Withdrawl!

Like any addiction, when you decide to give something up either voluntarily or involuntarily, there is withdraw. I myself am going through withdraw of my own – involuntarily of course. My 4-6 hour a day internet fix has been taken away from me and I am left shaking, sleepless, with headaches and frankly with a lot of time on my hands. All except one of these symptoms you like to have while you are on vacation.

I should explain. Here in the land where democracy, philosophy, the Olympics and everything else I hold dear to me originated (Including realpolitick toddler), except maybe celebrity gossip. Things are not the same; water, electricity and even the internet are sometimes hard to come by, in my case I have water and electricity but a phone for internet access is very difficult to find. Realpolitik husband and I have been looking for alternatives to our non-internet access issue for the past 2 years without much to show for it. Realpolitik husband is under the impression that somewhere, somehow, someone would be broadcasting a wireless connection that we could just happen to jump on every once in a while. Not a chance. Then we thought for sure we had solved the problem by going to our local AT&T store and purchasing the newly advertised air cards. You know the ones with Bill Curtis in the middle of an island “finding” the internet. Don’t believe the hype people; the small print says that if you are out of the AT&T broadcasting area you are paying roaming charges, which can add up pretty fast. So while Bill Curtis has found the internet on his little island, poor Bill will use the money he was paid to do the ad to pay for his roaming charges. So, realpolitik husband and I were on our last option. The home/apartment we have here, which is about 45 min away from a big city, has several phone jacks placed around the house. Perfect, we will call the phone company get a phone line/number and we will be up and running. It maybe dialup but at least it’s something. FAT CHANCE. I go to the phone company (OTE) they take my info, and say they will be out in a few days to connect the line, give us a number and we are off to surf not only the waves a block from the house but also the internet. Dude calls me 3 times, to make sure where I live, what I want exactly, etc. He finally makes an appearance, goes into the basement of the building and proceeds to tell me that the electrician/developer had not finished the job of pulling the phone wires into the building, so while I have phone jacks in my house taunting me with the possibility of a dial tone, until the electrician finishes the job (which by the way this building is 4 years old) I cannot have a phone line installed. Ok, who does that?! So now on to find the electrician to do the job and start this process all over again.

I know this explanation is probably more than you all care to know, but remember what I said at the beginning, I’ve got a lot of time on my hands.

Hence the shaking, irritability, sleeplessness and headaches.
Things can only get better…….