Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Using The Tools That Are Available

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While searching for an elusive fact using Google somewhere around five o'clock this morning I was suddenly distressed to find that once again my FREE Wi-Fi connection had failed and was no longer available to me. Yes, after less than one day of its restoration after a previous two-day failure, Wi-Fi had abandoned me and once again I was utterly and helplessly offline.

It is now 5:35 a.m. which is usually my most productive time for online work, and now I am faced with waiting until 10:00 when the office opens before I can report the Wi-Fi failure... again. And even then, of course, the office will have to notify the technician who will have to drive to the router's location and reset the downed equipment.

FREE Wi-Fi... I am reminded of the cliche so often quoted by a fellow member of my writer's group, Mr. Anthony Dauer, who is fond of (gleefully?) repeating: "You get what you pay for."

I have no idea when I will be able to upload this blog entry, but whenever that is, please note that it was written before six a.m. on Tuesday, April 19 in the year 2011, which is surely much earlier than it is now being read, by you or anyone else.

'Drat!'
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I was reading earlier an article about the creation of memorable sentences, and was struck by a short poetic piece written by Kenneth Koch.

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, in her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up and created the Sentence.

Isn't that charming?
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Three pieces of string go into a bar. The first one orders drinks and the barman says, "We don't serve strings in here." The second piece of string fares no better. The third piece fluffs out his ends and saunters up to the bar, shouts, "Three beers and make it snappy!" The barman looks at him and says. "You're a string, aren't you?"

The string says, "No, I'm a frayed knot!"

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I just heard on NPR that the losing prosecutor on the O.J. Simpson trial (ancient history?) Marcia Clark, is now a mystery writer. I was going to look up the details concerning her upcoming novel... but then I remembered that I have no Internet connection.

'Drat!'
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There is an advantage, though, to being helplessly without an Internet connection; I am unable to be distracted from creative composition by the perceived necessity of checking my email, Googling for suddenly needed fact-checks, and anything else available online that will take me away from the hard, hard work of writing fiction.

I suppose one could call that an advantage.

Even though I am offline there are other ways of distracting myself... I can always slip one of my old DVDs into the computer and watch a John Wayne movie, an episode of the old Dick Van Dyke Show, or some of the wonderful skits performed by good old Red Skelton.

See how creative I can be?

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A couple hours ago, since the office was not yet open, I left a note at their drop-box regarding the Wi-Fi situation. Then I embarked upon a long walk. Went to Fry's (formerly Kroger) Supermarket and bought some bananas and apples. They had Organic Gala apples on sale for 99-cents per pound. That's amazing. I bought seven apples, two and a half pounds for a total of $2.47. Wow! Now that's a real-deal.

It's now almost 10:00 a.m. and I am back home -- and now I have Wi-Fi again. That's what I call efficiency.

Thank you, Sallie.

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In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
--Bertrand Russell

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