Take the internet away from an academic for a day and her/his world is rendered meaningless.

Yesterday the college's network went down. They had a blackout that broke a router...or something technical like that. In any case, we did not have internet access on campus for a whole day!

My office is in the social science building, so I can only attest to the impact it had there. Perhaps things were worse in the science building. Perhaps no one noticed in the humanities building. These things I do not know.

Personally, it was irritating and annoying not to be able to access information with a click of the mouse. I was working on some job applications and I wanted to look up information about the particular schools I was applying to. No dice. That had to wait. I had a long list of emails I needed to reply to. No dice there either. I did have a few students come in to talk about their term papers, so the day was not totally wasted. Oh yeah, I had to be in my office because I had office hours.

So after working on some cover letters and helping some students, I took to wandering the halls and observing the behavior of the other faculty. It was so amusing. They were wandering the halls not knowing what to do with themselves. A few gloated that they had already collected their term papers and they could spend the down time grading. Believe me, I will never gloat about being able to grade.

We are seriously addicted to the internet. We use it for work and we use it to procrastinate when we are at work.

Is it like that elsewhere? Of course, look who I am asking...no offense.

Today the system was up and running again - with some quirks, of course. They tell us what to do in case of a fire, earthquake, etc. But I think they need to come up with a plan for us for the next time the internet goes down on campus.

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In other news, I have two phone interviews for jobs. That's the good part. The bad part is that neither is in/near Boston. One is at Miami University (which is in Ohio - it is the name of the Native American tribe that lived in the area in case you were wondering if just some Floridian's got lost). That interview will probably take place in January. The other one is at the University of Redlands. They wanted to interview me on Monday, but I will be driving to San Diego that day. Ironically, I will actually be driving right past Redlands on Monday. Fortunately, they were able to do it on Wednesday, so I will do it from Boston.

So yeah, I am busting out of here on Saturday. The plans is to drive down to San Diego (which I will do in 3 days because it will just be me and the dog driving) and then on Tuesday I board a plane bound for Boston. This time I get to stay there for three weeks! I know, Boston in December is nothing to write home about, but it is not about the place rather it is about the company.

I am pretty eager to get out of here and see Sara. I hate packing, though, and I really have not started. That is tomorrow's project, along with laundry, haircut, and giving the dog a bath (he needs to smell good if he is going to sit in the car with me for three days!).

I should quit my online babbling and go do something productive.