Painfully slow broadband speeds, dogged determination by AT&T and a bargain price convinced me to finally upgrade my broadband speed/home system. It did require that I get cable television for six weeks and thus, the my phone/broadband/cable were untited in one fat cord running into a box at the side of my house.
I then spent a weekend watching countless random movies on a combination of 8 temporarily free HBO channels–violating one of the 10 tips of achieving happiness as catalogued by a British study–watch half the amount of TV you’re currently watching. (can’t find the link at the moment. But here’s a different link about happiness tips.)
And so it was that last night, when my united cable failed, so did my phone and internet connection. As I started to look through the papers they gave me about how to program my new voice mail, I saw the myriad warnings about the inability to call 911 if the cable were to fail… which… it did last night.
I have to say, I’ve been very happy with AT&T’s customer service, they’ve been smart and apologetic (if a bit talkative) and they got the service up and running in just under 24 911-unavailable hours.
So, last night, for the first time in a long time, I was broadband-free and not entirely sure what to do with myself. I had 20 minutes of clicking and zooming, watching and surfing withdrawal symptoms after which I ended up playing guitar and house cleaning, and guess what? I felt pretty happy.
I’m not really into co-dependence (more into independence) and I sure felt it when I had home-wide system failure. It took only one old-fashioned evening to seriously think about making my home a cable free zone, a place with a land line, where 911 can always be reached, if necessary.
And of course, in cases of broadband emergency, I’ll always have the iphone.
zoe finkel 
Sounds like a good night.
On a similar vein, in pre-internet days, I recall the failure of electricity all together in big storms, and the family was left to stumble by sometimes for days with candles for light and the fireplace for heat. It was always wonderful, and the shock of the electricity coming back with its bright lights and whirr’s of the frig. was always an almost unwanted shock to the system. Although it was nice to have water again.