Wow, how did I ever...

...live without the Internet?

We haven't had the Internet at my work office since last Tuesday. We moved our bottom-floor-office to the top-floor-office in the same building. And even though we didn't travel too far, the move sure caused a lot of headaches. The biggest migraine being the lack of Internet access. Which is a pain because so much of the work I do is on the Internet. We are a remote office and must link to the network at our main office, via the Internet.

Needless to say, it has been a very frustrating few days, which made me try to think about life before the Internet. Back when I was in college was the first time I ever tried this crazy thing called the Internet. It was okay, I thought, at least I could email people from home instead of using snail-mail.

But slowly and surely, my life began to change. Not only could I email, but I could also chat online, research papers became easier, phone books were no longer necessary, didn't even have to drive to a store very often (handy when you're a Freshman in college without a car).

Just a couple of months ago, Phil and I were driving from a church in DC to the wedding reception. We were unfamiliar with the area, and my brother-in-law asked if we had used a GPS to find the place. "Nope", I replied, "I got directions the old-fashioned way". Then I realized that this so-called "old fashioned way" was going online and map-questing the locations! Since when did going online at a computer become old-fashioned? I can hardly remember what people used to do when they needed directions...stop and ask a stranger (gasp!), call ahead and ask someone (no way!), or even pull out a map to figure it out by themselves (say it ain't so!).

On a similar note, I caught myself saying just the other day to Andrew, who couldn't find the remote: "When I was a little girl, we actually had to walk across the room to turn on the TV, change the channels, or adjust the volume". To which he replied, "huh?". Yup, it's that unbelievable!