Where Have I Been?

First of all, I love this picture of Kaitlyn.

She loves to watch the movie "The Sound of Music", and one day she was inspired to go and find props to match Maria's guitar and suitcase. Not bad creativity for a 2-year-old.

I suppose there's no good single answer to the question of where I've been, though.

Here's kind of the funny, poetic justice answer:

About two months ago when some of Ryan's friends were over playing, they kicked my wireless router over and it disconnected. I came along, in a hurry, and needed to get on the net for some reason or another...When my wireless network failed, I noticed that several of my neighbors have unsecured wireless networks, and I jumped on theirs (in case that might be illegal in some way, you could read it this way: It's possible that my computer somehow, and without my direct action or knowledge, spontaneously connected to a network that may or may not have been my wireless router--at this point I'm really not sure (hee hee) ).

After a while, I kind of forgot that we were doing that and it lasted nearly a month. Finally, I thought to myself "Why keep my service? I have 2 networks with perfect reception on either side of me..."

I'm not saying that this was nice or ethical, but, you know, it was more about seeing if that would work. So I canceled my service.

THE DAY I canceled the service, after poaching it for over a month, the guys on the right put a "For Sale" sign in their yard (no, I don't think I had anything to do with that), and they started the process of moving, which, apparently, includes unplugging the wireless network. So I was down to one network with no backup.

Two weeks ago, the guys in front of us got some kind of different internet connection and didn't put it on their wireless network.

So we were hosed--All I could do was laugh at myself for trying to get away with it.

In the meantime, Ryan and I went out of town. When I came back, we got the new FIOS internet, which is screaming fast, and it cost the same as our old DSL service. In fact, we got all new hardware, etc. so we actually came out way ahead on the deal. Total monthly expenses saved : $0.00.

But for a while there I could only get the internet at work so I didn't feel comfortable posting anything of substance.

It's funny, too--I go through times of feeling self-conscious about my posts and feeling that they are very self-absorbed and trivial. During those times I find it hard to make time to sit down and write. I guess I had one of those episodes too while I took time off.

And, my friend "Anonymous" (his poor mom couldn't think of anything else to name him?) is moving away, and that's depressing too.

At any rate, I'm all Blogger/Google upgraded so I think it should be easier to post pictures and other stuff, so I'll get back in the swing of things and catch up on the now-elapsed moments of brilliance and hilarity.