On Thursday -- finding ourselves with a free morning -- George and I headed over to Starbucks for the first Pumpkin Spice latte and Pumpkin Spice scone of the season. As we intended to sit and linger for a while (the sun was shining and none of the kids would know where to look for us), I grabbed my knitting bag and MyPet (mini laptop) and my cell phone. George took the newspaper and his iPhone.
I will do some knitting, I thought to myself. And check my email. Send a few text messages. And (feeling both brilliant and smug) I will write up a blog post about how portable my work is – and how I embrace technology (when it serves my purpose) and maybe even wax rhapsodic about the Wonders of the Age We Live In. And, tremulous, I ventured: Wow, with my knitting in hand and the world at my fingertips, maybe I really could live at Starbucks!
Sunshine, coffee, my own George beside me, the morning paper…pretty good so far. I knit for a while, then sent some text messages. And I asked George to hook me up to the Internet (we get WiFi at Starbucks with our Gold Card). I kind of expected it to be one of those quick fill-in-the-password deals, but it took a bit longer. So, I pulled out my knitting (fortunately I had a nice, simple seed stitch in-the-round going). And I pondered how in order to get hook-up for the Internet, one had to hook up to the Internet. Felt a little like Alice in Wonderland.
Finally, success! I had Internet connection. But then I couldn’t type the password for the email in the little box. Try, try, grrrr, try. Hand MyPet to George and pick up my knitting (K1,P1,K1,P1…). He got my password in and I started checking my email. The page kept jumping around and I had to keep clicking back to where I was reading. Click, click, grr, click. When I tried to respond to my email (touching base with my son, Geoff, in London – that was going to be one of the “Wonders of the Age We Live In” bits), I couldn’t type anything in the box – i.e. I would hit the keys, but no letters would appear on the screen. Type, type, grrr, type. Hand MyPet to George and pick up my knitting (K1,P1,K1,P1…)
He tried a number of things, but it was obviously some sort of program issue and he said he would fix it at home later. All this clicking and typing and grr-ing to no purpose had taken time, of course. And I was wondering if I really had time to type up a blog post about the savvy way I handle technology (K1,P1,K1,P1) when my cell phone rang (rats, I forgot that in this Age of Wirelessness it doesn’t matter if no one knows where you are – they can always find you).
It was Sarah telling me to meet her at Max’s school so she could walk me through the “check out” process – it involves typing a secret code into several different typepads (easier to get the Crown Jewels out of The Tower than to get a kid out of that pre-school). And that was the end of the morning.
So, technology, hmm. K1,P1,K1,P1…
Note: Today Sarah and I formed the Portrait of the Modern Artisans – ensconced in the comfy chairs at Starbucks with Gwen in her carseat at our feet while I Sarah worked on our Etsy store profile on MyPet and I knit (K1,P1,K1,P1…).
