26 June 2012

Travel, hotels, and the net

Today is turning out to be fine. Started out racing around this morning. Went to bed a bit late. Knew I was supposed to leave early. Luckily, I packed my bags last night after an all day search for my glasses. Unlike most people, I take mine off to read. Whereupon, chaos ensues if those little bits of glass worth about a week's work after taxes {nah, make that two weeks worth} should happen to grow legs and move from the spot I am certain I left them in.

Bribery didn't find them either. I told the kids that I'd give a chocolate candy bar to the person who found my specs. Then my niece promptly brought me a pair she found laying on the kitchen table. Hah! Shows how much she pays attention to me and what I wear. I informed her that mine were actually purple with a light purple inside. Then I had to change it to black as she had problems trying to envision me with purple glasses on. I could tell this from the intentness of her stare while at the same time trying to seem like she wasn't looking at me.

Next, they were very quiet and I knew I had made a mistake. Sure enough. They were "looking" in the bedroom which is off limits to them as my son is touchy about his laptop. When the bribe failed to turn up anything other than glasses I had no use for, I informed my mom that we might have to find a driver for her trip. I had already made the reservation for the night and wasn't about to be left behind.

I continued to look in the most likely of places, involving an almost total retracing of everything I had done before. This, of course, was between bouts of frantic dashes to my tenth favorite haunt. {Too many report bugs in the past few days which I might be inclined to tell you about one day.}

In the middle of one of my dashes which included a new game that company that intends to profit from my third favorite's popularity has deliberately set out to tempt me from the ever growing backlog of goals, my son: "Look! Look! Mom! Mom!" I turned to see him pointing frantically at the floor by my feet. I bent. My glasses. Yay! "Mom, we can go. Yes."

Upon our departure, I made a lightening strike for my son's laptop to make sure I had access to that ever increasing goal hungry black hole which I avoided for 5 months. Alas! The gravity of that situation had drawn me back and here I was, absconding with my son's dearly held machine with the browser and other parts set just so. He gets a bit perturbed if anyone messes with his settings. {His bleary sleep filled eyes assured me that he didn't really understand what he agreed to.} I made good my escape and arrived with minutes to spare for Mom's panel discussion.

I set up the machine and did a few necessary adjustments on those goals trying to keep the black hole from dragging any more into it. Having finished that, I turned to the next object of my visit to this popular haven for those in the village with a penchant for slots. Upon my return to reality, I checked in a couple hours early, set up my machine and voila! No net.

Diagnostics insisted I was connected. This must be the price for the kidnapping of my son's machine. Kept getting kicked off the server. Made the journey to the lounge where I had connected earlier. No go. Drats! My efforts doubled as I envisioned the timer in that dratted game ticking down. Nothing. Nothing. Now, several hours later, having duly considered Mom's suggestion that we depart for home, the server has let me on and here I am, happily enjoying the benefits of my great escape.

{Written on 19 Jun 2012 - posted a week late due to unforeseen circumstances involving family affairs.}