only me...

I wrote this Wednesday night - in my internet deprived delirium.

Just remember that technology exists to make our lives better.

Riiiiight…

Let me tell you about my last 24 hours. There will be a quiz at the end and the only question will be this:

Is technology RC’s friend?

1. No
2. Hell, no.

It all started last night when the cable went out. Surfer Dude came in to the kitchen all pale and twitchy to tell me about it. Gumby was right behind him, looking a little off his feed. I told them not to get freaked out about it, since our cable has been known to be temperamental. It will go off for no reason, and then all of a sudden it’s back. As they left the room, heads hanging and noses warm, I thanked my lucky stars that I wasn’t completely addicted to that brainless little box.

Then the internet went out.

Well, now it became personal. But all my teeth gnashing and sacrificial offerings to the gods went unheeded. Neither the cable nor the internet came back on. (And in the supreme irony of the night, the wireless was connecting perfectly. It just didn’t have anything to connect with).

So this morning at work I called the cable/internet company hoping against hope that someone had hacked their system or blown up one of their transformers so it wouldn’t just be us. Nope. It was just us. The guy I talked to was very nice, but there wasn’t much he could do, since no one was home to fiddle with cables and wiring. Evidently their system and our modem were on the outs and refusing to communicate. They could send someone out to fix it, but not until Friday – since we had to have an adult home while they were there. I developed a little tic in my eye.

My head hung all day at work. To add to it, all the freaks, drug seekers, drama queens and frequent fliers imaginable showed up with a new list of complaints, complaints that all somehow included narcotics and nurse baiting. I did get on the computer at work. I checked my Yahoo! Account. I went on Facebook. I did not, due to the fact that I need to keep my blog and work totally separate, check my blog or my gmail. Now I was twitchy and my tail drooped. It was not a pretty sight.

(It isn’t like the technology at work is a walk in the park either. Take our little voice activated thingies that we clip to our scrubs. We can communicate through the hospital with one touch. They’re great – when they work. My classic story is when I called Dietary to order a sandwich for a patient, and the voice system called LifeFlight, which is the medical helicopter that takes critical patients to the trauma centers. Knowing that I would never in a million years live that down, I frantically managed to cancel the call before the chopper took off, although the temptation to spill the whole story and ask them to stop at Subway for a six inch tuna on wheat on the way over was almost overwhelming).

When I left work, I pulled my phone out of my bag. I tried to call Sasquatch, but accidentally dialed the FX. I hung up as soon as I realized it, before he answered. Then I called Sasquatch and asked him where he was. He didn’t know. How can you not know? I’m on the bus, he said. On my way home. Where is the bus? I asked. I’m not sure, he said. Then my call waiting went off. It was the FX calling me back. And as I tried to figure out which one to deal with first, my phone died. It probably had something to do with Sasquatch “borrowing” my charger and assuring me that my phone had been fully charged when he took it off the charger.

I picked Gumby up from play practice and headed home. Then I called the cable company and said okay, now I’m here. Tell me what to fiddle with. We fiddled and tweaked, then my landline call waiting went off. It was the FX wanting to know how the tweaking was going. I said I don’t know – we’re still doing it. He said okay, call me when you’re done. I said okay. We fiddled and tweaked some more, then my call waiting went off again. It was Sasquatch, who had managed to find his way off the bus and now needed picking up in a part of town I had just passed through. I told him to sit tight, and the tech support guy and I kept fiddling and tweaking – with no result. Evidently their system and our modem are really ticked off at each other, and it’s now going to take a service call to look into.

As the final coup de grace, Surfer Dude asked me to go out to the car with him, since he had left his backpack (and his phone) in my car. In the pitch black driveway, he pulled out his backpack and then realized (once he was in the back yard) that he was holding his backpack upside down. And it was unzipped. And he couldn’t find his phone. Anywhere.

And as we stared at a long driveway drifted high with fallen leaves, he looked at me and said, Uh oh. I think I dropped my phone in the driveway. Somewhere.

Right about now, I’m considering converting to an Amish lifestyle. I can’t think of a single reason not to.

You can take the quiz now.

Oh, but wait. It's Thursday now, and as you've noticed I have internet. I'll spare you the details, the phone calls, the very nice service guy who came out today while I was at work and poked around the wiring outside. You know what was wrong with our service?

The modem was unplugged.

Pencils down. Pass your tests forward.