Florida time

[ellen_datlow]

Great flight, in a bit early. I fell asleep for about 45 minutes as I was very tired from a monster cat (Dinah) awakening and whining and tapping me from 6am on. I kept tossing her off the bed, spraying her with water from the plant sprayer, even putting out of the room (although I couldn't close the bedroom door as my bathrobe was hanging off of it) but she kept coming back in. I finally gave up around 7:30 so had more time than I needed to get ready, eat breakfast, take out the trash and pick up a sandwich for lunch on the plane. Caught a cab immediately but we got stuck on Bleecker street where a Con Ed truck was just....stopped.

My parents picked me up and we were in the door by 3:45 or so. Then the fun started. Dial up. Couldn't get a dial tone. Tried everything. Finally used my mother's laptop to find out the phone # of bway.net, called their toll free number and when Rich (who I've dealt with before) answered, cried "help!" After describing my laptop and the problem (no dial tone) he asked if the cord was in the right hole...huh? What do you mean? There are two feeds: ethernet and phone line --does the cord fit in well? Um no...hang on. Let me look for another hole...aha!! on the other side of the laptop I did indeed fine another hole and voila --the phone cord fit in much better than on the other side. It clicked.... That was embarrassing but at least I'm online.

And found 161 messages since the 6 hours I turned off the computer at home....BAD. Some facebook messages, lots of listserve posts that I was able to delete most of. I was online for about 2 1/2 hours during which the phone is totally tied up (my parents only have one line).

My cousin and his wife came over and we all went out to dinner at a very noisy sports bar. My parents' choice. Good food and we were in a room without the huge tvs on...but there was a family with four kids next to us and the youngest was shrieking. I was afraid my dad would lose it. All was fine.


Boring day--but I hope to get a lot of work done while here.

Comments

[nballingrud.livejournal.com]

That's the big drawback of Facebook: your inbox is going to swell considerably. (And most of it's going to be a bunch of "So and so wants to give you a plant!" or some such nonsense.) There might be a way to switch off email notification of updates, if it gets to be too much.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

So far, it's mostly invites. And at least a quarter are from people I've never heard of.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

And found 161 messages since the 6 hours I turned off the computer at home....BAD. Some facebook messages, lots of listserve posts that I was able to delete most of. I was online for about 2 1/2 hours during which the phone is totally tied up (my parents only have one line).

Welcome to the 21st century, where 1000-word web pages come with 1Mb of cruft, you get 10 real emails and 990 spams a day, and old-fashioned modems glow red hot and die as soon as you plug them in.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

Heh. At least most of the spam spam is taken care of. It's "real people spam" that continues to grow.
My parents have the option of getting wifi for each building in the community down here. I'm encouraging them to get it. :-)

Duma Key

[(Anonymous)]

I know you won't have time to read it, but DUMA KEY would make a good addition to your stay in Florida. Best King novel I've read in a long, long time (well, I'm enjoying the 18-disk audio edition). Creepy, slow to build, and wonderfully written...it's like he's channeling John D. MacDonald for the duration. - MarcL

Re: Duma Key

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

It does sound appropriate though :-)