Our internet provider suffered a local outage recently leaving us disconnected from the internet for a week. The solid green lights of much anticipated web access returned after a few days but we discovered we were still not able to connect. Ninety minutes on the phone with tech support suggested that their outage did more than frustrate us, it killed our modem. A new hub is scheduled to arrive today or tomorrow along with a few weeks of free service. Until then I will continue to feverishly search for an open line to sneak onto for a few moments at a time, but I no longer need to call the automated help line * every 15 seconds to see if the service is back up.
* Incidentally, a recorded message that says today is June 18 and we anticipate that service will be restored by 11:00 pm does little to instill confidence in a customer when it is June 20 and you’re still not connected.
It has not been all gloom and internet doom for an entire week though. The last two weekends were very enjoyable. The neighboring town was holding their summer festival last week and we hit the barbeque and the midway on Friday night. The food was great and the midway was…expectedly overpriced. We let Aidan blow some cash on the rides that looked the least sketchy including a trip down the giant slide* with his dad.
* Note to those burlaping down a traveling carnival’s giant slide…check the seams on the way up. The middle lane was as fast as we anticipated but a nasty gap at the bottom threatened to separate my tailbone from the rest of my person. I thought for a moment that my coccyx was dislodged.
We returned to the festival on Sunday for the parade. Having grown up in Pella, Iowa with all that is Tulip Time during a six-parade weekend each year, my standards for a town parade are perhaps a bit higher than the national average. I will admit that the local parade was impressive in length and in the sheer volume of candy tossed from passing parade units (there were 100+ units). Aidan made out with more candy than he’s consumed in his lifetime and we were introduced to roughly 20 Minnesota town festival princesses riding the route with their runners’ up. They were all saluting us with a uniform I-am-the-teenaged-queen-of-(insert town here)’s-(insert festival here) wave while some musical treasure from the Spice Girls blasted from their float. Overall it was very nice and a beautiful Father’s Day afternoon.
* Incidentally, a recorded message that says today is June 18 and we anticipate that service will be restored by 11:00 pm does little to instill confidence in a customer when it is June 20 and you’re still not connected.
It has not been all gloom and internet doom for an entire week though. The last two weekends were very enjoyable. The neighboring town was holding their summer festival last week and we hit the barbeque and the midway on Friday night. The food was great and the midway was…expectedly overpriced. We let Aidan blow some cash on the rides that looked the least sketchy including a trip down the giant slide* with his dad.
* Note to those burlaping down a traveling carnival’s giant slide…check the seams on the way up. The middle lane was as fast as we anticipated but a nasty gap at the bottom threatened to separate my tailbone from the rest of my person. I thought for a moment that my coccyx was dislodged.
We returned to the festival on Sunday for the parade. Having grown up in Pella, Iowa with all that is Tulip Time during a six-parade weekend each year, my standards for a town parade are perhaps a bit higher than the national average. I will admit that the local parade was impressive in length and in the sheer volume of candy tossed from passing parade units (there were 100+ units). Aidan made out with more candy than he’s consumed in his lifetime and we were introduced to roughly 20 Minnesota town festival princesses riding the route with their runners’ up. They were all saluting us with a uniform I-am-the-teenaged-queen-of-(insert town here)’s-(insert festival here) wave while some musical treasure from the Spice Girls blasted from their float. Overall it was very nice and a beautiful Father’s Day afternoon.
Proudly representing their town in traditional Dutch attire, not donning prom dresses to promote a barbeque. These are certainly not the Spice Girls.
The week between Father’s Day and the one just passed is when our connection to the internet was interrupted. I felt disconnected from the outside world as I use the internet heavily for communicating with friends and family, exploring my current job options and such immensely important and life altering things like fantasy baseball. You know you’ve got a certain level of dependence when you’re searching for a neighbor with an unsecured wireless signal to “borrow” for as much time as you can before loosing the connection (and I do thank them for leaving that line unencrypted). The signal would come and go so I never knew just how much web time remained leaving me to open only emails that looked potentially life altering and acting quickly to grab the online information that was vital to surviving the day before loosing access. I was also made to call Rachel once at work late in the afternoon requesting that after her peers had left perhaps she could set my fantasy baseball rosters for the evening.
On to the present (or recently completed) weekend…
Being without internet meant Rachel was inhibited from completing some of the usual work related tinkering that she normally does in the evenings. That opened the door for causal time with friend Scott watching movies on Friday night with brownies and ice cream while cursing the neighbor’s fire pit that made the air a bit smoky. Saturday night we played four-person Mario Kart and Aidan was thrilled to have three live competitors. He had been waiting for this opportunity for some time and was allowed to stay up until 10:00 racing around the virtual track. I then stayed up way too late playing cyber golf with Scott (or way too early…how should I classify 2:30 am?). I might have been able to catch a little extra sleep on Sunday morning had I not made a promise to Aidan that we’d run out and find him a freshly sprinkled donut for Sunday breakfast. He woke me during the eight o’clock hour reminding me of my promise and announcing that he was hungry at that very moment. The event described in the next paragraph also nixed a potential Sunday afternoon nap so the short night ended with me crashing on the couch last evening shortly after my Cubbies swept the cross-town White Sox (it’s always nice to go to sleep smiling).
On to the present (or recently completed) weekend…
Being without internet meant Rachel was inhibited from completing some of the usual work related tinkering that she normally does in the evenings. That opened the door for causal time with friend Scott watching movies on Friday night with brownies and ice cream while cursing the neighbor’s fire pit that made the air a bit smoky. Saturday night we played four-person Mario Kart and Aidan was thrilled to have three live competitors. He had been waiting for this opportunity for some time and was allowed to stay up until 10:00 racing around the virtual track. I then stayed up way too late playing cyber golf with Scott (or way too early…how should I classify 2:30 am?). I might have been able to catch a little extra sleep on Sunday morning had I not made a promise to Aidan that we’d run out and find him a freshly sprinkled donut for Sunday breakfast. He woke me during the eight o’clock hour reminding me of my promise and announcing that he was hungry at that very moment. The event described in the next paragraph also nixed a potential Sunday afternoon nap so the short night ended with me crashing on the couch last evening shortly after my Cubbies swept the cross-town White Sox (it’s always nice to go to sleep smiling).
I blame this pastry (not my video gaming) for my exhaustion.
Free access to excellent Sunday afternoon Metrodome seats (the one’s where you duck a lot of foul balls) presented themselves and Scott and I hit the Twins/Diamondbacks game. It was not an afternoon at Wrigley to be sure. The air conditioning inside the dome had me considering the need for a jacket and you could only see the sun outside of the ballpark. I did enjoy vendor #37, a maestro of cotton candy concessions, and was impressed at the immensity of the ½ pound hot dog. There will be a future picture of this colossal wiener after our next visit to the Dome but for now I conclude with a photo of one of my Father’s Day gifts…
Aidan took me to see Kung Fu Panda at the local theater on Saturday and we enjoyed the show with a reminder that just because the animated character’s kicked and twirled around on the screen we would not be replicating such actions back at home.
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