Disconnect

Stephanie and I just accomplished something amazing. We survived an entire three days without internet service! For those of you reading from the U.S. with more or less continuous service, I know that might not sound like much, but even we didn't realize how important being connected has become until we became disconnected. Besides e-mail and facebook, we were without weather forecasts, recipes and up-to-date news reports. It was very disconcerting.

It all started on Friday afternoon when the connection was suddenly lost. We had just enough time to confirm with the service provider that our account had not been shut off, (something that happens once in awhile due to clerical errors).

When we awoke on Saturday and still had no internet, we called the help line and two technicians arrived several hours later than scheduled. (At least some things are like home). When they got here, they said that our line had been cut somewhere along the way and that they wouldn't be able to repair it until Monday (gasp, horror).

Today, the technicians came back and repaired the line, but the interet still didn't work. It turned out that we needed another technician to come and set up the connection. As I said, we survived, and it helped that we had plenty of other things going on throughout the weekend.

On Friday, there was a party at the Marine house to bid farewell to our temporary Management Officer, (my temporary boss). It turned out that he was an extra in "Animal House", yes, THE "Animal House". So we all watched the movie and tried to catch glimpses of him.

On Saturday, we were supposed to go out of town to try some really good chicken place in Hissor, but that fell through thanks to the internet kerfluffle. But given that it started to snow fairly heavily in the morning, it might not have been the best time for travel anyway.

Saturday evening, we were invited over to a friend's house to do a beer tasting. We had charts to fill out to note the different characteristics, (color, aroma, taste, complexity, etc...), and rate each beer. Coupled with some delicious burritos, it was a great night.

On Sunday morning, we went to the Hyatt for brunch with most of the management team, (another farewell event), and made the most of the selection of smoked salmon, fresh fruit, omelette's, crepes, ham, bacon, pastries, and so on, and so forth. We didn't need to eat again until dinner. Despite our lack of access to Allrecipes.com, we were able to guestimate a very good corn bread to go with the pasta we cooked.

Most of all, we spent time together, which was the unexpected benefit of not having internet. We played several rounds of Scrabble and watched movies. Given the inclement weather, it turned out to be a very nice weekend.

Unfortunately, I had to ruin the niceness of the weekend with a trip to the dentist today. They're actually very professional at the place we go, but the water in the water pick is very cold and that was extremely unpleasant. Hopefully that will be my last such experience before we go back to the U.S. at the end of August.

So here we are, internet is back on and the long weekend is coming to an end. I guess, all-in-all, it's good to disconnect every once in awhile.