a week without internets

Our internet service failed very early Monday morning and did not return until last evening. It was interesting to note through deprivation just how much time I spend on the computer and for just how many purposes: Couldn't check email. Couldn't read blogs. Couldn't check the weather or read the NY Times. Couldn't check the bank balance or pay the bills. Couldn't find a recipe for pea soup with ham in ten seconds flat, or get knitting instructions, or check the local classifieds for leads on the mystery kitty that turned up in our basement and stayed for a week without putting my boots on. Yes, many of these things could have been accomplished through other more cumbersome means, but come on. Cook books? Too few choices. Telephone banking? Did that ever seem convenient? CNN and The Weather Channel? Don't get me started.

In the early nineties, I was one of those Luddite wannabees who resisted so much as looking at a computer. How could diddling around with a machine that looked suspiciously like a TV make me in any way more productive? How could staring at a sterile little screen in an alpha-wave brain state do anything but isolate me further from my fellow beings? Well... huh! Sure, it's another way to waste alarming amounts of time astonishingly easily, but, man, I just hadn't fully appreciated how much time it can save. And do I even need to mention how much I missed my email and blog buddies? It's good to get bitch-slapped with one's own self-righteous prejudgements from time to time, I suppose.

The Mystery Kitty was eventually reunited with his grateful people the old-fashioned way: they saw one of the signs I'd posted around the neighborhood. Sure felt good to deliver him safely home. Handsome little dude. And, yeah, I finally closed up the hole he came in through. It was as if the cat said, "Hello. I am a friendly and fine-looking feline who needs a place to crash if it's alright. I noticed the broken basement window under your deck there and it just called to me. I can stay? Cool, thanks. Oh, by the way, I could have been a skunk."

G is inching toward his last day at his office job. Just three days to go after this. We got an interesting little preview of things to come yesterday when his new boss got tired of the delays in productivity due to our service outage and called a guy he knows at our internet provider, who happens to be the head of marketing there. And whattaya know! Our internet connection was restored within the hour. And G got a total of three personal phone calls from this executive, who smooched his butt liberally and told him to call his cell phone anytime if he needed help again. My man, the VIP. There were pink cartoon hearts swirling out the top of my head.