A week without internet or wife
The past week or so has been an eventful one. The Friday before last I went down to Seattle to work. Ironically all but one of my team ended up absent or working from home, so little in the way of team bonding actually occurred. The one person who did show up had some nice teas for me that she'd brought back from Thailand. Fun!
After work I met VL for dinner. I know we were both tired (I'd only slept a couple of hours as my son had some severe nightmares and needed comforting), but it still seemed like we didn't connect quite as well as we normally do. Still we shared a mediocre+ dinner of sushi and Singapore noodles and had a nice chat, then went our own separate ways.
From there it was straight to Bellevue for a weekend (or part of one) at the Dragonflight gaming convention. I've had friends encouraging me to do that con with them for years and years, and they'd finally conspired with my wife to coerce me into attending. I'm rather glad they did. It was a very nice hotel (the Hilton) with very large convention spaces. The main hall was jammed with hundreds of tables around which thousands of serious gamers played every imaginable game. Surrounding halls were filled with roleplaying gamers, computer gamers, LARPers, artists, game dealers, guest speakers, etc. It was quite the to-do.
I'm still not sure of the logic of paying a couple of hundred dollars to spend a weekend at a hotel gaming with friends when you could do the same for free at their house, but I very much cherished reconnecting with these friends. I see them perhaps once a year or less, and never together like this. Plus, it's an unusual experience to attend a gaming convention with a state senator, one who spills the beans on the secret geekdom that occurs at the Capital building behind closed doors (pompous politicians that are closet geeks staging special showings new sci-fi movies, etc.).
The day after I got back L left for a trip to Las Vegas. It was an Avon conference, but the trip was just as much a chance for her to take her mother on a vacation like they used to take together to Reno on Mother's Days past. They splurged and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Meanwhile back at home our internet had mysteriously completely failed. It's two-way satellite (no true broadband out here in the boondocks) so we assumed it was bad weather blocking the signal. Sunny skies came and still no signal. The tops of some fast-growing maples were in the line-of-sight of the dish, so we spent some hours cutting them down. Still no signal. The work week started and the provider's tech support said there was no outage, so it was probably the equipment -- the service call would start at $100 + parts, and would be in a day or two. Days of being unable to do my work while getting more and more behind.
Five days later my wife returned, with still no repair person. Within fifteen minutes of her getting home the guy showed up, turned out to be a friend of my wife's, replaced the (expensive) part, and the internet was working. I need to keep this woman around -- she's good luck!
After work I met VL for dinner. I know we were both tired (I'd only slept a couple of hours as my son had some severe nightmares and needed comforting), but it still seemed like we didn't connect quite as well as we normally do. Still we shared a mediocre+ dinner of sushi and Singapore noodles and had a nice chat, then went our own separate ways.
From there it was straight to Bellevue for a weekend (or part of one) at the Dragonflight gaming convention. I've had friends encouraging me to do that con with them for years and years, and they'd finally conspired with my wife to coerce me into attending. I'm rather glad they did. It was a very nice hotel (the Hilton) with very large convention spaces. The main hall was jammed with hundreds of tables around which thousands of serious gamers played every imaginable game. Surrounding halls were filled with roleplaying gamers, computer gamers, LARPers, artists, game dealers, guest speakers, etc. It was quite the to-do.
I'm still not sure of the logic of paying a couple of hundred dollars to spend a weekend at a hotel gaming with friends when you could do the same for free at their house, but I very much cherished reconnecting with these friends. I see them perhaps once a year or less, and never together like this. Plus, it's an unusual experience to attend a gaming convention with a state senator, one who spills the beans on the secret geekdom that occurs at the Capital building behind closed doors (pompous politicians that are closet geeks staging special showings new sci-fi movies, etc.).
The day after I got back L left for a trip to Las Vegas. It was an Avon conference, but the trip was just as much a chance for her to take her mother on a vacation like they used to take together to Reno on Mother's Days past. They splurged and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
Meanwhile back at home our internet had mysteriously completely failed. It's two-way satellite (no true broadband out here in the boondocks) so we assumed it was bad weather blocking the signal. Sunny skies came and still no signal. The tops of some fast-growing maples were in the line-of-sight of the dish, so we spent some hours cutting them down. Still no signal. The work week started and the provider's tech support said there was no outage, so it was probably the equipment -- the service call would start at $100 + parts, and would be in a day or two. Days of being unable to do my work while getting more and more behind.
Five days later my wife returned, with still no repair person. Within fifteen minutes of her getting home the guy showed up, turned out to be a friend of my wife's, replaced the (expensive) part, and the internet was working. I need to keep this woman around -- she's good luck!