Why, Oh Why-Fi

Sometime in the middle of the night – I think around 4 a.m. – the power went out. Not sure why. It wasn't storming or anything. We only noticed because our fan (aka white noise machine) stopped. It was suddenly very quiet.

And you know what we heard? Coyotes. Lots of them. Somewhere. I guess near enough for us to hear them. Yikes.

The power came back on after an hour, I think. So waking up meant fixing all the electric clocks in the house and more. The "more" part was not fun. First, the cable television signal was out. I had to reset and restart all kinds of things before that got going. Then it was onto the Internet.

No matter how many times I reset and restarted any and every thing related to our Internet and wi-fi, I could not get a signal on our computers. I tried switching the wireless routers and everything. No success. To use the Internet on my computer, I had to use my smartphone as a hotspot. Now that's just a pain.

So I gave up and went shopping.

Well, first I ran 3 miles and got laundry going, then showered and went to Stevens Point shopping. But not for me, of course. For Carter. Just needed to get a shirt for his senior pictures tomorrow. But then, since there was no one home waiting for me – Carter was tubing and Jim was at a funeral in Green Bay – I decided to shop for myself. I had a $50 Kohl's gift card burning a hole in my pocket since my birthday. That was well spent. Ha.

Retail therapy is underrated.

When I got home, Carter was there there trying to figure out our darn wireless connection. How will we live without it?!? We were both frustrated so I got in touch with our Internet provider and no one else was having this problem since the power outage. Between the support guy and me, we determined it was our own wireless routers that must have gone to pot somehow, maybe a surge during the power outage. Who knows?

So after some time with Mr. Deck Chair and a dinner date with Carter, we picked up a new router... because I'm sure I had $70 burning a hole in my pocket! Got home and hooked it up and, I gotta tell ya, this new one works better than the two we had. My connection is faster and not slowed at all when we have two computers and three phones using it.

An expensive pain in the butt, but they don't make things to last. They know the consumers will fork over money for replacements because, well, we can't live without the Internet, can we?

I managed to most of today but I can't shop and go out to eat every day to fill the void! Not unless this new magical router is so good it prints money... or Kohl's cards.