Goodbye dialup, hello world!

Well, we did it, we got Satellite Internet! Wooo Hooo! No more waiting a zillion years for screens to download! We can read attachments, look at pix, even listen to music. Did you know they have this thing called "You Tube"? Of course you did! I'm finally able to see what my online friends look like and watch the cute movies of their kids! Hooray Hooray!


Okay, now for the bummer: we cancelled our dish service. We're not 100% satisfied with that, but we haven't found any option we're completely satisfied with. When we finally got serious about this New! Improved! internet connection we talked about a variety of options with the kids.


We're not in a position to afford all the things we want at the same time; in this case dish service, movie rentals, and a good internet connection (no cable anything this far out, not even city water, yet). We figured out we can afford two out of those three, though, and since we've all been dissatisfied with the recent tv show selection and getting sick of commercials we decided to try dumping the dish and getting the movie rentals (Netflix) again. Its an experiment.

So far I'm thrilled to be able to look at pix and movies online, George and Ray are ecstatic that they can listen to and even download music, and Mo is utterly gaga over the Games! Oooooooh ahhhhhhhhh, Disney and Nick and OMG Lego games! Plus we're all enjoying being able to rent movies again - that was the first thing we cut back when the finances got tight, so re juggling the budget and discovering that we could have movies again is a bonus. So far, we're all agreed that this particular way of divvying up the funds gives us the most options.


George is most excited about the music options - that's what ended up fueling the whole push to better interconnectedness. It wasn't even possible to have a Myspace or Facebook page with the connection we had, much less up or download music, and music is important to George. Kinda goes with the whole guitar building thing. Here's a link to his website, where you can also hear a sample of one of his guitars being played:


http://dismalax.com/
And oh! look! well, you can't see what I'm talking about so I'll tell you, it took less than a minute for this pic to upload! It used to take several minutes and then maybe it would upload, or not. This speed stuff is really great... er, I mean online.











He has a Myspace page or something, too... actually he has two, one just for music, but I'm behind on all this stuff, so I don't have addresses. I'll get them at some point.

Its Thanksgiving, today, and I've been employed for a year, now. I'm thankful for that, and for having a paid day off and spending it gardening - I got a spectacular deal on end-of-season plants and had dozens of hostas, coral bells and hyssop to get in the ground while its still reasonably temperate. I'm so thrilled - I got to plant borders! I've never planted a border. Usually I plant a couple plants and spread them out over the next few years. Its exciting.

George and Ray have gone to the big "alternative community" Thanksgiving potluck and Mo and I have been enjoying a quiet day home. She got the Whole Day to play computer games without three other people asking "can I have a turn?" so she's pretty pleased about that. So many games! Once I'm done here I'll go make us some coco and we'll likely snuggle up with books or projects - me knitting, her with legos or scissors. We're not the coziest snugglers in the world, I'm afraid. Lots of points and sharp edges. Its nice when George is out or up late so we can take over the bed with our prickly brand of affection. I know I have new pix somewhere - looks like still in the camera - so I'll have to post some soon. Now that I have new internet powers I can do that thing that used to drive me up the wall and have Whole Posts of Nothing but Pictures. Ahhhhhh, this is why they call it a super highway... all this time I've been driving the internet equivalent of a backroad with grass poking up through the middle.