This weekend, Mother Nature, with a big assist from the power company's freelance crew , managed to place me incommunicado. 
It started Saturday afternoon, with heavy rain and wind. Connecticut was not suffering anywhere near the devastation that was hitting other parts of the country, but in this neck of the woods, combine strong winds with our beautiful tree-lined streets and you can bet on power outages. Our power was out for a few hours, Saturday afternoon, but our trusty generator took care of that.
Sunday, however, was a different story. We woke up to find the top half of a large tree, resting on the power line to our property. We immediately called the power company to remove it, fully expecting them to say it would be a long wait until they could get to it. We were pleasantly surprised to see a crew show up a few hours later. They made quick work of the tree and were gone before we knew it. Also gone was our cable line and phone line.
Two more phone calls, one to the phone company and the other to Cable. Okay, cable would be back, later that night (actually turned out to be a day and a night.) But, phone, not back 'til late Tues. night. YOU'VE GOT TO BE KIDDING!!!
How could I survive? No e-mail, no faxes, no phone calls (my cell doesn't work very well, in my house), no printing, no copies, no T.V. NO ACTIVE RAIN!!!
Okay, I admit, it wasn't THAT BAD. Some forced down time may not be such a bad thing. We still had power and the T.V. hook up to the VCR and DVD was fully functional. We settled down to an evening of old movies...everything from "The Sum of All Fears" to "Cheaper By the Dozen."
The phone's still out, but at least, I'm back online. It's amazing how dependent we've become on our technological inventions.
Yes, I agree Marilyn ~ it is absolutely amazing how we all have become dependent on all these tehnologies. Kinda scary!
Tina- The shame is that all these advancements have increased our working hours. Used to be when you left the office and came home, your working day was done. Not anymore.
Kathy- Downtime would have been a lot easier on some secluded beach. I can't tell you how many times I instinctively sat down at the computer or went to pick up the phone, before remembering they didn't work.