Is there life offline?

So what, you may ask, can one DO when there is no internet to absorb, delight, educate, aggravate and titillate? If you are a geeky person like me, you read. Yes, those book things that we house in places called libraries and line up in bookstores filled with the intoxicating aroma of, well, probably glue, formaldehyde and some other chemical constituents I’m ignorant of, but that draws me in every single time.  As an aside, do you think that Kindle, Nook and such will ever create downloadable books that actually smell like a book? Since I have internet at work, but they frown on me actually not working when I am there, I would surreptitiously take my Kindle to work and download books as the Kindle sat placidly in my briefcase slurping up the guest data connection.  I also read real, concrete, books in hand.  You are all fascinated at this moment, I know (not), lol!

I also went to parties with real people, experienced my first game of ‘Cornhole’ (really, can we not call it Bean Bag Toss??), played with grandchildren, rode my bike, toted the camera around, visited with my parents and tended to the routine chores of RV living, which were once in a while not so routine.

For instance, someone for some reason (sick humor?), decided to swap their defective sewer pipe with my brand new one. Being still a novice at this whole dealio, I just thought it was my own ineptitude that was making what previously was a fairly straightforward process suddenly quite frustrating. Maybe I had some mysterious muscle wasting disease that strikes me only when working with sewer pipe?  So despite the fittings not quite lining up and locking as they had in all of my other dump chores, I soldiered on. Please let me give you a dose of caution: DON’T DO IT!!!  Dump chores are not really a pleasant thing anyway, but when you wrestle with them in 90 plus degree heat AND your fittings don’t, well, fit, the results are just enough to make you cry.  Which is exactly what I did; sit down on the ground and cry when done. You see, if your fittings don’t actually fit, the pipes don’t actually contain the effluent.  Uncontained effluent travels effortlessly through air via gravity and has an attraction to human bodies.  Makes sense I guess, rather like returning home. When you are a sweaty, hot mess to begin with, holding the two ends of sewer pipe that previously were one and are now two, you can’t like, move, without making a mess.  And you have to move to get to the drain valve to stop the discharge. Except, when you move, something has to give. That something is your pride and possibly your lunch. Juggling large plastic slinkies full of waste is probably not ever going to be featured in any Cirque du Soleil vignette.  Well, maybe the lunatic version for people who like ‘boy humor’.  But juggle I did, with kind of crab-like movements towards the water bin of the RV, all while spilling and sliding and generally performing some form of disgusting Sewer Pipe Salsa dance, until I could shut off the valve. I think I took three showers that day, which then filled the grey water tank faster than it should have and caused my shower to back up. Crying in the shower is far less embarrassing and you don’t have to wipe your face (which you can’t do elegantly outside holding two sewer pipes, by the way). So while I did not experience Mount Effluvius akin to the scenes in the movie “RV”, I have now been baptized into the Black Tank Brotherhood of ‘shit happens’.  And to the person who thought to do this to me…I am glad I am me and not you.

What I missed most from being offline was music streaming and blog reading.  To all of those whose blogs I have neglected, please forgive me.  And now that I have interwebs again, I find myself without any extra time really.  Because you see, I’ve met someone.This has been going on for a while and is developing nicely. And that’s all I’ll say about that, for now (smile).

I will say that I actually turned on the TV one night and watched part of a movie before falling asleep. I’ve not put up the antenna, so the channel pickins were pretty slim. I settled on an old black and white movie, “How Green Was My Valley”.  I just couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to find out how the brothers did going off to make their way, leaving the littlest one behind to work in the mines. I’ll find it online somewhere I suppose and see if the ending is happy or not.

Some views from the past few weeks.

Zinnia Lurve

Incoming!

Delicato

I am a fun gi 🙂

Water and shadow

The bike haven

River view

Oak history

More fun gis!

Testing one, two…is this thing on?

And today requires some off and running again, so until next time….

Beware of sneaky sewer scoundrels!

~SE (in silly mode)

PS. If you get 100K for one of my photos, call me *