I am back!!!

I am back!!! And I bet you didn't even know I was gone.

As those people who read my last couple of posts know, Denver was experiencing the joys of the annual monsoon season last week. (Yes, I know that "monsoon" is not the correctt word for it---but hey, the weather people use it on TV, so who am I to be better than they?) What you might not know is that my internet went out shortly after the last post I did about Thursday's storm.

Sometime, late Thursday night, early Friday morning, the internet went bye-bye. Along with the landline on our phone service. Fortunately, my wife has a cell phone, so we could call to ask for someone to fix it.

And we were told that we were on the list, and Sunday was the earliest that it might get fixed.

You see---a lot of people were without phone service thanks to the torrential downpours. On the bright note, we still had power. For awhile there both on Wednesday and Thursday, I was worried about getting stuck by lightning. There was no time between flash and sound. Needless to say that the cats did not like the weather gods those nights.

So there were a lot of power outages and phone lines down.

I handed it better than my wife did. During the semester...and writing season...I tend to take whole days and nights off from the internet. (Hence, the reason I always warn people that it may take up to 48 hours to have their comments approved---I may not actually be around on the internet to approve such things---after all, I have to work for a living and it is easier to do occasionally by ignoring the internet.)

On the other hand, my wife might be an internet addict. Or it might simply be that she is trying to do work for her online jewelry shop on Etsy (Celtic Jewelry and Pottery). I am betting addict. It drive her nuts not to have the internet. And I don't think she could understand how I could be so calm about it.

I was working---that is how I could be calm about it. Oh, I did miss a deadline for a newsletter article because the internet was down. But for the most part, I worked on things that I needed to do offline. (It is one of the reasons that I am not heavily into the whole "cloud" system---how are you supposed to work if you can't get to the internet. Remember my tactic for dealing with Y2K---pen and paper---same goes for internet downage.)

But it did remind of the fact that the internet is actually changing our brains. And part of the change is that we become addicted to the internet. (I am researching "brain changes" for a future set of lessons for the lodge.) I wonder how many people are internet addicts---I am guessing most of my readers.

Anyways, the service person showed up yesterday afternoon. And the problem spot was the same bloody spot as all the rest of my annual internet/phone outages (yes, once a year, Qwest/Century Link is at my house fixing the phone line and DSL)---the place they keep putting back together with gobs of black tape. It does not help that there are demonic squirrels in the neighborhood who chew everything.

There is a bright note here---this service person actually fixed the problem with something other than black tape and a prayer---he actually installed a new junction box and a new section of line (it will be easier for it to be fixed the next time it goes out).

So final score---fifty hours plus without internet. And I survived.

As for my newsletter article---I sent it to the editor with a short explanation. The service man was still loading his truck back up as I hit "send." It took me maybe two minutes to do. Then I wandered for for a couple more hours before going back online. One can see my priorities, can't they?

And the moral of this story is "It is possible to treat the internet like a tool, instead of a slave master and drug dealer."