Dire Straits: No Internet for a Week
Yes, you read that headline correctly. I was without internet for a week. One whole freaking week. Of course, as luck would have it, I was out of town for part of that time, but still. Come on.
It started when a car ran into a pole a few blocks away. Sheared the damn thing off, so that the top part of it was dangling from the electrical wire. Power went out to our entire neighborhood early Friday morning. Let me tell you, it was downright creepy to awaken before dawn that day and realize there was no fan running, no clock, no glowing lights from the power strip. And most of all–no sound from outside. Nothing. You don’t realize how much noise all our things make until they all go away. I had the oddest feeling that the electrical grid of the whole country had been taken out. But luckily, it was just my zip code. And the power came back on within a couple of hours.
All except the internet.
I can live without the TV, and the landline (which is disconnected anyway). But internet? No way.
Okay, okay, okay. So I do have a smart phone. It’s not as if I was totally disconnected from the world. But I am old of a certain age and it turns out I’m lousy at managing my life and my clients and my business from my phone. Really lousy. Careful as I am to scroll through all my emails, I still miss some. And there’s no way to send attachments from the phone.
I know. Whine, whine, whine.
Anyway, I called Comcast (sorry, I just can’t get used to calling them Xfinity) and scheduled an appointment for the next Wednesday, when I would be back home. So much for all those TV ads I saw while watching The Voice. You know, the ones about how Comcast now schedules evening appointments, when it is convenient for their customers. Ha! Nope, they couldn’t come when hub was home in the evenings. The earliest appointment that I would be home for was quite a few days hence.
I went to the beach for a few days and my husband came home early. Bless his heart, because he was able to download messages (hello, data usage), he thought the internet was back up and so I canceled the appointment. But, no. The internet was not back up. It didn’t work at all. Another call to Comcast, and another appointment a few days out.
But! There was hope! Turns out we had an “end-of-life” modem (I swear to you it was only two years old) that had refused to come back on with the rest of its brothers and sisters. And all we had to do was dash up to the Comcast service center, four minutes away, and get a new one. At said service center we were assured that all we had to do was plug it in and everything would work again. (Oh, and routers are no longer needed–cool!)
But…you guessed. We plugged it in and everything worked except the internet. Sigh. So I waited until yesterday when the nice cable guy, Ben, came over and hung out and fixed all my things. He even moved my new, improved start-of-life modem/router away from the bedroom where I’m sure it was emitting all kinds of foul vibes while we slept.
So now I have the interwebs again.
Yes, I know this should have been a lovely amount of extra time to work on my rewrite. And it was. Except I still had clients who were expecting responses from me. And emails to answer. And blog posts to write. And dealing with a tech fail takes time, people! But really, I’m whining on the yacht, because: smart phone.
But I thought you might want to know why I’ve not been blogging. And….I would also like to let you know that after this tale of woe I’m going to need to take to my couch and read for awhile. No, actually, I’ve got to hunker down and get the rewrite finished.
And so I’m taking a brief blogging hiatus. I’ll be back the week of the 15th. However, I do send out a newsletter every other week, so if you’re not on my list, sign up over there on the right so you can get it. I used to do a whole formal ezine thing but lately I’ve just been writing what I call love letters on various writerly topics. I don’t post them on the blog, so the content is completely different. It comes out Sunday (next one will be August 14th).
Okay? Okay.
Oh, by the way, the France retreat is now full. Woot woot! But we’ll be going again next year, so if you’re interested, do let me know. Debbie and I are working on a new website for Let’s Go Write and once that is done we’re going to get very official about a mailing list and actually send information out on it, too!
So now I’m going to go work on my rewrite. Actually, I’m going to go have a glass of wine and sit outside and talk to my husband. Yes, I’m still speaking to him, even though he told me to cancel the first Comcast appointment. I’m not bitter. No, not me.
See you on the 15th.
J.D.
The 15th. I hope in that time you finish your rewrite. Losing the internet would bother me, I suppose, though it has become like television controlled with a keyboard instead of a remote. The people you are teaching in France are in for a treat. I gaze in my crystal ball and see much wine and good food. Finish the rewrite. On the 15th, we will be slightly over two weeks away from college football.
Charlotte Rains dixon
Sure wish you were coming to France this year, J.D.! But college football will be a consolation, I guess! Still plugging away on the rewrite, but making good progress.