And the oven is fixed too

The dark ages have come to a close.  Our internet and phone service were restored yesterday afternoon.

Normally I wouldn't have been as rage-y about the lack of Internet, because after all, I spend all day at work on a computer. I can get the basic email-checking, bill-paying and web-surfing during the day, yes, but we've been trying to plan some sort of anniversary trip thing, since by some sort of time turner witchy magic we have been married for almost a year. In this age of coupon codes and roaming gnomes, it is not possible to plan a vacation without the internet. Well, it's not possible to plan a discount, last-minute vacation without the internet, and if you know us at all, you know that we're very much the last-minute, discount vacation types.

We didn't want to be literally last-minute, though, so we tried our very best to soldier on without home internet. First, we went to the close-by Starbucks on Wednesday last week, having read that they had just transitioned to free internet. We each bought the cheapest thing we could consume (a small iced coffee for Joel and an orange soda fizzy thing in a bottle for me) and then sat down for some interneting. Five minutes later, we found out that the whole free internet at Starbucks thing was true, starting July 1. At this point it was 8:30pm on June 30th. So! We packed up our computer, I screwed the bottlecap back on to my orange fizzy drink and we biked over to Barnes and Noble in the sweltering, record-breaking, I-just-took-a-shower-goddammit heat. At Barnes and Noble we were able to successfully able to connect to the internet for an entire twenty minutes before they closed. It was just enough time for me to finish my $3 orange drink thing from Starbucks.

There were several different variations on this scenario over the following days. We went to Joel's office on a Saturday, except we were unable to figure out the network key, so I sat and watched Joel do computer stuff for a few hours and THAT ended in good moods for everyone. Joel spent an hour in the coffee shop across the street from my yoga studio unsuccessfully trying to connect to their broken network. On the Fourth of July we returned to our trusty Barnes and Noble, where the free internet was no longer working because of "interference" and all the cafe tables were taken up by tourists (my personal favorites were an elderly Asian couple who were intently paging through a picture book called Baby Animals). Let me tell you, after this whole ordeal Panera Bread has won my undying affection. Four hours of uninterrupted internet access. It could only have been better if we were, say, IN OUR OWN HOUSE.

But, anyway! We have an anniversary trip booked and I got a really good cup of french onion soup out of the deal.

I was a little bit ruffled by this entire situation, in case you couldn't tell, but I think that the family member most traumatized by this outage was the Tivo. You see, we have the Tivo hooked up to our wireless network so that it can have high-speed conversations with the internet about all of the wonderful programming options out there for citizens with basic cable. When it can't talk to the internet for some reason (say, when we didn't have our own internet for several years), it uses the phone line to talk to the hamsters at Tivo central. When the internet AND the phone line are down, the Tivo gets a little bit crazy. It threw increasingly frantic messages up every time we turned it on, telling us that program information was running low! Please to connect to internets for talk with hamster friends! I CAN HAS INTERNETS RIGHT AWAY PLZ! Finally, we turned on the program guide on Tuesday and saw a blank, open space stretching from 7pm on Wednesday onward. Forget December 2012, armageddon was coming on July 7 as far as our poor Tivo was concerned. And he was afraid.

We had a scheduled appointment with Verizon yesterday, made weeks ago, but I had little hope would get anything accomplished. Someone had already come out the week before and been shocked that the pole with all the phone and internet wires was not in our backyard (note: we have no actual yard), but in the alley of a house up the block on another street. This also shocked Verizon when they came out to install our internet several years ago and every other times they have come out for service. Every time they are completely flabbergasted that there is no way to access this stupid pole from our house, which is kind of annoying because, 1. this is not the first time we've been over this, and 2. we are not the only city dwellers in this situation, guys. But the dude last week said he'd contact the owners of the house that does have access, and that he'd call Joel the very next day to work something out. He never called, obviously. I tried pleading with the Verizon customer support representative on Twitter, and that accomplished about as much as you'd expect. But someone in the technology world must have heard our Tivo's distress call, and somehow everything just got fixed yesterday at about 3pm, four hours shy of the Tivo apocalypse. And then there was a brownout around 9pm and we the internet was broken again for a while, but we're not going to talk about that because I don't want to cry.

So things are fixed and everyone is happy. YAY. Except the Tivo, who can't get it through his antennaed skull that we narrowly escaped the pit of despair and everything is OK now. He is still giving us frantic PLEASE CAN I HAS INTERNETS messages after we finish a program. And when we turn the TV on. And at the bottom of the Tivo screen. Obviously he has suffered serious psychological damage from the near-miss and is going to need lots of therapy. Which is why I'll be demanding at least two months of free phone and internet, just for starters, when I call up and yell at Verizon later. Yelling at people is my new thing. I yelled at a gang of thug-wannabes in the movies this weekend -- they were being seriously, disruptively loud and we are serious about The Last Airbender around here -- and then I demanded my money back from the theater after the movie was over. I am half proud of myself and half nervous that I'm turning into the older lady at my office who calls up to yell at her credit card company at least once a week, but either way I have two free movie passes. Hello, Edward Cullen.

Comments

[Kate]

I'm trying to convince my husband that we need to take a trip for our first anniversary (in Sept) and he's just not biting. Hmmmm....

Where are you headed?

[heidikins]

Good gracious--that sounds all sorts of complicated! Salt Lake City has free wi-fi in the downtown area...seriously it's about 6 square blocks of uninterrupted wi-fi. It wasn't until right now that I truly appreciated it!

Big Question: where is your anniversary trip going to be? I'm all curious now!

xox

[Aly]

I'm glad it's all back - I think we'd cry with no internet connection. Okay, make that: I'D CRY. Jason would get a life and get over it - I'd just sulk.

My goodness, where did this year go?

[Life of a Doctor's Wife]

I really enjoy thinking of your TiVo as a person. Once who speaks broken English and has some sort of heroin-type addiction to the web, at that.

For future reference, McDonald's.

Many locations also have free internet. I know this, because I work from home and when my husband and I had to drive for eight hours to his parents' house, we plotted several Internet-friendly spots along the way. Panera, natch. But McDonald's.

I mean, you have to deal with the smell of too many McMuffins and the nearly overwhelming desire for fries... But otherwise, not too shabby!

[Ashley, the Accidental Olympian]

Sounds like Tivo needs a hug.

[Heather]

Too cute :)

Glad your internet's fixed. There's nothing worse. I'm near the brink when ours is on the fritz.

So, where are you going on your anniversary trip? And when exactly is the big day? Our is July 31 and we've just booked a list minute (cheap!) vacation to Vancouver, B.C.