How I Spent My Fun-Filled
Days Offline
Five days. If
you’re on vacation, it seems like 24 hours. If you’re offline,
it’s an eternity. Ask any computer zombie. You’ll get responses that
vary, but essentially convey the same emotion. Some will shudder and
turn away quickly. Some will cringe openly and hold you in awe at still
being sane. Yet others will back away from you, wondering how on earth
you could still exist.
Offline for me means no internet
access. Offline for my friend means she can’t get into chat rooms. We
each have our priorities.
Our hard drive went south. Simple
as that. We wondered why it had been slowing so fast. We ran a surface
scan of the disk and found bad sector after bad sector. Sounds like some
hideous Orwellian plot. I cried the night it breathed its last. Only 8
weeks old and it’s toast. Needless to say we were on the phone and
getting a replacement as fast as possible.
You would think the people
working as techs and representatives of computer companies could
sympathize when you start to cry hysterically on the phone, blow your
nose dramatically every few minutes and outright plead with them to use
faster service than five day delivery. You beg them. You make false
promises to the gods of whole computers. You damn near sell your soul to
Beelzebyte. You scream for mercy. And they promise to have your hard
drive to you in three to five business days. You quickly scan the
calendar and realize that the delivery overlaps the weekend so you could
conceivably be looking at seven days downtime here.
o o O (lots of time for sex)
note to self: STOP THAT!!!
you’ll give writers a bad name.
Facing a possible week away from
the natural course of things I pondered my options. Ok, no email.
That’s the biggie. I knew I’d be coming back to hundreds of emails
to read. I looked forward to it with relish.
I had projects that were long
overdue. Not writing projects. THOSE were all online. Erg. Craft
projects and household jobs that need attention about once a decade. You
know, the mending and such. I had requests for classic little boxes that
I make and hadn’t filled yet. Such is the life of an addict.
First day went fine. My house got
cleaned in gig ...er...jig time. My dishes were done. And had I had a washing
machine that worked, my laundry would have been done, too. Needless to
say, the family was dually impressed. They had clean glasses to drink
from and forks without crusties. They thought heaven had come and gone.
I was a hero.
The second day, I started to
really feel it. My belly button hurt where I’d been disconnected. My
brain strained with the ideas. And can you ever find a pen when you need
one? A writer’s home and no pen. May the muses have mercy, we are a
spoiled generation of writers. For poetry, I still favor pen and paper.
But I do love my computer for writing.
The third and fourth day are a
blur. Although I do remember clutching the mouse and my husband trying
to pry my hand off of it. I also realized that day that my mouse-pad
callus was starting to soften. I could be in trouble here.
The fifth day, we received the
hard drive. My husband installed it and made sure all was right with the
guts of our baby. We plugged it in, turned it on and voila! A processing
error. And a nifty explanation about how other assorted major pieces
were now defunct. Mother board and processor were on their way after a
brief but emotion filled call to our computer manufacturer. Low and
behold, this time they promised overnight delivery. Yeah, right. Weekend
yet again. So guess what? Three days. Yep. More little boxes done, more
dishes clean. Even the cats were looking at me strangely by this time.
They had no kitty food to forage under the counter for. It was all
neatly in their dishes. Just not normal.
The sixth day really stunk. I
wanted to get online so badly. My fingers twitched and I was in junkie
mode. May the gods bless my family; they were so cool about it. Mind
you, it helps that my husband and kids are video game freaks. THEY had
something electronic to do. So I tried the skate boarding game thingie.
I stunk just like the day. But I practiced.
The seventh day rolls around with
me fully rested and a clean house. Things just kept getting weirder and
weirder. The parts come. No go. A lemon computer as they said at tech
central. Such is life. Return it. I have never dialed the phone so fast.
Yes, the store said, they had another available. Not the same brand (woo
hoo!!) but one comparable. Faster processor even. Does it get better
than that? I think not. My husband was up, comp lemon packed and out the
door in thirty minutes. Back with our new system in perfect time. We had
this thing online before the dishes had a chance to get dirty again.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I
opened my email. And closed it again, wondering what on earth four
hundred plus emails could contain.
There is always tomorrow. And I
was getting pretty good at the skate boarding thingie after all.
Copyright - 2001 |
