Modern Technology

I would like to start off this post with a quote from Tamir (edited for language):

Thanks to modern technology I live in the woods and there are 4 trees blocking my street, none of which have been removed since last night in spite of calling the fire department at 4 pm.

Modern technology indeed. I can also add that, thanks to modern technology, I have discovered that many of my classmates are in a state of powerless, Internet-less panic. And flooding, of course, but lack of power is usually the first thing people apparently talk about when they share their latest news online.

(Perhaps it's because when you're in the public library, basking under *gasp* fluorescent lighting, sitting in front of a sluggish computer, it's hard to remember that you have six inches of water in your basement.)

Regardless, I am very glad that my power--and Internet--are all very well alive and perfectly fine. There was that brief moment yesterday when the lights came whirring to a stop, and my mom had contemplated turning off the laptop to conserve battery-life, but the lights came back on again and everything went on as usual. And the only Internet loss I experienced was due to my modem rebooting after the power loss.

I don't have a basement, so I don't have any flooding issues as well. Most importantly, all of the trees around our house have their roots firmly planted in the ground.

Not that it matters, really, because my house is one minute's drive away from a major road and a fire station (maybe the same that is not clearing the trees in front of Tamir's house), and unless a tree happened to fall in that short stretch of "neglected" road, we're guaranteed road access.

But obviously, there are both positives and negatives to this situation.

The positive is that there is no school tomorrow, yay! I get to sleep in late tomorrow, and, when I do get up, I have plenty of time to go over the AP calc problems Mrs. James gave us on Friday.

Of course, this brings up a critical negative: Mrs. James is probably panicking right now, with the mantra "May 5th is approaching" stuck in her head. We had already missed lots of class time with our snow days, and our limited knowledge of series and whatever else comes after them is definitely not good.

Speaking of school, I have also (accidentally) left a few books I needed to quote from for my research paper in my English classroom. I was hoping to get them tomorrow, and finish my last edits before I have to hand the paper in on Tuesday. Right now, I can only hope that "house nearly surrounded by water," as Mogley eloquently puts it, is good enough of an excuse for the deadline to be extended, if only for a day or so.

Hey, it's better than the hackneyed "my dog ate my homework."

No Internet for many people in town also means nearly no communication with other people (as my parents think the phone is the next worst thing after video games, at least for me). So I compromised by chatting with my friends back from my old city. Stella informed me that "there's something on the net describing what would happen if we lost the Internet." But upon further probing, it appears that she has lost the link for me to read more, so our conversation disintegrated into a series of pointy emotes (e.g. >.> and <.<).

I guess times like these I really wish we still socialized 100% like cavepeople--completely face-to-face with no technology whatsoever.

(Incidentally, the wind did not stop countless people from taking the SATs--or the PPPPPPSATs--this weekend. Well, all except for Argon, who had taken them the month prior and so left early. We're all such studious people, aren't we?)

Ps. I also just realized that this places Argon tied for most-tagged with he-who-must-not-be-named-or-else-the-tie-shall-be-broken.