Until around 1997 I had never used email.   I didn’t really know much about the internet before I started law school.  The computer was a word processor to me, and a wonderful one.  I spent hours typing and mechanically cutting and pasting, rearranging, effortlessly murdering my darlings.   It was fantastic.  Later I found pictures of pretty women on the internet and thought how cool that was, but I wasn’t connected on-line yet.

Fast forward 17 years or so, the lifespan of those who grew up with electronic devices connecting them to each other, and, on discovering I have no internet service today, I feel like I’ve had me legs chopped off.

Among my emails is a possibly very important phone number, the direct line to a board member on the largest, best-funded, public school after-school program in the country, based in NYC.  This fellow found the promo I sent him very cool and invited me to call him when I got back in town.  But his number is inaccessible now from my internetless apartment.

As are the limitless informational possibilities that the internet represents.   Dag.

Can’t even call my internet provider, Verizon, a chickenshit outfit, because their number is… on line.   Unless I can dig up a paper bill and find a tech support number there.

My plan is to bring the iPad to a local coffee shop, connect over there, with a notebook by my side to jot down numbers in.  Damn it.  They do have good coffee though.