Gearing Up to Return

What a vacation it's been!  I have not posted anything to the blog recently because I have been SEEING most of you LIVE AND IN PERSON!  HOORAY!  We've been so busy that it's dizzying.  Over 8 weeks we have been to Knoxville, Cleveland TN, Troy OH, Grand Rapids, Charlotte,  Kiawah, and Charleston.  We've hit pools, beaches, and the slip n slide in the backyard.  We've been to two zoos.  We've had three rounds of professional pictures made -studio, environmental, and beach.  We've been to the doctor and the dentist and the hair cut place (twice!).  Yes, we have been here so long that the kids have needed two haircuts.  I guess that's a signal - our time is up. 

Mike is already back.  He went back on August 23rd, and when he got there, he had a really big surprise.  All the internet all over camp is down.  SURPRISE!  When he arrived, the internet had already been down for more than a week.  And it's still down.  Which is not just inconvenient - it's crippling.  Ramifications for this twist in Our Arabian Adventure include (most importantly) no more Vonage.  Ack!  That's our phone!  Also no more Skype.  And without TV or radio already, no more internet means no more connection to the outside world.  Since I am still here in the land of normal, I have been acting as Mike's own personal news reporter when he calls in (which he does from our land-line in Arabia, which means it's some ungodly expensive rate like $10/minute).  "Hi, honey!  The kids are fine, Hurricane Isaac is getting ready to wipe New Orleans out, and Neil Armstrong died.  I love you, bye!"  Poor Mike - talk about bored!  No TV, no radio, no news, no streaming movies or TV, no phone, no computer at work.  What to do?  You can only run for exercise for so many hours every day.  Thank goodness he's got the cat. 

Apparently, there was a "hacktivist" attack on the company that wiped the hard drives of 30,000 company machines on August 15th, while we were all lounging on the beach.  If you do a quick Google of [the company name] and computer, you will see all the articles.  They say that IT is working 24/7 to get it cleaned up and fixed (hmmm....unlikely that they are working that hard, with the work ethic we've seen over there), and rumors on camp are running rampant - some say two days, some say two weeks, and some say two months until the internet is back.  (And some say never, but I bet that's not right either.)  So there's no telling when it will be back.  My best guess is a month or so.  If that's the case, we will again be in a hard place about functioning over there.  Take our mortgage payment for example.  How are we going to make our payment without phone or internet?  Credit card statement?  View our bank records?  Communicate with our property manager?  Not having internet makes everything hard.  It's rather like they suddenly shut off the electricity.  This is going to require some major adjustments.  Snail mail, here we come.  

Oh yeah, one last thing....no internet means no blog.  I'll try to post a few things before we get on that plane, but if you don't hear from me after that, don't worry.  It's only because Hurricane Benchich (a very destructive Category 5) ventured into an information black hole.  (Fun!  Maybe we will emerge in another dimension!  I will let you know - if the internet comes back!)