I'm back!!!

I'm back!!!
21 November 2012

I’m back again!  Yeehaaa!!!  No more Internet-Interruptus for me!  After more than 24 hours in the black hole that is “no-internet-connectivity”, I am once again hooked up to my main line.  And like a junkie deprived of the good drugs, after a period of enforced abstinence, I am now gorging myself on the ready supply of bandwidth at my eager fingertips.  Blood is coursing through my veins and I am happily surfing the net again.  Checking a virtual plethora of e-mails and replying to them, as well as my Facebook and Blog pages.  How dependant one becomes.

Years ago, I would have not missed it at all and would have coped very well.  However, nowadays, not so much.  I suspect that I am not alone and that many of us feel the same.  I can kind of equate it to not having a car.  You know that feeling when your car is booked in for a service and you haven’t got your wheels.  And all of a sudden, you have a million little jobs and errands to run.  It reminds one yet again how isolated you can become without certain things we normally take for granted.  The same goes for the telephone and cell phone too.  They are lifelines to all of us.

But, of all the things I missed the most, my blog is first and foremost.  It felt a bit like I’d been cheated and robbed of my daily fix.  How rude!  Despite this, I filled my time very adequately with other obsessions.  It is market season at the moment.  No, not fruit and veg type of market.  Christmas market - those very same Christmas markets that seem to sprout up around just about every corner at this time of the year.  Most of them have a common thread – the Church, and in particular, the NG Church.  I think it is their biggest source of income and revenue and helps them to add substantial amounts to the church coffers every year.

But fun though the crafting is, it generally demands a huge amount of time.  Not to mention the effort.  I am not scared of either and thoroughly enjoy it.  Yet it is tiring and exhausting work.  I only slept a total of four hours last night and I’m feeling exceptionally sluggish today.  Kind of like I’m trapped under layers and layers of cotton wool and I just can’t seem to break free.  Sounds appear hollow and I know for a fact that I’m moving in slow motion.  Perhaps driving today was not such a good idea.  One night of little sleep, is not the end of the world, and in general I cope exceptionally well with it – not requiring a huge amount of sleep to function, and function well at that.  However, I’ve had many consecutive nights of little sleep and the effect seems to be exponential.  It is a feeling that transports me back to my student years, when cramming and pulling an all-nighter before an exam was the order of the day.  And I must say big-up to the Chinese or whoever invented it, because sleep deprivation is a killer.  As a form of torture it is surely unparalleled and probably makes waterboarding seem quite tame by comparison.  However truth be told, waterboarding doesn’t sound like a whole pile of fun either.  Perhaps we could call it a truce between the two and say that they’re even-stevens with regards to torture-ability, as I’m certainly not offering my services as a guinea pig to test my little theory.  I can also vouch for the fact that all three of my kids are masters at the art of enforcing sleep deprivation on me.  Perhaps it is a hidden and latent talent that starts forming in the womb, because from day one they were pro’s.  And as far as I know they never received any training in the field.  So it really is a more natural ability or maybe a gift, depending on your outlook.  Quite possibly it is just as well that they haven’t discovered waterboarding yet.  Chances are they’d be good at that too.

Being at the mercy of Telkom whilst I was unconnected was also rather peculiar.  Firstly it is a major achievement if you actually get to speak to a real person.  A call to them necessitates a whole bunch of computer-voice prompted responses and pushing of buttons.  You know how annoying those can be.  “If the telephone you are calling from, relates to your query, please press 0.  If you wish to report a fault, press 1.  For problems with your ADSL line, press 2.  For online technical support, press 3.”  TEDIOUS!!!  It took about 3 minutes just to speak to a real person, not a computer.  It probably would have been sooner, had it not been for the fact that they kept on repeating the mantra “Please note that for security purposes, your call might be recorded” – over and over and over again.  I mean, seriously!  I am but merely logging a fault and trying to ascertain some technical support.  It is not as if I will be disclosing the location of WMA’s in Iraq. 

Alas, the bottom line is, that I am good to go again.  Thanx Telkom, you have restored my faith.

And on a lighter note, my comment about Internet-Interruptus, reminds me of the time, my Dad suspended chemo for a few weeks, as he had to go up to the Grahams Town Festival to perform with the Blues Broers.  He made a decision to take a brief reprieve from treatment in order to have a bit of fun.  I think he probably knew by then that the end was inevitable, not avoidable.  Perhaps he was looking forward to his Grahams Town swansong so to speak.  There was much banter by all of us as well as the Hospice nurses about Chemo-Interruptus.  A sort of tongue in cheek reference to an ancient form of birth control, called Coitus-Interruptus.  Which for those of you not in the know, is basically the rhythm method of birth control.

Which brings me to my brother-in-law Robin.  I’ve heard him say this little nugget of truth a few times:

What do you call people who practice the rhythm method of birth control?

Parents!  Ha-ha-ha!!!  Too true.