Gone from the map...

I woke up yesterday and immediately the panic set in! OMG! My cell phone had no service!!! Suddenly I was facing the day with no Internet, no phone and (gasp!) no texting!!! I immediately started thinking two things: firstly how did I forget to pay my bill and secondly how was I going to pay it with no Internet access? Of course it never occurred to me that it was simply a case of lightening having hit the cellphone tower. And after all that was said and done that WAS the actual problem! Ever have one of those domino-type days where it starts in disaster and then heads immediately into another disaster? Because I was worried about my cell service I completely forgot to put on my work boots! Kind of stupid especially when I made it all the way to work before the foreman pointed it out! D'oh!! Eventually I was driven back to camp by a non-plused Kate and was able to retrieve them and get back to work. By then not only had I realized that my service was not the only one down but actually service had been restored. After that the day went well. When I was a kid my Dad used to tell us stories about friends of his who had gone off to be Lumberjacks in their youth. He would tell us about the long days and the giant meals and how when they came back to town they were bigger and tougher than anyone else. I actually always wanted to do that stuff. I guess now I am doing the modern-day equivalent! Except in those days I doubt that the camps had phone service and cells hadn't even been conceived yet! Honestly I have no idea how they managed! When I look at all of the modern conveniences that we have and what a global world we live in I am shocked at how far the world has come during my short life. When I grew up we had rotary phones and each house had only one line! The rotary phones were originally stuck firmly to the wall and couldn't be moved. We were SO impressed when it became possible to pull the phone off the wall and hook it up to a long wire so that we could slip around the corner and get some privacy while talking on the phone! We saw Maxwell Smart on one of the three stations that came in on our black and white TV (2 English channels and one French) using his shoe-phone!!! Wouldn't THAT be cool we thought. And Captain Kirk on Star Trek (it was still a low budget TV show in those days with no movies) using hi 'tricorder' which was effectively a two-way radio!! Now our cell phones put those funny little devices to shame! At least as long as the tower avoids lightening! Phones weren't the only things that have changed drastically in my time. You won't believe it but I remember when they invented the calculator! It was big like an adding machine and cost hundreds of dollars! My Dad has always been very tech-saavy and he bought one! What a brag item it was! Now you can get them for less than a dollar and they are free add-ons to any electronic device from computers to phones! How about MP3 players? When I was a kid we had record players that played 45s! Then they came out with cassette players and finally Sony Walkmen! I was so proud to have one of these giant babies when I went to university! I would wear it jogging and on the downstep of each stride gravity would cause it to slow a little! But that was nothing compared to the 25 batteries it required which were not recharchable but which DID cost a small fortune! And boom boxes used to be called Ghetto Blasters which we're called portable but only if you had 11 other guys to help you carry it! So I guess I shouldn't complain too much when my cell tower is knocked out. It isn't a show-stopper or anything. Really it's just an inconvenience. But the fact that I have a portable tiny little phone that is also a computer and a calculator and so on is so beyond the imaginings of the era I was born into shows how quickly technology has progressed in such a short time. And I haven't even touched on video games yet! :)