The Joy of Skype

It took me a long time to decide, but I am now the user of Skype.
You might ask, Dear Reader, what took me so long?

Skype is a universal, free, telephone and video program, used by many of our friends, and often adopted by TV news journalists who aren't able to use a camera crew or even an iPhone to file their stories.
Many families have used it for years, allowing members from all around the world to check out new babies, children, etc. One of our friends, who has a first grandchild (named: Colin), living in Toronto, even used Skype each evening to read him a bedtime story! It was the highlight of their days.
Skype looked better when I read some glowing reviews, but I still wondered:
-- Do I need it?
-- Would I use it?
-- How difficult is it to download and set up the program?
The “tipping point” (and I use that jargon term reluctantly!) came when a friend who was visiting Sydney -- the other one, in Australia -- learned in early December that one of her mentors had passed away here at Sisters of Charity-Halifax. She would be unable to attend the funeral Mass. It was SHE who suggested a Skype conversation with my wife.
And so, I decided to download Skype, which turned out to be ridiculously easy, then set it up, choose a Contact Name, and test it.
After we exchanged Contact Names, the next step was to set up a mutually-convenient time, because Sydney time is 15 hours ahead of Atlantic time! Neat trick.
So, there we were, at 5 p.m. here and 8 a.m. there, clicking the appropriate icons and seeing each other on Skype.
(Of course, she had to brag that the afternoon temperature that day would be hovering around the 40° C range.)
What I had forgotten to take into account, Dear Reader, was that our friend is not an early riser, sounded slightly on organized and rather disheveled!
However, she proved to be her usual excellent conversationalist self, and my wife replaced me in the camera chair.
They had a great talk for almost an hour.
And, she got to see the funeral Mass, as streamed by Sisters of Charity-Halifax.
We repeated the effort on Christmas Day, when she had returned to Florida. This time, the discussion was among the two of us here and two people there. The whole session went fine, until 50 minutes into the conversation, when the audio became garbled in both directions. We're going to have to look into that.
All in all, we have found that Skype works; it's free, the video is good, and the audio may need a little work.
That's all for now.
Happy New Year!