This past week has been insane. My wife gave birth to our daughter, then we hid in the halls of the hospital when the second deadliest tornado outbreak in US history swept through. We survived, as did our home, but when we were discharged from the hospital, we had to go home to no power. The weather was great, but try changing diapers by flashlight. We had almost no gas in the cars so I couldn’t risk not being able to leave the area just to charge my phone. So I turned it off.
Yeah. I had all these pictures of my baby girl to spam to my Twitter followers and post on Facebook, yet I had to disconnect. Even if I hadn’t, there was no wifi, and the cell networks were on and off, with AT&T going between G and Edge, and Verizon just being spotty.
Yet we gathered in the living room and made sandwiches, chatting and taking the occasional picture with the sunlight that came in through the windows we had left open for the breeze. The 50″ TV stood there mockingly with my Portal 2 case sitting on the XBox below, as my brother in law asked about how fun it was and we agreed to play multi-player if the power came back on.
I was in full freak out mode without my finger on the pulse of the internet. Even as I laid in bed, trying to sleep for the two hours between diaper changes, I thought of funny tweets I could have made about the situation. Too bad you guys didn’t read ’em. But then we found a filling station that was running on a generator, and we packed up and headed North to my in-laws. I got kind of excited that I could connect again. I plugged the phones in to charge for the two hour drive and started uploading pictures during particularly boring stretches of Interstate.
Once we arrived, we unloaded the car (traveling with a 3 day old baby takes up the entire trunk of a 2008 Malibu, and part of the back seat) and I connected to the wifi so I could maximize my internetting. Yet I didn’t do much. The most interaction I had was when I heard there was going to be a late night announcement from the President, and I asked around on Twitter what was up with the timing (seriously, who is going to tell him to hurry up?) It’s even taking a lot of concentration to type this out instead of hanging out with my daughter and wife.
So instead of curling up into the fetal position and crying until we got power, I actually enjoyed myself. It’s encouraged me to take a few more trips to the boonies where I can disconnect and actually have my own thoughts for a while. I recommend you try it too.
Now’s the time to develop that Cityville addiction, before it becomes too noticeable that the baby is draining all of your time.
Again, congratulations on the birth of your daughter, now go change diapers.
I’m starting to get concerned that we’ve all just about written a “disconnect from technology” article at this point. Me thinkst we may have alighted on the wrong sort of website to start. :D
I prefer to be a “modern lifestyle” blog. Drunken camping would be a good article to research.
The only thing that I have that comes close was the last set of wildfires that ravaged San Diego County in October 2007. My son was just three weeks old, and we had a mandatory evacuation from our home, along with our two dogs and three cats. Since half the rest of the county was being evacuated as well, and we have no family here that also wasn’t being evacuated, we were really struggling to figure out just where the hell we could go. Every hotel was booked, or would not take us with our menagerie of pets. We ended up camping out in my office for two days before being allowed to return to our home. Me, my wife, our three-week old baby, two dogs and three cats all crammed into my 15×15 office.
But at least I had internet.
I used the internet to connect to my Slingbox at home to watch the news. I knew that as long as I was watching TV “slung” from home, our house was still there.
Haha. I was outside on Pendleton, running an training operation at the time. Wearing MF’n painters masks. What a dickup. That’s actually when I joined twitter, so I could get updates sent to my phone.
I did something similar when I went overseas in December/January. It’s a really nice refreshing break and also a nice refreshing return to normalcy when you go back to your tech-filled life. I suppose that’s because I’m as addicted as the next person to technology, but it still opens your eyes.