AKMA’s Random Thoughts

A Rest is as Good as a Change

It’s amazing what even a small break can do.

Margaret and I try to have a mini-vacation once a term (try and too often fail). We go to an inexpensive hotel right in downtown Evanston (in fact, our room overlooks the church where Josiah will have his drama class this afternoon), close enough that if any need should arise, we can be home in the blink of an eye. But we make arrangements for the kids to be overseen, and then slink away and spend forty hours or so all by ourselves. I can’t recommend this strongly enough, probably even for those who are unmarried, without children; at least for us, the change signalled by our lack of immediate obligations and availability makes a world of difference.

It is frustrating that Martin Luther King day comes precisely at this point in the year, because this makes the second year in a row that we’ve scheduled our mini-vacation for the earliest available two-day gap in our calendar, only to discover after we’d made our reservations that Seabury was planning a special observance of Dr. King. I feel stricken to miss a seminary function, and especially one for a figure as important (and atypical of the usual round of pallid English ecclesiastics whom I do love and to whom we customarily dedicate our special seminary functions). The announcement of the special MLK service was made after the reservations, though, and we’ve been waiting a terribly long while to get away, so we went ahead.

So yesterday afternoon I fired up AOL, and hopped online to check our email and glance at the comments on my blog (thanks very much—Trevor and I are still walking on at least a thin cushion of air). Logged off again quickly, because this hotel charges for local calls longer than thirty minutes.

Then we went out, had a lovely vegetarian dinner, picked up some snacks and a DVD because we didn't like television (or available cinema, though we’re planning to drive out to see Adaptation this afternoon), watched the movie, and were getting ready to retire, when I heard the familiar “beep-beep-beep-beep-beep” of Ellen Feiss (not, as Margaret keeps insisting wittily, Heidi Fleiss) alerting me that I had email.

But I had logged off AOL hours ago.

A cold chill ran down my spine, as I began calculating how many minutes had elapsed since I thought I had logged off. I unplugged the modem cord. I examined my running applications to see which might have said, “Okay, we know he’s offline now, but if the modem would just kick in and connect us to the ’net, we can get some work done.”

Then I noticed that my wifi card had picked up a signal; somewhere in the hotel, someone was using an unprotected wireless hub, and when AirPort noticed it, it dutifully logged on and checked my email. It was a weak signal, and I’ve lost it now (back to the thirty minute log-in interval, which is just as well, considering the point of this minivacation), but for a sweet few minutes I was piggy-backing onto the net courtesy of a generous stranger.

Now, back to breakfast and vacationing. . . .

Posted by AKMA at January 21, 2003 08:09 AM | TrackBack