Reason 244

Technology. The morning after we arrived in our quaint vacation community, I fired up the old laptop, plugged in my modem (yep, an actual Clearwire modem - don't laugh), and found out I would be waiting an awfully long time if I ever wanted to access the internet from our condo. My signal was nonexistent. This revelation was actually quite liberating because it meant I wouldn't be a slave to my computer or this blog during two weeks of vacation. Sure, I couldn't look up local restaurants on Yelp or read inane status updates on Facebook, but that seemed like a small price to pay for freedom from technology that hypnotizes me into wasting precious minutes that could be devoted to reading actual books, sitting by the pool, and griping about our noisy upstairs neighbors. I swear they have thirteen children who are all hooked on meth and love to play DDR. I've never been enamored with or impressed by the latest and greatest in technology, so the thought of being stuck on the side of the information superhighway didn't depress me too much. Since my computer was out of commission I decided to embrace this Stone Age living by severing all ties with the wireless overlords and leaving my cell phone turned off for the majority of each day. Besides, most of the calls I receive are from my doting mother, who is currently sitting five feet away from me, so I was confident that I wouldn't be missing much. Today, the third day of my self-imposed exile from technology, became too much to bear, though, and I headed to the nearby library to use their public computers (yay for libraries!). Fingers twitching in anticipation, I double-clicked my way on-line...and then waited for several painful moments because the server was taking forever to load anything. Argh! I finally did manage to log into my email account, Facebook, and my lovely blog, but the computer was so turtle-like that it almost wasn't even worth it to drive over in 90 degree weather, suffering from back sweat and those unsightly marks sunglasses tend to leave on the bridge of my nose, when I could've been holed up in the much cooler condo with a bag of microwave popcorn and Oprah. When my mom found out I had gone on-line without digging up information on Crater Lake, a possible excursion while we're in Oregon, I decided to throw in the towel and find out how to log on to the Interwebs with the condo's server. So, now I am sitting on the front steps (apparently signal strength is as weak as Mel Gibson's self-control inside our room), typing away on my mom's laptop, once again a slave to technology and my little year-long experiment. Even though I now have all sorts of information at my fingertips I am going to try my darndest to leave this computer in its case, snug as a bug in a rug, unless it is absolutely imperative that I watch a video of a monkey sniffing its own butt or something. I know you adore all of your MAC products, Jason, but if you ever need to quit cold turkey for awhile so you can reconnect with actual human beings, I'll be there to support you. I will hide your iPhone if necessary and we can recklessly go out into the world with no GPS or movie times at our fingertips. Let's be brave together, my friend.