Disconnected

For once I actually have an excuse for not posting anything new on what has lately been this sadly neglected blog. Shortly after I got back to Brooklyn after a 10-day sojourn in California (and you didn't even know anything about it, did you? not a word of griping from me about how much San Francisco or Berkeley suck, either!), my internet connection (my very expensive internet connection, I note, unlike my free Berkeley internet connection - see, some things are actually better in Berkeley) decided to go walkabout and/or wonkers (my new coinage, combining, duh, wonky and bonkers, hope you like it).

I knew I'd been spending way too much time on the internet, albeit little or none of it blogging, but wasn't aware just how dependent on it I'd gotten. Not just for killing time, though there's certainly that, but for so many of the day-to-day functions that heaven knows how people managed to deal with before the internet was invented. Like looking up phone numbers, for example; who has a phone book anymore? I realize some profligate people call information at whatever number(s) they're using nowadays, but I quit that when 411 stopped being free.

Or, for example, when I decided to take to my laptop to the public libary and take advantage of the free wireless connection there. I wanted to look up which branches had wireless and what hours they were open, but where do you find that sort of info except, of course, on the internet. Anyway, trusting to memory or instinct, I'm not sure which, I found my way to Bryant Park, located behind the main library at 5th adn 42nd, where I'm currently sitting at a nice little table, conveniently shielded against the blazing sun (currently 95F/35C) by a lovely garden umbrella and watching a couple new skyscrapers being built virtually in front of me).

My trip to California was not something I really wanted to do, especially in the middle of my favorite time of year in New York, but I'd promised to help my mom with some things and also had a bunch of old business to clear up there myself in preparation for what now looks like my permanent move to New York. Can't remember if I mentioned it in my dispatch about the flood, but part of the fallout was that I have to move out of the place I've been subletting. I wasn't looking forward to spending the last month of summer in what has sometimes been described as New York's premier blood sport, the apartment hunt (especially sans internet!) but then the super called yesterday and offered me a place all of three doors away. It's more expensive and has its drawbacks (but on the plus side, it's on the third floor and presumably safe from floods), but it looks like I have my own apartment now, or will come next month.

Enough personal minutiae: I really only stopped by here to let any faithful (or otherwise) readers know that I was temporarily out of the electronic loop and not to expect much from me (not that you probably were anyway) until next week at least. Oh, and while I was in California, my personal computer genius friend Patrick Hynes helped set me up with some new computer wizardry which may help me finally get my long-promised website off the ground. If I ever get an internet connection, that is.