I’m supposed to be done with school for the semester. I’m supposed to have the remainder of December to prepare for Christmas, not worry about studying. I was supposed to take my last final yesterday. Supposed to.

Instead I got this…

A big snow ice storm. It rained ice all day long. Everything shut down. Even the university, which never shuts down.

The ice stuck to the trees causing them to bend over. Every tree looks like a weeping willow these days. Branches broke off, leaving gigantic limbs in the middle of the streets barely missing people’s houses and cars. Roads are still blocked today. And power lines were sagging from the weight of all that ice. Some snapped. Tons of people lost power. Miraculously we weren’t one of them.

We did, however, loose our internet for a while. I was in the middle of a conference call and all of a sudden the speaker went silent mid-sentence. I thought, “That was weird. Did his phone disconnect or something?” And then Lee said, “I think I just lost internet.” That’s when it occurred to me. Perhaps switching to VoIP wasn’t the best telephone option.

I used my cell phone to call a co-worker so he could add an away message to my email letting everybody know I was out of the office. Then I decided to bask in the glory of an unscheduled day off from work.

But what was I going to do? There was no internet. No telephone. And no cable TV. But at least we still had electricity.

I told myself, “You don’t need internet.” I had a couple of projects to work on that could be done offline. So I started to work on those.

But, like a junkie, I couldn’t get the internet off my mind. I had to shut down my mail and my IM because they both kept trying to connect every minute or so and then I’d get a pop-up message that said something like, “HA HA! You have no internet. LOSER!” Of course, I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the jist.

I walked away from the computer. I went to fold some laundry. But my computer kept taunting me. I had to keep checking to see if the internet was back yet. Oh internet. I tried, but I just couldn’t quit you.

After about 45 days [which is around an hour in real time] I heard a familiar ding. It was my Gmail notifier, dinging to let me know there was a message. It was the most beautiful sound ever.

I spun around in my chair. Sure enough internet was back. I picked up the phone. Dial tone. I turned on the TV. Soap Operas.

And then the Heavens opened up and angels began to sing.

Ok, maybe not. But I had internet and that was almost as good.

Of course, it meant my free day off from work was over. It was back to the daily grind. Emails to answer. Contracts to review. Sales people to ignore. You know, the usual.

But that was a small price to pay for having the internet back.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 12th, 2007 at 9:55 pm and is filed under A day in our life. Comments are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.