Status: Netless

Still no internet. I drove up to the nearest library that has power and internet to get on-line. The three libraries closest to us don't have internet... the Bothell library still doesn't have power. Hubby-Eric and I have been cleaning up from the outage, but have amazingly little to worry about. We lost almost no food, and what was lost was stuff we were near throwing out anyway. The only exception is our ice cream, which may or may not still be good. We decided to try to eat it and find out. We also got the insurance claim in for the car, and have a dollar estimate. Much more than I expected, but let's hope it covers the repairs.

During the chaos, we also got our new phones. We have a deal for new phones every two years, and they were having a two-for-one on one of the best phones Verizon offers, so we snagged them. We ordered them right before the windstorm, and despite next-day FedEx (free shipping) we got them three days later. FedEx had a few difficulties making deliveries during the storm and aftermath.

My old phone was wonderful. It was a phone and an alarm clock and nothing else. The new phone (LG VX8300) has a camera, camcorder, MP3 player, bluetooth (which I still don't quite understand), custom ringtones, and a number of other features that I probably won't use. My only disappointment with it so far is that it doesn't have a quick alarm (pre-set number of minutes or hours) like my old phone, so I can't just set the alarm to go off in an hour, I have to program the alarm. It's actually annoying, because that was the one non-phone function I used regularly on my old phone. But I think the fact that my new phone has a camera will make up for it. Mostly.

I have been learning how to sync the new phone with my computer, and I'm very pleased that I can use a program called BitPim to create a calendar and upload it to the phone. The only reason I never used the calendar feature on my old phone was because it took me so long to type anything on the phone's keypad. But if I can create it on my computer then upload... well, that takes care of that issue.

So except for no tv and no internet, we're doing well. The water even heated up enough to do laundry and dishes. Yay.

Hopefully the 'net will be back on by the time I get home. Hey, I can dream.