Serious With-drawl Symptoms!

Have you ever been forced to stop doing something that you or a big part of you really loves to do?

How about an addiction or a bad habit?
Something that perhaps you don't love but a part of you somehow is attached to the the very core of the thing?

Well that has happened to us this week, we are in a stage of with-drawl, pain and remorse all at the same time! This is all very emotional and hard for me to talk about...

What is it you ask?
Well it is the Internet, or better yet... the lack of Internet.

We have a great Internet plan down here that we utilize on our travels. Its a MiFi which is a little electronic thingy (Router) that we keep with us wherever we go. Its smaller than my cell phone and it provides us with affordable Internet. We have a plan that gives us 20 Gigs a month and for the last 2+ years that has been more than enough.

The other day it wasn't working. Barb called into our provider whom I might add have been fantastic and still are. The problem it seems lies with us!

After using up 25 Gigs they decided to cancel our usage for the rest of the month! Yikes, are you kidding me - they have canned us!

Like many things in life you don't really know how bad life can be until you lose that particular something. Then you hit the gutters when you find out. I am sad to admit it & sadder to say it out loud but we are in the gutter!

With only 9+ days to go we both feel like we are in the long part of the short stretch of a life sentence in prison. We rarely have decent TV these days and to be honest there is little on TV (other than NASCAR) that I care to even watch. But please I beg you don't take away our Internet!

Now we are left to do things like normal people do.
We have to go outside and do things even when its cold (yes it is cold here in this part of Florida). We have to interact with each other, talk out loud and even interact at times with other people. All because we have lost our Internet! What else do normal people do? We are at a loss!

You see we did not expect this. We did not expect to be in such a dismal state of affairs just because we have no Internet signal.

I have to ask myself what did I do before the Internet? How did I go on with my days? How could I have accomplished or learned anything, what about entertainment?

Well I must say I am exaggerating a little bit.
But just a little. You see we do like meeting other people. So that's not a problem, in fact that is a good thing!

But deep in the pit of our hearts a little something has changed.
Part of it is the habit (bad I know). For example when we rise in the morning the first thing that happens is we read our email. We do that after making a nice pot of coffee. We also check Face Book, Blogs, News, Maps and research things to do in the days ahead.

So as we head into day 5 (I believe) we are learning to make do without. The last 2 of 3 mornings we have had coffee at a cafe that has Internet. Yes no matter how cold it was we cycled down the road a mile or so just to get wired.

One day we drove to Gainesville (about an hour away - still in Florida) so that Barb could get groceries and guess what I am doing? You are reading it.

So, we are learning a lesson and I am in fact glad to have had it taught to me (again). Whether it's a left-over from my corporate days or what, I do not know, but we have come to rely on this and rely on it far too much.

Sure we use it for communicating with family and friends back home but far too much time is wasted on no-brain cramping too. So I guess what I could have said in one sentence or less is that - we do not have Internet and you might not hear from us for a few days! :)

No worries though, our sanitized North American culture and way of life has provided and likely still will for a few more days. Thanks to Starbucks, McDonald's and others we get free Internet when we go out and look for it! So the with-drawl symptoms are not near as bad as first thought and yes we will survive the rest of our sentence to do without.

BREAKING BAD.
I may have mentioned this before - This is a big problem and another big bad habit!

You may or may not have seen this TV series. I didn't until recently. What happened here is that we became addicted to this too! In fact we are so addicted to this silly TV show it is the real reason we have lost our Internet!

We have watched far too many episodes this month (on our Laptop) and we have to stop! If you decide to watch this show I will warn you. Do not do it on anything other than your TV at home (Net-flix is what we use). If you use your computer it will eat your Gigs faster that an Alligator eats wild chickens in a Florida campground!

Soon after the 1st of February we should be back online again. Until then we will either be in a restaurant or off line... Time will tell! :)