Life Happens
By Irene Conlan -
Yesterday morning I woke up early feeling wonderful and thought, ”Aha! I’ll get a head start on the day.” I always wake the computer up first, check my email, do the crossword puzzle of the day and then go about meditating, showering and all those things we have as a morning routine, ending with breakfast. After breakfast the blogging begins.
Yesterday, however, I woke the computer up and no Internet. I tried again. No Internet. I rebooted the computer. No Internet. I looked at the TV and it looked like no TV, either. I clicked the remote and, sure enough, no TV. The cable was down. Now at our house this is a near calamity because my son is a web site developer and an SEO specialist – he’s usually working on the Internet. I heard noises on the other side of the house so I wandered over to see if he knew anything. He was stretched out on the couch and without opening his eyes or waiting for my question announced. “It’s been out since 2 (a.m). They’re down for maintenance and should be back up by 6.”
O.K. No big deal. I have a lot of things I can be doing. I’ll get a head start somewhere else.
6 a.m. No Internet.
7 a.m. No Internet.
A call to the company: “We finished our maintenance and everything is back up,” the guy on the other end of the line said. “ “No Internet here,” I told him. After plugging and unplugging wires and cables that went everywhere still no Internet. “You have a very low signal” was the most hope he could give us and scheduled a technician to come out at 10 a.m. this morning. So if you are reading, this, the technician came.
My son who always has two days worth of work to do in one day because he’s so good at what he does, was totally calm. I’m usually the calm one and he gets up tight about computer/Internet malfunctions, but my cage was rattled. After all I was going to get a head start. “Let’s go to the library and use their WiFi” was all he said.
What a great idea. We packed up the computers and spent the day at the library – one of our favorite places to be, anyway. We took a lunch break, picked Jack up from school and took Jack and his computer to the library for the afternoon. He felt pretty grown up playing on his computer at the library.
It turned into a very nice day.
It certainly was no earth shattering happening, but for those of us who spend our day working on the Internet it was a big deal. The dreaded words at our house are “The Net is down.”
We’ve have had a lot of rain lately and that’s usually bad news for the wiring in our houses. Arizona isn’t known for its excessive annual rainfall and when we get more than “a little bit” the power lines go down easily and the cable thinks it should join in.
When these kinds of things occur I consider it “life happening” and try to see the “up” side. There always is an “up side” although sometimes you have to wait a while for it to be discovered. If you can just hold on and see it through – If you just don’t get discouraged and quit – If you keep on keeping on, you’ll get to the good stuff.
As I wrote that last sentence the repairman came. He checked all the boxes. Climbed to the top of the telephone pole and checked something there then climbed into our attic and looked at the cables and connections there. Along the way he found the problem and explained it in much technical detail that I didn’t understand.
But it’s fixed now and we have a sharper picture on the TV than we’ve had in a very long time and the Internet is up again. Yippee!
