Due to stupidity on the parts of both myself
and my Internet provider, my Internet
connection died Wednesday night and will
probably not be back on until Tuesday, at the
earliest. It's not the first time I've gone without
home Internet, but the difference is that this
time, I stopped to think about it. And
yesterday I -- hold your breath -- turned off my
computer and haven't turned it back on yet.
Yes, that's correct; my computer has been
turned off for about 29 hours now.

So there I was with no Internet. Thursday was
no big deal, as I worked all day, went out to
pizza, then came home in time to watch
"Friends" and "Will and Grace." I had a bad
headache, so I think I watched another TV
show while half-fixing a Rubix cube.

Friday was weird, because I couldn't get up
and read the news online, as I normally do.
Since 9/11, I've gradually become more
obsessed with not missing out on any news,
and it doesn't help that I have the Associated
Press news wire at work. I had to settle for TV
news and my own paper. It was my day off, so
I considered installing a computer game I've
never played, but I didn't. After playing around
in Photoshop for a little while, I did a little
cleaning and then tackled -- and conquered --
a 1,000 piece puzzle. I think I did some other
things, too.

This post is getting long, but I'm actually at the
good part now. On Saturday, a friend and I
took off on a road trip to the Delta.
The Delta is an area east of here, and it's
where a bunch of rivers meet, meander and
criss-cross before they head out to the Pacific
Ocean. It's all farmland, and
there are actual islands, though roads
connect them and you can't really tell they're
islands without looking at a map. We picked a
spot on the map borrowed from work
("Newsroom: DO NOT REMOVE!" was written
on it -- ha ha) called "Boon Dox" but never did
get to that marina. We saw a lot of other
places, though, and I refrained from
saying "Water!" and "It's sooo green!" too
many times. I kept thinking of my New
Hampshire trip, and I have decided that I
should kidnap Sam and Leen and drag them
around the Delta so they can say "That's
water?!" and "It's soooo not green!" They're
spoiled.

It was early afternoon and we were rather
hungry, so we stopped at a place called the
Lighthouse Restaurant. I was disappointed at
the lack of a lighthouse, but the view and
weather made up for it. It was a perfect day to
sit outside, with the river actually flowing under
the seating area. Several people were fishing
off the docks, and an occasional boat cruised
by.

Either the food was very good, or I was very
hungry, and it was also fun to feed fries to two
cats. At first, the cats stayed away, but when
our food arrived, the cats became almost
dog-like, giving "Please feed me because I'm
cute" looks. We didn't think the cats would like
french fries, but they proved us wrong.

Anyway, we finally wandered back to Lodi, in
time for the Kings game. They proceeded to
stomp the Memphis Grizzlies, and it was a fun
game. A co-worker called at some point to say
that she couldn't get a babysitter, so a
get-together at her house was canceled. I was
disappointed, because we'd all been looking
forward to it, and because I could have gone
along with the police officers on a DUI
checkpoint if I'd known my Saturday night was
clear.

However, I instead dove into a book I'd started
earlier, and it's a GOOD, FUN book ("The
Sigma Protocol" by Robert Ludlum). I better
watch out, though, because if I continue
reading these kinds of books and writing
about police adventures, I might suddenly
switch careers and go into investigations.
Then again, that's nothing new; I always
wanted to be like Sherlock Holmes and
Encyclopedia Brown, too.

The one thing I didn't do this weekend was
write, and I'm a little disappointed about that.
I've got so many ideas for projects in my head,
but the more I write for work, the less I write for
myself. All in all, though, I did just fine without
the Internet. But I did miss being able to 'talk'
to my friends, since some of my closest ones
are online. Oh well; I guess you can't always
have everything.

Ell"signing off until Election Night is
OVER"myruh