Dewired

On Saturday, I bought a router.  This part of becoming wireless proved comparatively easy – comparatively, as I wasn’t entirely sure what kind I needed, and the advice of the first two assistants in the shop didn’t inspire a great deal of confidence.  Setting up (possibly this ought to be ‘configuring’, but as I’m currently awash with half-digested computing terminology, equally possibly not) the router was astonishingly straightforward.  By contrast, the final hurdle was trying in the extreme: the computer recognised the router, but wilfully chose to ignore it.   However, after several lengthy arbitration sessions (was this configuring?), I have, this morning, connected and reconnected to the internet via the laptop in each room in the house (it’s too cold to experiment outside), and am almost certain that I can claim to be sans wire.

Now, it seems, I have to configure myself, as, although I have tried to write in a variety of new locations, I have migrated back to my original spot - the desk. 

The weekend was a rather an extravagance, as, in addition to the router, I bought books: Gombrich, A Little History of the World; Yates’ Revolutionary Road; a trash novel; and a replacement copy of Roget, having been driven over the edge on Friday when the state of my original copy deteriorated so dramatically that, on opening it, its pages fell on the floor like the petals of a blown rose.  But, I am still reading Proulx.

I bought the books in a Borders, a large airy bookshop, which also has a cafe which sells passable tea, and a small but interesting selection of cards  and writing paraphenalia.  As usual, I conned myself into believing I was going straight upstairs to the cafe to meet someone, and afterwards straight back to the car.  And, as usual, I made my way to the cafe via the bargain book boxes (mostly recipe books, so no use to me) and the stationery department (where, somewhat unexpectedly, I found (and bought) a teapot); and to the car via most of the rest of the shop, and the till.