It Took Two Entire Weeks . . .

. . . for CenturyLink to restore our internet service. That was inexcusable. I have lots of thoughts about the past two weeks and you will hear them in future blog posts, trust me.

Lack of internet was not just a matter of not being able to check social media and stream Netflix. If that was the extent of what we lost during those two weeks, that would be one thing, but we—and several of our neighbors—are trying to run businesses or work from home. Functioning internet is not a luxury for us.

I had earmarked the entire week between Christmas and New Year’s for working on various websites, particularly the one for our local homestead foundation. None of that happened. I had no access to any of the Adobe Creative Suite apps because they are all in the cloud. I was successful at using my cell phone as a hotspot exactly twice. (On Christmas Day, we had emergency service only on all our cell phones because the towers were overloaded.) I could not access the Bernina website for my serger class materials. DD#2, who had hoped to work while she was here, left a day earlier than planned after Christmas to go back to Seattle so she didn’t have to take any additional time off. Everything required one clunky workaround after another.

I do not have a laptop. I could not pick up my entire desktop system and transport it to a location that had internet. Thank goodness I refuse to use Quickbooks Online; I insist on the desktop version for this very reason. I had no access to online banking, which was difficult, but at least I could still prepare and send out invoices and do payroll.

I am starting 2023 weeks behind where I had hoped to be. All of those homestead foundation tasks I had hoped to accomplish now have to be fit in around other, already-scheduled projects.

We are looking forward to getting Starlink and being able to tell CenturyLink to go pound sand. I hope to have nothing to do with them in the future. I do understand that part of this outage was due to issues (somewhat) beyond their control. Apparently, some components inside the service box on the corner got fried when Bonneville Power shut off the electricity coming in during that cold snap and Flathead Electric had to move electrical loads around this side of the valley. That explains why the internet went out a few hours before we lost power. However, part of it is also due to their stupidity in putting the service box on a corner where it gets hit, repeatedly, and in not repairing the line properly after it does get hit. They also have abysmal customer service and did nothing to keep customers informed about what was happening. Most of the information we got came from someone in the neighborhood who stopped and chatted with the techs while they were working.

Honestly, we had more reliable internet service 20 years ago. Starlink will be more expensive, but as the husband pointed out, no one is going to run their car over a satellite and take out internet to the whole neighborhood.

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We were not unproductive during this time, but we did have to shift our energies to projects that could be done without internet. The husband worked in his shop and moved a lot of snow around. I pulled a bunch of UFOs and either finished them or moved them along in the queue. I finished quilting one top and started quilting another. I worked on embroidery projects. I bound a few table runners. I made the class sample for the Bernina serger event. That class was great fun. You know a class is successful when even the teacher has a great time.

I cooked down ham bones and vegetables into stock and canned 17 pints. I did some cleaning and reorganizing. I prepped a whole stack of projects and got them into the queue to be worked on in the next couple of months. I cut scrap fabric into usable pieces for future quilts. I feel like I accomplished quite a bit, but I did not like having my entire workflow upended. The two hours between getting up and making breakfast are some of the most productive hours of my day, but they are all done on the computer. I especially missed writing blog posts.

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The little deer is still hanging around. She is getting a bit bolder, too. The other day, I looked out the kitchen door and saw this:

She follows me around in the afternoon when I am doing chicken chores.

We also have two cats arguing about whose house and property this is. I was lying in bed the other morning when I heard a strange hissing noise. At first, I thought something was wrong with the husband, so I checked to see if he was breathing, but then I heard snarling. I came downstairs and found Sylvester—the feral cat that catches mice around our chicken coop—and another cat fighting on the front porch. They actually pulled out the plug to my porch lights in the midst of their tussling and left bunches of cat fur strewn about the porch. I’ve had to yell at them a couple of times since. I think Sylvester doesn’t want other cats poaching in his territory, although it’s not like we have a shortage of rodents around here.

I suppose I should be grateful it was a couple of cats and not two mountain lions.