Hi, Folks -

I'm back. :) For the record, sixteen days without Internet is not something I'd recommend. :)

At about 10:20 p.m. May 31, a neighbor's 250-year old oak tree fell across the street and all the lines (power, phone, Comcast and Google) and in the process also pulled on the power cables to my house, bending what's referred to as the mast. Main power was restored to the neighborhood in a short while but could not be restored to my house until an electrician could rebuild the mast and sign-off on the safety of the connections. That did happen about two days later and cost a surprisingly large amount, and then we had power once more. In the interim a neighbor had allowed us to run a long extension cord from his house to ours so the refrigerator could be kept running.

We don't know if it happened the night of the 31st or sometime later, when workers moved the huge tree around to clear the roadway, etc., but at some point we had water running into the street from about where our meter is. Fortunately we had good water pressure in the house anyway. Perhaps by day 4 a crew had repaired that situation. We wait to see if our next water bill will be huge; hopefully not. :)

Then began the waiting for our land line and Internet connection to be restored. I'll spare you the details. Just know that there were many phone calls on a borrowed cell phone and some missed commitments. I think AT&T made the assumption that our problem was part of a larger problem and would be resolved when the larger problem was taken care of. That may have been partially correct - the falling tree required running of a new cable, and apparently not just near my house but all the way to some connection box, and then the hooking up of all the related terminal connections.

The missing element, however, was that our "drops" (lines from cable to house) were severed and new ones would need to be installed, on top of running the new main cable and hooking up the terminals. The new drops were finally put in place, Friday evening and Saturday morning - and here I am. :)

The amount of disruption caused by all that is noteworthy. There was an ongoing sense of being on edge, poised for some appointment, only we didn't know when the appointment would be. And there was a sense of, "What am I supposed to be doing right now?" And, "Is something important that really should be happening right now not happening because we're off line?" There was considerable stress involved in all that.

However: I'm back. :) I see things went along smoothly enough in my absence, and I'm grateful for that. My thanks to HotCoffee, CrystalRiver, NaturalWisdom and others, who expressed concern for my welfare and/or stepped up to at least try to handle things that seemed needful.

Rayelan had emailed me new Fundrazr code on June 6 but of course I wasn't able to receive that email or do anything about it if I had. I was able to get Raye on the phone today, and rather than put up a new Fundrazr now that the month's already half over, we decided to leave the existing Fundrazr in place and let it be for May and June combined. Many thanks to the approximately 19 fine folks who contributed toward RMN's expenses while I was away, and to the 8 or 10 fine folks who have added their contributions in support of me personally. :) (HotCoffee, thanks for suggesting that; you were right about this being "a good time" to add to that account. As mentioned above, the cost of rebuilding the mast was large and unexpected; recent contributions will definitely help with that. :)

I have a very large amount of email to wade through. :) So please be understanding as I do that.

Blessings, all.

--hobie

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