Wireless Weekend

(Written on Sunday, posted Monday, for reasons which shall become apparent.)

I had absolutely planned to post a blog or two – and probably a couple more Ragweed video clips – this weekend, but that proved to be impossible because Charter (my internet provider) sucks so much giant monkey butt. I’ve been 99% netless all weekend. Our connection has been really slow for a long time, and much worse in the evening, but Friday night it gave up altogether. I hoped it would come back to life all by itself, and when that didn’t happen I fiddled around with all the various cables and connections. Early on Sunday (today) I actually got it to connect – sort of. The only page that would load was gmail, so I sent out a few quick messages, then it died again. Apparently this will force me to make a call to “customer service,” but my experiences with Charter’s version of service have been every bit as frustrating as those with cell phone providers and credit card companies.

So, today I can write, but can’t post anything until I get a few free minutes at work.

Despite my lack of contact with the cyberworld, it’s been a pretty nice weekend. I finally got some pool time in decent weather, yesterday and today! I’m no longer the winter-white Minnesotan, but have a bit of color. I used to tan myself leathery, but not anymore. My skin is aging badly enough as it is. Unless I want to end up looking like one of those dolls with the heads made out of shriveled-up dried apples, I have to keep the tanning to a minimum. I didn’t even bring Darwin in the pool. I just wanted to float on my raft, read, and listen to Ragweed.

Tom got out of work a bit early yesterday, so we had the afternoon and evening to ourselves. I was in the pool for 2 ½ hours today and a couple of hours yesterday, making this one of the few weekends of the year that the pool is not more trouble than it’s worth. But it’s clouded up a bit, so I decided to come in and not hang out there all chilly, and still end up with a sunburn. NASCAR is on a road course today, which I hate, but there’s an Indy Car race on right now, and Marco Andretti is running up front.

Remember the zillion box elder bugs I was complaining were swarming all over the exterior of my house? Now they’ve gone airborne. Every time you walk outside, you get dive-bombed by the psychotic little buggers. I’m sick of picking them out of my hair, and I just know that sooner or later one is going to fly into my mouth, and then I shall vomit. So today, while floating in the pool, I devised a sinister plan to reduce their numbers, if not eradicate them altogether.

My plan does not include insecticide (the product or the act). I’m not happy killing things – usually – and I’m sure they’d make an extremely gross crunching sound and squirt out gobs of disgusting goo. That wouldn’t be any better than having them fly into my mouth. I prefer methods which, while not as immediate, should provide more lasting results throughout the ecosystem.

Lots and lots of these bugs end up drowning in the pool. Initially this seems like a good thing. But I got thinking that these floaters are clearly the least-intelligent bugs, falling into the insect equivalent of Lake Superior, and not being strong, quick, or bright enough to get out. Darwinism at work – the stupid are not alive to reproduce.

But what if they were? These stupid bugs would reproduce, resulting in dumber-than-usual box elder bugs, and sooner or later they’d all be too stupid to live, and I would be able to walk out onto my own deck without bugs flying into my orifices. So I started rescuing the stupid, struggling, floating bugs. Go forth, be fruitful and multiply, buggy morons. You are ensuring the destruction of your entire race, just as I’ve planned.

My aversion to squashing pests, however, does not extend to Charter Communications at the moment. I’d really, really like to grind somebody under my heel, but I suppose I should wait until tomorrow when we can contact “customer service” on the off chance that they’ll actually be able to fix my internet problem without a lot of grief or complication.

Since this is highly unlikely, I should make sure I know where my stompin’ boots are located, clean the dog poo out of the tread (or maybe not), and have them ready to go.