A Day Without Internet Is Like A Day With Extra Hours.
It’s a well-known fact that television is better than Ambien, at least for me. With the exception of Jeopardy, all I need to do is sit down to watch a little something, and I fall asleep immediately, unless it’s a mystery or crime show, in which case I’ll make it until the last 15 minutes. There are episodes of some shows I’ve started to watch three or four times, and I still don’t know who did it. Happily, TV networks tend to put their programming online and a person can watch at an hour when she might stay awake.
To alleviate the foul mood of the my-life-is-now-different-and-I’m-upset whinefest, I thought I’d watch one of the many fine progams I’ve slept through and took the laptop into the bedroom. After finding an outlet and plugging in a power strip, I was finally ready to watch Num3ers, featuring a crime with a magician: another well-known fact is that I’m a sucker for a mystery with magic, food, priests, crime-solving animals, or locked rooms, and if you combine them, and I’m transported. All of which is more than you needed to know, and probably enough to make you think less of me as a person and a sex object. But I digress.
I plugged in my laptop, opened it up, and couldn’t find the internet. I looked under the bed, in the litter box, and where it ought to be, on my computer. But no love, no internet. Of course, I took it personally and assumed that I had done something wrong, or had frightened it away, or was simply unworthy of the Greatness of the Intertubes; it was that kind of day. Finally, I called Bob, who was working on a Saturday and was very reassuring. “Sometimes Verizon is just weird,” he told me. “It will probably be back soon.” It wasn’t when he returned home, so we took the opportunity to have dinner at Nora’s, our local pub, which was all decked out for the holidays.
What I’m not showing you is the other tree in front of the pub, which can be seen from blocks away, possibly even from space, and is one of the more restrained lighting displays in our neighborhood. If the power goes out in the northeast, it won’t be from a blizzard, but because of Marine Park’s festive mood.
We returned home to find that we still didn’t have a connection, and Bob called Verizon; they said there was an outage in our neighborhood and ours alone. So, the next day, without e-mail, Facebook, LJ, online news, or amusing games, we got to work. Curtains finally got hung in the living room.
Wood blinds went up in the bedroom, office, and over the hutch, respectively blond, cherry and metallic. The overhead light in the office got repaired, with a pretty glass pull thingamee added. All of this was Bob’s handiwork, with an occasional assist from me. My contribution was the hanging of artwork, this time in the bedroom.
For reasons I’d hate to explain, mostly because couldn’t, this involved partially disrobing and climbing up on furniture. No alcohol was involved and no animals were hurt, and as you can see, it worked out in the end. After that, I started and mostly completed the festive holiday card project.
By the time we finished everything, the internet had returned to reward our virtue and industry. Or maybe they just fixed the problem.
The living room curtains really make an enormous, if not all the difference to me, enough to regain my cheerful equilibrium, or as much of it as I had. Once again, I feel like there are many wonderful things about this neighborhood, including the splendors of Kings Highway. Still, it saddens me that I remain unable to get my two favorite comfort foods: Stouffers frozen spinach soufflé, and Annie’s mac&cheese, but that seems like a small price to pay when so much else is good.
To alleviate the foul mood of the my-life-is-now-different-and-I’m-upset whinefest, I thought I’d watch one of the many fine progams I’ve slept through and took the laptop into the bedroom. After finding an outlet and plugging in a power strip, I was finally ready to watch Num3ers, featuring a crime with a magician: another well-known fact is that I’m a sucker for a mystery with magic, food, priests, crime-solving animals, or locked rooms, and if you combine them, and I’m transported. All of which is more than you needed to know, and probably enough to make you think less of me as a person and a sex object. But I digress.
I plugged in my laptop, opened it up, and couldn’t find the internet. I looked under the bed, in the litter box, and where it ought to be, on my computer. But no love, no internet. Of course, I took it personally and assumed that I had done something wrong, or had frightened it away, or was simply unworthy of the Greatness of the Intertubes; it was that kind of day. Finally, I called Bob, who was working on a Saturday and was very reassuring. “Sometimes Verizon is just weird,” he told me. “It will probably be back soon.” It wasn’t when he returned home, so we took the opportunity to have dinner at Nora’s, our local pub, which was all decked out for the holidays.
What I’m not showing you is the other tree in front of the pub, which can be seen from blocks away, possibly even from space, and is one of the more restrained lighting displays in our neighborhood. If the power goes out in the northeast, it won’t be from a blizzard, but because of Marine Park’s festive mood.
We returned home to find that we still didn’t have a connection, and Bob called Verizon; they said there was an outage in our neighborhood and ours alone. So, the next day, without e-mail, Facebook, LJ, online news, or amusing games, we got to work. Curtains finally got hung in the living room.
Wood blinds went up in the bedroom, office, and over the hutch, respectively blond, cherry and metallic. The overhead light in the office got repaired, with a pretty glass pull thingamee added. All of this was Bob’s handiwork, with an occasional assist from me. My contribution was the hanging of artwork, this time in the bedroom.
For reasons I’d hate to explain, mostly because couldn’t, this involved partially disrobing and climbing up on furniture. No alcohol was involved and no animals were hurt, and as you can see, it worked out in the end. After that, I started and mostly completed the festive holiday card project.
By the time we finished everything, the internet had returned to reward our virtue and industry. Or maybe they just fixed the problem.
The living room curtains really make an enormous, if not all the difference to me, enough to regain my cheerful equilibrium, or as much of it as I had. Once again, I feel like there are many wonderful things about this neighborhood, including the splendors of Kings Highway. Still, it saddens me that I remain unable to get my two favorite comfort foods: Stouffers frozen spinach soufflé, and Annie’s mac&cheese, but that seems like a small price to pay when so much else is good.