Internet Junkie

Confession time - I am an Internet junkie. Tonight is the first time I am actually online in our little Bed & Bunnies apartment and its better than . . . hmm . . . never mind, my parents and father-in-law are reading this blog (in fact, they may be the only ones). We already knew that we would have a high speed connection at our long term apartment, but the B&B apartment we are staying in until Sept 1 did not have an internet connection, although the owner has a connection upstairs. Unfortunately, our Italian is not good enought to explain a wireless router, etc. to our very charming landlady, Vladi. So, we sent an email to her daughter in California asking her to explain it to her mother, which she did with the final result being Vladi coming downstairs and saying "computer" and making the universal hand & arm gestures for "go ahead, do whatever you want." It did require finding the local "Media World" store (by bus, of course), selecting and buying a wireless router and a web cam, then 3 visits by Bill up to her apartment for installation, security, no security, etc. - but we are now online!!! I am so happy and if any of my friends and family have a webcam, we can actually talk online with them. For only $29.99 you can see us and talk to us in that stilited surreal way that you may remember from the early days of videoconferencing (if you are old enough). The kids favorite thing to do is to position the camera not so you can see us, but to point it at the computer screen so that the caller can see themselves - apparently that is more fun than just visiting with the caller.

But I digress - instead of sending a bunch of long, overdue emails to my friends and family, I used the internet to read the NY Times, check the weather, and go to my favorite fashion satire site, gofugyourself.com. And, I suspect I may even play a few games of literati before I actually get around to those emails.

By the way, we love Italy except the heat is really getting to all of us - there are very few air conditioned places, stores, etc. However, being mammals, we all appear to be thermo-regulating and getting used to it (a little).