Maybe you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone, but I knew it would be at least inconvenient to be without Internet access for however long this goes on. I knew I wouldn’t be receiving email or sending any, or updating any web sites. And I knew I wouldn’t be able to check news and sports sites every hour to see what was happening in the world. That almost convinced me to watch some network news, but not quite.

What I didn’t think of until it started happening was the rest of it. I wasn’t thinking about updating my Netflix queue until I thought of a movie I wanted to add to it. And when I was watching a movie tonight and wanted to look up one of the actors in the cast, there was no IMDb just a click away. I have so come to depend on IMDb.

This morning when I was getting ready to go out on my errands, I couldn’t check the temperature in my system tray. I had to open the door and poke my head out to see if it was hot or cold. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t hot. But it would have been nice to know how heavy a jacket I needed without exposing my flesh to goose bumps.

Here’s something else I hadn’t considered. I’m watching Rachael Ray and she’s making this black bean and corn salad that looks like (a) something I could do, and (2) something I would eat. So I race to the computer and— nothing. I can’t log onto the Food Network site to download the recipe. Not until Tuesday, anyway. (Not that I don’t have enough leftover stoup from last night, but still. I was trying to think ahead.)

Worst of all, I didn’t know how my friends in far places were doing. And I didn’t have a way to let them know what was going on with me. If there were problems with the Dreamhost server that I didn’t know about and couldn’t deal with, then the message I asked Mom to leave in the Comments under my last entry weren’t going to be read. I didn’t realize how cut off I would feel. I knew I’d feel that way, but I didn’t anticipate the intensity of the feeling. It’s like being in solitary confinement.