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by Teresa Martin

The past few weeks, I dropped offline during my annual migration. This is the period in which I move about 20 feet east to a tiny cottage called Birdhouse, thus freeing my bigger cottage, GrayGull, to continue its 70 year history of helping people make summer memories.

Which sounds lovely, but in reality it means I clean a lot. And haul stuff. And paint and repair and oh yeah clean some more. While dropping out of the world for the duration. In the midst of this throwback behavior, though, technology didn't leave. In fact, I invited a fun new duo into my life.

As frequent readers know, one of my online obsessions is Overstock. I love Overstock and when I can't sleep at night I surf random product categories there. So prior to migration week, but with cleaning on m mind in the wee hours of the morn, I came across my new friend Sally.

She's round and white and cute in a robotic sort of way. She's about the size of a serving platter and makes little chirping noises. Of course I ordered her. Sally (as in "sally forth") is a refurbished Roomba Discovery.

Now, iRobot Roombas aren't new (CCTC folks might remember that one of iRobot's founders, Colin Angle, was a keynoter back at a long-ago annual dinner), but having robotic cleaning help was new to ME. And I got a bit of the giggles from it.

The day the box arrived, we unpacked her and plugged her in to charge. It was frighteningly consumer friendly and easy. I've had traditional vacuum cleaner that were far more intimidating.

A few hours later, I pushed her big round middle button and with a happy burble noise she was off and running. I stood there and watched her making circle patterns and zig zags. And then my daughter joined me. Then the dog joined us. Then the two cats joined us and honest to goodness for a half hour the five of us stood in a row and watched Sally zip about, totally mesmerized.

I wasn't off-line just yet, so I Googled a bit and found a time-lapse photo in which someone recorded the loops and arcs of the little machine's cleaning patterns. And on YouTube, there was a whole collection of home videos featuring cats riding atop zooming Roombas. Apparently "cat toy" is a bonus application that comes along for free. Then of course there are all the videos of people's Roomba modifications - like creating a module to enable Roomba to bring you a beer.

The machine, you see, not only cleans but is also programmable. So if you have the knowledge and a bunch of time on your hands, you can turn it into ... well, whatever your imagination and programming skills can create. There is, of course, a slight irony here in a time-saving cleaning machine becoming a time-sink toy.

So, back to Sally! She zips and cruises across the floor picking up debris I didn't even realize was there while I'm off doing other cleaning tasks. She really works. I mean, I thought she was cute and added her to the cleaning arsenal as sort of a whim, but the darn thing really does fulfill her primary mission.

Various neighbors and friends have trooped through to see Sally. If I had a display for sale right there, Sally's cousins would have been flying off the shelves. Everyone responded just like our little row of human/canine/feline reviewers: they had to stop and watch. And then watch some more.

What is it so that so fascinates us about a whirring spinning cleaning device? Did we once sit and marvel at a spinning washing machine? Or gaze at the amazing automatic dishwasher?

There's something of the same nature in both the Mars Rover and in Sally. The same quality that made Rover such an adorable planet-exploring robot lives in this floor-cleaning robot as well. I wonder if NASA was amazed when people wanted to buy small toy models of Rover? Perhaps it is the roundness, a feature that humans are biologically programmed to respond to based on the shape of human babies. Perhaps it is the jaunty way they both move, which triggers a response of amusement. Somehow, they are robots with a lovable personality that also do something useful.

And so we return again to cleaning. Sally was my cheerful companion for the past week, zipping around the floor until her battery grew tired and she needed a recharge. By taking on a floor-cleaning task independently, she let me do other tasks simultaneously, just like the great wave of home automation appliances of the 1950s did.

My grandmother had an early washing machine that involved a large barrel of water and a hand-operated set of rollers that squeezed out the water. Washing clothes was a very manual process, even with a first gen tool like that. The automatic washing machine changed her life - and the life of everyone whose tasks include getting clean clothes. We use these appliances every day, and very seldom consider ourselves consumers of technology as we stuff our jeans and shirts into the washing machine.

And yet, we are. Being offline didn't remove me from technology, but it did make we aware again of just how integrated it is into everything we do. Someone has been getting GrayGull ready for summer renters since the 1930s. Cleaning. Hauling. Painting. Cleaning again. I'm repeating generations worth of patterns, but using the tools as my disposal to do it, layering the tradition and the technology together without a second thought.

And now this year's migration is complete. Sally is spending the summer in GrayGull. The first renters arrived and oohed and ahhed over her. The spell continues.

Oh yeah, once I was online again I returned to Overstock and ordered another Roomba to keep us company in Birdhouse this summer. The cats can hardly wait.