Random Tuesday- Wifi Wars

1.  My husband and I have been carpooling to work with each other for the past month since we only work about five miles apart and it is currently cheaper to buy stock in the Hope Diamond than it is to fill my tank.

2.  The good things about this arrangement include the fact that I can now sleep on my way to and from work,   or I can knit, or I can catch up on correspondence, read a novel or even have a nice conversation with my husband.  We are no longer faced with taking out a second mortgage in order to purchase another gallon of gas, and we now have all this quality time that we can now spend together!

3.  The bad things?  Well, I have to get up at 3:45 AM now as my husband has to be at work by 6:00 AM.  Since he takes two years in the shower, that necessitates me beating him to it.  Hence the reason why I sleep on my way to work.  With my mouth hanging open.  Sexy, right?

4.  So now I’m at work at 6:00 AM when I don’t need to be there until 8:00 AM.  What to do?  I tried sleeping in my car in the parking deck, but that didn’t work out.  Seems that the maintenance man, whose job is apparently to use a huge, ridiculously loud leaf blower on the parking decks every morning at 6:00 AM also has a thing for eyeballing folks sleeping in their cars with their mouths open.  Creepy.

5.  I started going to Starbucks.  No, not for the expensive coffee.  Every dime I save would end up in a fancy latte if I wasn’t careful.  I’m in there for the free wifi.  Oh, and a small regular coffee (needed in order not only to wake up from my car-ride slumber, but to get that weird taste out of my mouth from riding around with it hanging open).

6.  So now I can spend a couple hours in the morning updating my website and making good use of the extra time.  But one thing I’ve found is that the free wifi crowd are a whole different breed.  And it is a difficult thing to get accepted into the crowd.  Most of them are quite a bit younger than me and definitely cooler judging by their clothing.  I feel like the country girl that has just been thrown into middle school with a bunch of mean, street wise city kids.

7.  Most of them are there when I arrive and are still there when I leave and I often wonder if they are there all day.  If maybe they have a sleeping bag tucked around the corner somewhere.  Some wear headsets, some talk on their cell phones continuously, and all have some sort of frappe or something else fancy to drink in front of them.

8.  Me, I don’t know what a frappe is, and frankly it just doesn’t sound that tasty.  Frappe is the sound my dog makes when he’s had too much cheese.

9.  And there is apparently a constant cold war going on over the prime locations near wall outlets.  If I get there early enough, I can usually snag one and not have to be a slave to my weirdly faltering battery.  If not, then I have to sit near one and wait for that person to possibly leave so that I can beat all the other wifi-ers, who are also eyeballing that wall outlet.  It is kind of like a chess game.  Only with outlets and computers and computer-addicted idiots like me.

10.  Some days you win and get to plug that sucker in and sit back and enjoy the wattage as you smirk at all the competition and slowly sip on your coffee and work your way through the internet knowing that all the folks around you are envying your wall outlet.

11.  And then there are the days that you lose and then suddenly with no warning, usually smack in the middle of doing something particularly delicate with html code, your computer times out and shuts down and all you end up with is a blank screen and a lukewarm cup of coffee brimming with the taste of defeat.

12.  I really need to get a life, don’t I?