Internet, Schminternet.

I feel like I would have a faster Internet connection if I bought 5 hamsters and a guinea pig, hooked their wee wheels up with fodder from our "box of wires" (which is real) thus creating the magic of the internet that way. It would also be cheaper. 

My husband and I are what the internet industry calls "power users."  We don't just email a couple times a day. Both of us send and recieve hundreds of emails everyday. (his are legit, mine are mostly stories that make you cry about a teacher that made a difference, or a soldier that gave his dog up to a shelter, but who's counting?)  We don't use Google to simply win bets or look up recipes for dinner.

We, legally, download music by the bucket full. We, legally, watch all our TV and most of our movies online. He plays video games, I Facebook (and I Farmville, but that's a whole other blog). We finished degrees online, bargain hunt and do the majority of our tasks via the information superhighway. (If indeed it is still called that, I spend too much time USING it to look up the current lingo)

So, when my husband gleefully danced around the kitchen with the information that we can get magically faster internet, at a fraction of the cost, we picked up both our kiddos and skipped around the house laughing like fools. 

Oh yes. Fools we were. Fools to think we could get everything we wanted at a low, low cost. Nuts to think we could get upload and download speeds that rival jet engines. Insane to believe all our dreams were coming true. For, you see, Virginia, you always get what you pay for.  And there is no Santa Claus. Or there is. I can't remember how that movie ends. I'll Netflix it in a sec.

For three days after we switched, our internet was amazing.  We brought people to our computer to marvel at the bitrate. We introduced our parents to our internet, brought it flowers and sang love ballads (the lyrics for which we'd googled faster than lightening; the karaoke version of those songs was downloaded in seconds!) My husband even started thinking about buying a ring. Yes, we were completely enamoured with our new magical internet. Until the fourth day.

The day the internet came to a screeching halt is the stuff of a Gordon Lightfoot song.  Pictures, half uploaded, email programs "checking" for hours, no youtube tomfoolery, nothing. I sat there, wondering what I'd said, what I could've done differently. I reset the router. Nothing. I reset the computer. Zilch. I even tried command prompt. Nada.  And when we called the service provider, their response was a glib, "Oh, sir, that was an introductory promotion. It ended. Sorry."  My husband and I, choking back sobs, closed the ring box and buried it beneath the socks, never to be spoken of again.

Back we went, beaten and bruised, to the extraordinarily expensive, but reliable internet.  Sure we had to give our third child to Internet Service Provider to cover our overages last month, but we're saving money in the long run. That third kid is smart and is definitly going to university. By the time that happens, tuition will be 4.3 million dollars a semester. Bwa haa haa! Take THAT Internet Service Provider!