Confessions of an Internet Junkie

1. Still no internet at home. The tower was repaired last Monday, so the problem is with our site, and it requires a company tech to come out to fix whatever it is. (We suspect the ancient modem.) They refuse to send anyone out for - "optimistically" - two weeks. Can you believe this crap? Deb was on the phone for a long, long time trying to get around the bureaucracy but with no success. We're hunting around for a modem on our own - also with little success. Deb has a friend who does freelance tech stuff (he'd helped us out once before), but she can't reach him. I'm hoping he was on vacation and will be returning tonight. Because this is ridiculous.

2. It's been beyond frustrating trying to keep up with things with no internet, especially out in the boonies. We had a tornado warning in our area last Wednesday. Normally we'd be tracking the radar online, but instead we had to rely on the national weather channel, which was pathetic. There is no local no TV, no daily paper. The "local" radio got their information from the same place we did: the national weather service. Even they (the nws) have admitted that they're not very good, and they're working with very outdated equipment. So we packed up our necessaries and kept a lookout for funnel clouds in the distance. Until it got dark, and then we just took it on faith and called it a night. We found out that a tornado touched down about 10 miles from us, but thankfully everything really nasty passed us by.

3. Dar's daughter, the Divine Miss M, is starting university in a few weeks at the University of Guelph. That's about an hour away. Because she's somewhat older than the traditional students (she's 20), and because she has various health issues, she wasn't going to be staying in a dorm. Dar knocked herself out trying to track down housing for her, and she finally found the perfect spot: a private home right next to the campus - like right NEXT TO the campus. The woman also had a gluten allergy, as did the other young woman who was going to share the rental basement apartment with M. The owner and Dar hit it off big time, everything was set, the woman wanted some recipes for M's favorite food, she was so excited to have M move in there . . . two hours later she abruptly backed out of everything. So all this week we've been traveling around Guelph trying to find an apartment for M. And Dar found one. This morning. It's great; M loves it; it's right on the bus route and across the street from her bank and a big, beautiful Zehrs that carries gluten-free food. We move her in next week.

4. I'm almost off prednisone, and it's a mixed blessing. Less drugs, more pain. Manageable but still . . . Also, that what-I-thought-was melanoma turned out to be a strangled blood vessel. Ewww. Looks like an alien bug bite, but I'll take it over the alternative.

OK, gotta run. Have groceries moldering in the trunk while we ducked into McDonald's to grab some online time. I hope everyone is well and rides out Irene safely!

You didn't even know that we were gone, did you? Let me tell you that we were, uh, forcibly removed from the interwebs for a while.

For those who don't know - or remember - we've moved into a house owned by one of our alpaca friends. We're on the main floor, and our friend and her daughter live in the basement apartment. Our friend's daughter's boyfriend recently moved into their place, too. So earlier in the week we noticed that our internet access was getting wonky. Very slow at times, non-existent at other times. And then we lost it completely. Ummm, it turns out that our combined household killed the internet in our whole neighborhood. Killed it dead. When the company that owns the local tower got everything up and running again, they kept us down for "hogging all the bandwidth." We were shocked when we found this out. No, really. Shocked.

First of all, we were all going on the fact that our friend told us that we had unlimited access. It turns out that our poor friend doesn't really get it when it comes to computers and technical stuff, and she was just going on information that had been in place for her little business. Second, it turns out that many of us in the house went a little hog wild. There was downloading of movies and TV shows and much music and streaming videos and big time online gaming. All at the same time. We killed the internet. We are mighty! I think the neighborhood thinks we're mighty big jerks, but hey . . . mighty is mighty.

We've got it all straightened out and are back online. Or mostly so. We in the house are all aware of the restrictions now, and we're playing it safe. Even so the company is monitoring this place 24/7 with the warning that if we use too much bandwidth they'll kick us off for good. You know, it's not like we did anything maliciously. It was an honest mistake built on a misunderstanding. On the other hand there are five fingers, the company is upgrading their tower to handle more bandwidth, and we'll be upgrading our contract when it's completed. Some time in January we think. But if we all suddenly disappear from the internet, you'll know what happened.

Never a dull minute around here. Ever.

1. I saw my nephrologist today, and my kidney function continues to improve. She doesn't have a definite prognosis (a bit oxymoronic, eh) because my tests keep changing, but because the change continues to be good, she's optimistic. Yay! She also said that the damage done was in no way caused by autoimmune disease; I can lay it all at the door of a combination of OTC and prescription meds that I've been taking for years. None of which I can ever take again. Ever. That's bad news in the case of Diclofenac, because it's the one thing I take that stops trigeminal nerve pain in its tracks. Trigeminal headaches are called "suicide headaches" because they're so painful that people have killed themselves when they couldn't get relief from them. I've never had them go for that long, but then I've always had Diclofenac to fall back on. I haven't had one in many months now, and I hope that run continues for a very long time.

2. There's a web project out there called We Feel Fine. Very, very cool stuff. They're turning it into a book, and I got email from one of the project people asking for permission to use one of my photos. I am so psyched! They've included the photo and the pertinent sentence (I know I'll get a grip and put this all in perspective, but I just need to feel what I'm feeling for a little bit.) into the web site already. Since there are thousands of random entries, I doubt I'll ever actually see it there, but I just think it's so very cool to be included.
( This is the photo. )

3. My poor Pixel has a cold, but at least her fever is gone now. She's still sneezing all over my pillows, though.

4. We've been without phone service for three days now. Just in case anyone was trying to reach us and not getting through. Cell Phones 'r' Us these days. Dar called the Bell service rep a couple times trying to get it straightened out. The rep said she tried to call Dar back but she couldn't get through because our phones weren't working. Bwah! Where do they get these people from?? Anyway she thinks that they're in the process of changing our exchange, and that's why our number is no longer in service. If so . . . 1) it takes nearly a week to finish? 2) why the hell didn't we get any notice??

5. That's on top of Mark's Jeep breaking down and the bank locking up all our funds because someone pressed the wrong key. Both of those are settled now, but it was a frustrating few days. Especially with no phones. Mercury is retrograde, so I hear. How long, O Lord, how long? (Lord in this case meaning wicked_goddess who knows all when it comes to the stars.) Really, I hate when Mercury goes retrograde, and it seems to happen about 8 months of the year.

6. Way past my bedtime, kidlets. Hope you all had/are having a great night. And a good flight to all of you heading out to the Browncoat Ball! Have a wonderful weekend!