at least--so it must be working in some fashion.

...I too experiment with different beverages, if they go well with lemon and honey. Rum is my number two choice, then Glayva or Drambuie.

That's the great thing about Hot Toddys--you don't need to wait until you're unwell to drink them.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Doing what I do best: annoying the doom-and-gloom club by sharing encouraging news.

https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/12/419201/drug-reverses-age-related-mental-decline-within-days

I said “encouraging”. Yes, I know it’s in it’s early stages. Nonetheless, it’s a glimmer of hope regarding a nut (dementia, Alzheimer’s disease) that has proven hard to crack.

 

[Trenchfriend]

When did you wet-wipe your home with your pure hands, the last time?

I'm 36 and will NEVER do that again! Since last year, I'm always using my old "wipeomat".

It's not the perfect system, but still so much more comfortable.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

You know you are getting old if you still watch movies on this device.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Back in the before-times, I once spent a very entertaining evening sharing my View Master reels with a couple of young people who were absolutely enthralled by the whole concept of it. The ones of the New York World's Fair were impressive enough, but when they came to the one showing a costumed chimp riding a llama, the excitement was absolutely palpable.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

Back in the before-times, I once spent a very entertaining evening sharing my View Master reels with a couple of young people who were absolutely enthralled by the whole concept of it. The ones of the New York World's Fair were impressive enough, but when they came to the one showing a costumed chimp riding a llama, the excitement was absolutely palpable.

I had a reel of Rin Tin Tin with a scene of a bear attack that was very 3-D like in quality. Was always fascinated by that one.

 

[tonyb]

Does anyone still take (and show) slides?

 

[Hurricane Jack]

Does anyone still take (and show) slides?

Developing is the problem. I used to buy 35mm Fuji Velvia 50 & Provia 100 by the brick. I still have some partial bricks in the deep freeze. The last I had developed I had to buy prepaid mailers from a developer in CA. I bought 6 mailers & still have a couple of them left. Film labs have become custom printers because there isn't enough development work for them left.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^

There’s a lab here in town I entrusted with making enlargements from a smaller B&W photo taken in the 1950s. These guys sell and process film. They got a fridge full of it. It has me thinking of breaking out my old OM stuff.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

^^^^^

There’s a lab here in town I entrusted with making enlargements from a smaller B&W photo taken in the 1950s. These guys sell and process film. They got a fridge full of it. It has me thinking of breaking out my old OM stuff.

Except in school I never did any darkroom developing myself. But E6 & even good C-41 processing have become a thing of the past.

When my dad died I brought home all his slides in trays. He still had a screen but hadn't had a projector in yrs. I already had a scanner with the software to clean up the varnish off the old Kodachrome. I went thru his slides & scanned the best to thumb drives, then bought my mom a digital picture frame. She could plug in the thumb drives to the picture frame & view the slides by subject matter.

She has passed now & I'm sure that technology has passed on too.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^
I’m reminded of a camera shop/photo processing place I visited frequently back in the late ’90s/early aughts, just when digital cameras were taking off. The proprietor was doing a good business then, but that didn’t last.

One conversation with him that has stuck with me was of us discussing how these digital formats become obsolete so quickly that future generations won’t experience the serendipity of coming across family photos taken half a century or more earlier, unless those images get printed, which the vast majority never will. I’ve taken thousands of digital photos over the past couple decades and the number I’ve printed can be counted without removing my shoes.

 

[Edward]

When you instruct JAG legal officers not yet born the year you signed up...

I've been through the full run - teaching the kids who were born the year I did my GCSEs, A levels, graduated, graduated the second time, started work.... Next year I'll be teaching students born in 2000.... not many more years and my undergraduate model will be older than the kids taking it....

I still swear by Vapo-Rub -- only thing that can get me thru a night when I have a cold. I had elderly relatives who would *eat* it -- a half a teaspoonful before bed or some such dosage as that. I do draw the line at that.

My grandmother ate it as her pregnancy craving when my mother was on the way according to family legend. Other side of the family swore by the old Irish cure for a cold - dissolve it in boiling water in a basin and sit with a towel draped over it and you, and inhale. Makeshift sweatlodge...

My go to cold and flu remedy is a hot toddy (lemon juice, honey and lots of scotch with boiling water), added into which is a full packet of Neo Citron or other medicated hot cold/ flu powder.

I call it a Widowmaker...

I was always told it was somewhere between deadly and rendering them ineffectual to mix those things with alcohol, though that may be the paracetamol in the ones we have here.... to be safe, I stick to lemsip for work, and whiskey at home. The whiskey is nicer to consume, and even if it doesn't cure the cold, it at least makes it funnier. Plus you don't have to wait four hours for another...

After getting laser eye surgery, I require glasses only for reading, so I am constantly getting drug store three-packs of 1.5 strength glasses, as I routinely lose or sit on them...

Those work well for people whose vision is otherwise fine - being short sighted (I have so far opted not to have laser done), I am due in a couple of years' time to have to go bifocal for the first time, and I'm not looking forward to it! I already find though that I'm taking my glasses off to read at close quarters and not at my desk, so.... only a matter of time.

