Perseverance

It has been a long and hard week, but we persevered!

Our modem took a dive last Sunday morning and since then we were without internet in our home. When scheduling a technician to switch us over I noted that it would be most convenient to do this on a Friday - when my husband was off. I didn't think so much about how difficult not having internet access at home could potentially be!

Of course there was the whole no World of Warcraft for AB.

And I didn't get to upload my now finished Blurb books to order.

But beyond that other little things came to the surface - like our Tivo now gets programming information from the net - no updated Tivo listings (not that we really needed beyond a week and a half, but I was starting to blame the net for why Top Chef didn't record on Wednesday). But no downloading shows from the internet (not that we really have time during the week to watch anything like that).

The obvious is no e-mail for either of us. AB can still check his personal e-mail from work, so he wasn't as affected here. I am not in that camp anymore.

I have no confirmations for stuff I have ordered online the past week (at work) for Christmas presents. I don't know what is in stock or backordered or when anything is going to arrive.

I didn't receive my book club e-mails. Book club kept slipping my mind already since I didn't even buy the book. But if it weren't for my friends inquiring if I was going I would have completely missed the opportunity to labor over the decision to attend or not (did I say I didn't even buy the book?) and would have done the "duh" headslap upon checking my e-mail later.

Wonder if my kids made it to the finalists in the Gap contest? (It has happened before.)

Wonder if I won any prizes (a GelPro mat maybe) from all those entries into the Food and Wine 30th Anniversary contests? (Probably not, but I can dream.)

Who knows what else I have missed... I suppose I will soon find out!

Curse you internet!

I am the queen of finding both useless and useful crap on the internet.

I can comparison shop, I can find the best deals, I can read reviews on products, I can order shoes while I work, I can buy Father's Day presents without hauling the kids to the mall... very easy to set my son in front of the computer and let him choose between two gifts - he picked out daddy's watch for Christmas, and then went and told daddy he just bought him a watch. AB thought he was making it all up. Surprise when on Christmas morning he did actually have a watch that Leif knew ALL about from the computer.

And then I can also find things like a dog.

For the last year or so AB and I have toyed with getting a Belgian Shepherd puppy. We have our Win-dog who is fabulouso. But she is getting old. Nine years old last month. That's 63 in dog years.

She loves to play with the neighborhood dogs, especially Lucy (a Great Pyrenees/Retreiver mix) down the street. Winny has her posse of doggy playmates on our evening walks. But she could really use a young dog to exercise her legs and keep her from getting too old and sedentary.

Then "we" (read *I*) went and got a cat last fall instead of a puppy. Winny and Lucky are to the point that they play, they sleep together, they race around the house, then they sleep together again.

But Winny really wants a dog.

We all would like another dog really. But mommy and daddy don't "really" want a puppy. Especially now that my kitten isn't so much of a kitten anymore and my baby is now a toddler. We are ready for a little break with live baby things

I made my way to a Belgian Shepherd Rescue pages like I do every couple of months. Just to see what is there...

Lo and behold there were a few dogs there. (There never are, people who get Belgian's don't give them up easily since they are rare and usually expensive as hell.)

There was Tinga.

"Tinga is a lovely 1 ½ - 2 year old from Central California. She’s house- and crate-trained, enjoys grooming, and travels well. Her foster family says she’s calm, oh-so-sweet and eager to please. She gets along well with other dogs and cats. Tinga especially loves to be invited onto the couch for some snuggly TV time! This sweetheart will be spayed later this month and available for adoption mid month."

And the fact that she looks *just* like Winny doesn't help either.

I phoned AB expecting him to reign me in with a quick "no".

But he didn't.

I have an inquiry out.

Sigh... time to close my browser before I get myself into anymore trouble.

For those of you who MySpace it

I haven't decided if I will cancel my account altogether, or just pare down my already minimalistic account to the bare minimum. I like the social aspect of being able to find people and be found by others. Plus, it is the only place where I maintain an albeit light connection with some people from my past.

But here is where my concern lies. I am a parent.

There is a website out there that apparently cites freedom of information and creates profiles for people. They claim to be akin to the white pages. But the white pages don't post a picture of my son next to my name and city and state. From everything I can tell, this information was taken from MySpace. And frankly, I see a huge difference between my putting a picture of my son and I on my profile and someone taking my picture from my profile and putting it on a website I have not authorized. (Freedom of information my ass.)

Curious? Want to see what your profile shows? Check out peek you dot com with no space between peek and you. You can "opt out" and remove your profile. Check out their privacy page for information on how to do this. (I did this using my spam account because I have no delusion that they will actually do this, nor that they won't then use my e-mail account for who knows what.)

I contacted the local news and have asked them to look into this and have also been looking into the legality of this. It is probably legit. And I probably wouldn't have flipped had my son's smiling face not been there on some unfamiliar website. But the security of MySpace - the reason my company banned it - is a concern, at least to me.