No Electronics?

Susanna left me a comment on Thursday's post about possible problems resulting from using a GPS unit while driving, telling me about a question asked by the CBC's Jian Ghomeshi on his radio program that day - what would we do without our electronics? What could we do without them?

I have to say, at this moment in time, I could give mine up quite happily, having just published a blog post meant for Saturday on Friday instead by accidentally pushing the wrong button.  So now this post is a day later, which is fine because I'm up at the cottage by the time you're reading this and letting my scheduled posts carry on without me.

As of Friday night, when I am writing this, I could give up my iPod, my computer, my cell phone.  I'm so tired at the moment, I don't have the energy it takes to deal with electronics or to figure out how to reverse actions that occur when you push the wrong button by mistake or disagree with my cat Max over which one of us should have greater access to the keyboard (apparently my typing interferes with his napping).  Or do laundry, or tidy my apartment or pack for the weekend.

On the plus side, I have my new laptop up and running.  It's not as sexy or pretty as my old one (which they apparently discontinued last month) but it's doing the job and after spending a couple of hours last night and tonight setting it up, creating restoration disks, installing the security program (all of which seemed to go a lot faster than the first time I went through all this only 4 months ago but still seemed to take too long), I'm able to work faster online. It would also mean I could share more photos from France...if only I could find the disks with said photos. They're here somewhere, I just don't have any idea exactly where and I don't have the energy to look for them.

I'd like to turn off my electronics and do simpler things, like just read a book or better yet, go to sleep. It seems like it has been a long week. I'm heading to the cottage for Thanksgiving weekend and we don't have Internet access there, so I will happily leave my computer behind. Besides, look what happened the last time I took my computer for a ride!! (and don't think I wasn't nervous, just bringing the new one home from the store!)

I'm not saying I want to give up electricity altogether, although that has its appeal sometimes as well. But this weekend, as wonderful as the forecast sounds, we're still going to need a little help to keep warm and we'd like to watch a movie or two in the evenings, so I would prefer to have the baseboard heaters and the TV connected. Plus we'll probably use the microwave to get some part of the turkey dinner ready. So I would have to say I need a little bit of juice for those machines.

But I'm okay being disconnected from everything else for a couple of days - no Facebook, no blog roll, no emails.  I'll have my cell phone with me but hardly anyone ever calls me on that.  For the next 2 or 3 days, the world will continue to revolve without my presence online without any problems. Could I do without it for longer?  Sure.  Forever?  Hmm, I'd have to think about that.