Back in the before-times, I once spent a very entertaining evening sharing my View Master reels with a couple of young people who were absolutely enthralled by the whole concept of it. The ones of the New York World's Fair were impressive enough, but when they came to the one showing a costumed chimp riding a llama, the excitement was absolutely palpable.

I remember friends having one in the late 70s, with Disney toons on them. I think they were sold well into the 80s here. Surprisingly, according to Wikipedia at least they're still on sale.... I thought they'd long since been outdated by tablets and streaming services, if not DVDs, for the kids. I suppose they're a blessedly silent way of keeping kids occupied.... I've lost count of the number of times that I've had to share a train carriage with people who parent-by-tablet. Which I wouldn't mind if they'd discovered such a thing as headphones....

Does anyone still take (and show) slides?

Back in 1992, I was on a school project that did an aid trip to Romania; I had a few speaking engagements about that through the church when I got back. I remember a rickety slide projector being a real pain. Only time I've ever done it; I wish I'd taken some 'proper' photos too. I might one day see if I can have the slides converted to digital. My parents took a lot of slides in the early 70s -big plus as it limited the number of baby photographs they could later embarrass us with (for years my brother and I used to sweep the house hiding old school photos before friends came round; I still cringe when I see some of them on my parents' wall).

These days, with digital photos so popular, people still do slide shows, but they tend to be either in powerpoint or something similar. Vastly more convenient, but I'd love to see somebody add in a slide projector sound effect for the jollies.

^^^^^
I’m reminded of a camera shop/photo processing place I visited frequently back in the late ’90s/early aughts, just when digital cameras were taking off. The proprietor was doing a good business then, but that didn’t last.

One conversation with him that has stuck with me was of us discussing how these digital formats become obsolete so quickly that future generations won’t experience the serendipity of coming across family photos taken half a century or more earlier, unless those images get printed, which the vast majority never will. I’ve taken thousands of digital photos over the past couple decades and the number I’ve printed can be counted without removing my shoes.

Quite so. I've always intended to print mine out in nice word documents, pre-captioned.... not happened yet. I went digital in 2003. On the plus side, I actually take far more photos now, because I'm not thinking about the cost of development, and I always have my phone in my pocket with a very decent camera on board (truth be told I don't currently have a dedicated camera - seems little point paying out for just a snaps camera when the phone is so good at that, though I plan in a year or two to buy a nice digital, maybe an Olympus Pen or similar, that has a bit of an old school look.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The last time I saw a slide projector in action was in 2007, when an elderly birdwatcher rented out the theatre for a night to do a presentation on Rare Songbirds of the Northeastern United States and the Maritime Provinces, or some such. He arrived with two Carousel projectors, a cassette player for his recorded bird songs, and four trays full of slides. There was no way to set this all up from the booth, and the throw would have been too long anyway, so we had to put up a high stand in the middle of the house. And then it turned out that the remote control for the projectors didn't have a long enough cord to reach the podium, so I had to run the whole thing from a middle-row seat near the stand, advancing the slides when he cued with his little metal cricket, while our sound guy sat at his station at the back of the house cueing in the bird-song tape when called. The lenses on the Carousels were not very good, and the lamps weren't very bright, so the image was very far from filling the screen.

But close to a hundred people came to and enjoyed the show, suggesting that technology isn't everything.

 

[Hurricane Jack]

You might be getting old if you ever made Mac & Cheese "from scratch" with Velveeta.

 

[tonyb]

You might be getting old if you ever made Mac & Cheese "from scratch" with Velveeta.

View attachment 286097

I was no fan of macaroni and cheese until I had some that didn’t come out of a box. It was something of a revelation. Still, I can’t get the vision out of my head of kitchen sinks piled high with plates with the remains of macaroni and cheese glued to them.

I may be trailer park, but I ain’t that trailer park.

...

Quite so. I've always intended to print mine out in nice word documents, pre-captioned.... not happened yet. I went digital in 2003. On the plus side, I actually take far more photos now, because I'm not thinking about the cost of development, and I always have my phone in my pocket with a very decent camera on board (truth be told I don't currently have a dedicated camera - seems little point paying out for just a snaps camera when the phone is so good at that, though I plan in a year or two to buy a nice digital, maybe an Olympus Pen or similar, that has a bit of an old school look.

The old saw is that the best photos are the ones that actually get taken. I don’t take nearly as much care in taking pictures with my iPhone as I did when I had to pay for film and processing, but I’ve still taken a few quite good images that wouldn’t have been made at all if not for my iPhone going with me pretty much everywhere.

A pro of my acquaintance is all about the new Sony mirrorless camera. He’s dumping his Canon stuff while it still brings a few bucks. The lesson in this for me, a person who will never be a professional photographer, is to buy pro equipment used, when it sells for a fraction of what it cost new just a few years earlier.

 

[Trenchfriend]

When you have to pay more attention to keep your belly trim.