There’s a beautiful feeling in my heart tonight as I write this blog. I finally have the Internet hooked up and I couldn’t be happier! On the other hand, what a few crazy weeks it’s been.I made the decision to get the Internet at home based on my ever-changing life. For the past six years, ever since I moved from Chicago and into the surrounding northern suburbs, I’ve had to resort to creative ways of communicating and connecting with the world, as my finances haven’t always been that steady or well-kept.
Of course, up until last year I was making payments on my Saturn and therefore, couldn’t afford all that much, including a telephone. During the entire year of 2003, I had no telephone and so I had to resort to using disposable calling cards whenever I wanted to speak to someone, namely my parents, The Arizona Babe & Rex Pater Homo. I used to call them at a local hotel, not too far from the basement apartment where I was dwelling on Sunday evenings.
That situation changed when with the help of The Arizona Babe, I was able to purchase a cell-phone and re-establish myself in the world once more. In the meantime, I had no connections to the Internet and so I would use the next best location, the public library.
The last time I had Internet service at home was late 2000 and then it stopped because it was at that time, financially impossible for me to keep paying for it. So, I had to resort to any and all public libraries in order to fetch my email and find out varying bits of information that I needed. I had initially thought that this sort of life without the Internet would be a temporary situation, but of course it lasted for almost six years!
Now libraries aren’t so bad, except for the privacy factor and believe me, people hanging out and waiting for their turn to use a computer made me a workaholic when it came to finding time in my already busy day to get online.
Not having the Internet at home also cramped up my free time. In fact, I almost never had free time, especially when I began dating and it almost always came down to a choice of either going on a date or using the Internet. But of course, there were ways around that; I would just spend less time online and get back to the next day.
Then of course there were the days that the library would be closed due to inclimate weather or various holidays. That can really muck up a schedule especially if you’ve been depending on something of great importance. I’ll miss the library, but perhaps only the folks who worked at the reference desk and that’s all.
Two weeks ago I was hooked up via the local telephone service, but that’s when all of my temporary troubles began. In order to get online, I had to have my computer fitted properly.
It took several trips to the local electronics store to get my computer fixed and re-fixed until it worked properly. During that time, I had experienced several episodes of near panic attacks and several shades and states of sadness. At some point, I prayed to God that I would get through this hardship and asked for guidance. This past Friday evening, God answered my prayers as I was finally was able to get online.
The first thing I did when I got online was to call up The Arizona Babe, who was overjoyed with the news. Then I took her surfing with me and of course the first website I went to was www.beatles.com; we then looked up her name, then my other two brother’s names, Benjy & Louie and lo and behold I found that my brother Louie has a blog like me. Then on final approach, I took her to my blog and read her one of my recent posts.
Even though I am working on the bugs within the system, I am still able to get online with no real problems. Those frightful days of having to go to the library are over. But all those days are gone now.
Today was a beautiful day; I went grocery shopping, I went to a friend’s house to party, I picked up some instrumentation for my pesky bathtub, went to work out at the gym and will do the laundry soon.
It’s almost as if I’ve become a free man!
I think I’m going to like this.
