Without Wi-fi

This morning I woke up bright and early, grabbed a cup of fresh coffee, sat down at my coffee table, and opened my laptop to find that my Internet service wasn't working. At all.

I disconnected everything; reconnected everything. I counted to 10 Mississippi. Nothing. I let Windows try and find the problem. It didn't. I thought maybe my wi-fi card got surged in the last storm. I booted. I re-installed drivers. I gave up but held on to hope that the Internet connection would be restored. I thought of a hundred things I would have done if I had Internet connection - blog, check email, look up whether or not there has ever been a study to show women have better memories than men - I needed to check ingredients for marinara sauce but couldn't, so I made another type of red sauce altogether not suitable for these warmer months. I couldn't make cookies because I forgot how much sugar I needed to use. IT WAS A DISASTER.

So at about 1 am I decided before going to bed I'd give it one last shot. Success! Then I needed to make certain it was working...by blogging.

It terrifies me that the Internet is such an important part of my life and the reality is I didn't miss much. Sure there were emails and Facebook status updates, but they could have waited a day or two.

My goal is to not spend tomorrow on Facebook. I have a recipe for green beans to think of, laundry, house cleaning, and well in lieu of the Internet I did seriously get my old school geek on. I've been playing Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a PC game that probably came out in 1999 that I loved and might be one of my favourite PC games of all time. Sid Meier/Firaxis Games are (some) of the brains behind Civilization, which is another one of my favourite PC games. (I just want to state for the record despite my geekiness I don't play Warcraft anymore and I have never played Second Life for example. I'm determined to beat my old high score. I can't let this get in the way of getting the house a bit cleaned up and preparing a yummy dinner (which will include an Oreo cheesecake) for Donald who is coming to visit while he's in France before heading off to China to trek around for the rest of the summer.

I've been in this flat awhile now, but it does still have its glitches where it sorts of ruins the idyllic setting. I can deal with the hiccups and have been for the past few years, but there's also another sort of odd thing I realised today about the rhythm of living in a place you care about and plan on sticking around in for a bit. When spring came I prepared the house for spring. Not just putting away my winter threads and the usual ménage de printemps (spring cleaning), but I planted and started using the terrace almost as an extra room. I started organising more and wanting to fix little things. Now that I'm thinking about the fall and winter I already have about a hundred household chores I have planned to make the house as cosy and warm as possible (thus avoiding all the mistakes I made last year like not putting curtains up!) in case it's another oddly freezing winter Mother Nature has in store for us.

So that's what this week is going to be about. Home improvement. I'll be posting pictures so show you what I manage to accomplish - especially since the big Emmaus sale is this weekend.

I think I might even turn the Internet off. God only knows what I'd manage to get done!