laptop love/hate

well, I survived a of having no laptop with little permanent damage. I forget what life was like pre-laptop until it is held hostage in the university’s tech lab. Just when I start to reminisce about the good ole days of less artificial connectedness and start making resolutions to limit myself when I get my beloved device back I am struck with a random, seemingly essential question and no good answer for it. I reach for my computer to google my conundrum only to find that alas I have no way of obtaining an answer.

Then I think, what did people do before the internet? What do I do when that baby robin has fallen from its nest and is clawing its way up the tree trunk with little success? Do I help it? Will its momma smell human on it and refuse to feed it or was that just a myth? If it never gets back up there, what do I feed it? Obviously I need google. Right?

Or what about that all important question of how long to cook corn on the cob? I tried it last year when some friends came over and it stunk, and suddenly I have been gifted a bag of corn from a neighbor’s garden. Google time!

So as easy as it is to get online to find the exact locations of Isfahan (or Easfahan as I am told it is spelled now) and get side tracked for a half hour or so on facebook, I suppose the answer is to exercise a bit more self control rather than to give in to the impulse to discard the demon laptop altogether. After all, if I tossed the whole computer what would I do the next time Hunter asked a question like “do butterflies sleep?” I’d have to go back to the days of making up an answer and pretending to know everything. I much prefer saying, “Well, Love, I don’t know. Let’s find out together.”

So here’s to facing down the evils of random internet distractions head on, loving the massive amounts of information out there and vowing to allow myself a good 15 minutes a day to get lost in the social networking world with no guilt.