It's been eleven days since we've had Internet connection. Talk about a long, dry spell! It's times like this that I wonder how we ever got along without the Internet.

I got my computer resurrected the day after we moved in here. The room felt so dead without the machinery on. Listening to its quiet hum again was comforting. But...no connection to the Internet. Todd couldn't string a phone cord to our computer room until three days ago. Bill hooked up the DSL modem and nothing happened. We had to wait one more day to try to find out why.

Monday morning. I called the tech support. They deduced that we needed a different DSL modem from what we had because of the line protocol in our new area. Bill went and exchanged the modems. The connection still didn't work. He had to go to work and couldn't do anything else with it. I called tech support again. From their end they could see that the line was trying to connect but it wasn't getting through. All they could do was schedule a technician to come to the house which is disheartening because we all know that ain't going to happen for at least another two days. Sigh.

It hit me Monday night how isolating it is not to have an Internet connection. I could use the computer and play games or write an entry for my journal but it just wasn't the same as when I could leisurely read e-mail in the morning while waking up and unkinking from the night's sleep. For people who have a wide circle of face-to-face friends, not having the Internet for that long probably wouldn't disturb them but for someone like me who hasn't been able to find a good friend yet in the three years I've been here, well, it is very isolating and disconcerting. I have three very good friends but they are all through the Internet. Two of them I knew in "real" life and we have kept in touch through the Internet. The third one is someone I met on a Yahoo group. Bill and I went up to Montreal to meet her and her husband last October. She is a real Sweetie!(tm).

But today, the technician has appeared and has worked on the problem and we got connected again. Seems the problem wasn't with our stuff, Bill didn't need to go get the new modem after all, the problem was with their equipment and needing to hook us up to a different port there. It was redone and we got our connection going. It was like some kind of hallelujah moment.

Now off to catch up with 1515 the e-mails that just got downloaded.