Staying connected

I was having so much trouble getting on - and staying on - the internet, and I've been so busy offline, that I just gave up on online life for a while. I pretty much avoided television, too. (That is nothing new. Overall, I barely watch television. I can't see where it helps me to watch it.) All in all, I'm currently horribly uninformed as to "news" of the wider world, but I'm better connected with people in my community. This I consider not such a bad thing, all in all.

I've also read quite a bit (not a bad thing), and I'm up to 40,000 words on a novel I'm writing (also not a bad thing).

The only thing I consider a really bad thing about my recent blog lull is that I'm feeling ashamed of myself for not fighting my way online somehow to let you know I was off concentrating on other things, and not, say, languishing in a hospital or something. My apologies.

We are still having some interesting connection problems, plus I will need to spend less time online while I work on other things, but I'll try to hop on now and then until I can blog regularly again. In the meantime, please consider "no news" to be "good news." I'd hate for anyone to worry about me simply because I'm spending more time with local friends and in church activities and at my computer keyboard writing a book instead of blogging.

A side note on the connection problems: It could be worse. The other day we got a phone call and the caller ID said it was from a local doctor's wife, a lady we know but hardly expect to call us about anything. Upon answering the phone, my husband found it wasn't the doctor's wife at all, but another friend of ours. The friend said that ever since some work was done on the phone lines, the doctor's wife's phone number got attached to her line somehow, and she'd been getting their phone calls. The doctor, we hear, was not amused, and was assuring her that the problem would be fixed very soon (if he had anything to say about it).

Well, yes. Having your phone line swapped with someone else's phone line could be a problem, I guess. And no, I don't know how, or if, our friend was able to get any phone calls that were aimed at her during the mix-up.

On the other hand, it could, possibly, be worse. Talking with my inlaws not that long ago, we found that they'd been without phone service for several days, because both their landline and their cell phone managed to go out at the same time. So, here they were, with a backup line that couldn't provide back up. They were none too happy about it, all the more so because they had just had a phone installer in their house, who didn't speak English, cut holes in the floor where he felt like it, and seemed to be casing the joint, as far as they could see, since he stuck his head into nooks and crannies that didn't concern him. And then left them with phones that didn't work.

As I understand it, they now have phone service from another company, having lost faith in that one. (Isn't competition good?)