life without internet
[ Written Oct 3rd ]
Gloria and I are still getting settled into the house. Over the last week, we made four trips to try and acquire blinds for the bedroom. First, they were too crappy and couldn’t even be properly installed. Then the store had nothing worth buying. Then the clerk cut them wrong. Then … well, then they worked. We can finally get changed in our bedroom like normal people. Of course, that only works because we’re alone in the house. Otherwise, we’d have to worry about the missing panes of glass in our antique door. Still, the lack of bedroom blinds was a major roadblock to comfort at home.
There are still a number of major hurdles, some of which we’re working through and some of which will require serious effort. Unfortunately, a few hurdles just requires patience, and one of those hurdles is getting internet. I really thought we’d have DSL on the twenty-eighth of September, but now we’re waiting for October tenth. In the meantime, I’ve had to reroute my mail (making it impossible for Gloria to retrieve hers). Gloria has to go to my parents’ house to get online, and I have to do the same, or at least dial up over my 4k/s GPRS link. Tomorrow I’ll find out whether I can get my laptop online at the libary or whether I have to go to my parents’, too. I’d be happy to go in and use the office network, if it didn’t consume four hours of my day and $20 of my savings. I’d moan about wanting instantaneous transport, but I’m guessing that ubiquitous internet connectivity will probably come first, so I’ll just keep waiting on that.
Tomorrow, at least, we get the precursor to internet: cable. The cable guy should show up and set us up with the right set of channels and, hopefully, a cable outlet in the bedroom. Until then, we’re stuck watching Netflix and the available channels (which is most of them), in the living room, where we still have no blinds.