Vacationing in PA

We left Ft. Lauderdale "International" Airport 20 minutes late Wednesday afternoon, but with the tailwind still got into Allentown 2 minutes early! We had plenty of time to make it to the in-law's church (Bethel Baptist Church). It's been awhile since I've been up here, so many were surprised at my "fuzziness" (didn't start my beard until Feb 05).

When we arrived "at home," I found the in-laws have a brand-spanking new Dell desktop!! That was exciting, but the "no internet" part wasn't. Thursday we went to the library with high expectations -- DSL, 20 or 30 work-stations, peace & quiet -- lo and behold, everything I wanted to access was blocked!!! No Facebook, no Blogger, no Blogspot, nothing! I couldn't post, read, or comment about anything to anyone. Not so good, but I was thankful to be able to check my Yahoo, Hotmail, & GMail (yes, I have too many email accounts, but they all serve their purposes: organization and prioritization).

So today, we received a disk in the mail from JUNO... supposedly to connect to JUNO, but no such luck -- it was actually a Norton anti-virus disk. Yippee. PC-cillin is working just fine... especially since there is NO INTERNET with which to connect and get infected by any viruses! After multiple calls to the JUNO "helpline" (not much help, since it's located in India, Pakistan, or some other country in which most of the people speak a totally differnt dialect of English) to attempt to find a JUNO disk here locally, I realized my hopes to finally get to connect by lunchtime may have been realistic. How-some-ever, every place they told me to go was out of JUNO disks, or had never even heard of JUNO! They were perfectly willing to offer me a collection of disks to connect to NetZero, PeoplePC, Earthlink, or a plethora of other dial-up services, but since my in-law's current email address ends in @juno.com, those wouldn't be much help.

Finally, after 50+ miles of driving (in the rain) up and down 309 -- past numerous little towns I've never heard of (Hellerstown? who would want to live there??) and a few I have heard of (Doylestown, Quakertown, etc.) I finally found a BestBuy with a JUNO disk! So we now have an internet connection! (My withdrawal symptoms are gradually receding.) Of course, it is dial-up (that just thrills my soul), but it's better than nothing.

I checked my FB inbox first and responded to everything in it, now I'm off to empty the junk folders in my email accounts, check for "real" email, peruse a few blogs, and then (if my wife's movie is over, and IF the Varmints 3 are still not ripping each other limb from limb) I'll move over for someone else. (I like being the computer whiz: first dibs on the computer.) Hoping no one wants to call here tonight -- with 3 internet starved people in the house on dial-up, it's going to take awhile.

Hm. I've just been informed the movie has ended and (since "Pop Pop" is still working) it's my job to go light the fireplace. It seems we're going to introduce the Varmints 3 to one of my least favorite food tonight: hotdogs (at least they're roasted and not boiled). The best part is we'll also be enjoying one of my favorite foods: roasted marshmallows!