Free as a Dragonfly

This seems to be a good year for dragonflies. This guy was one of a pair who rested in an elderberry tree off our porch; they obligingly waited while I got my camera, and lingered long enough for several shots. Most others I've seen this year haven't been so photogenic, but they have been fascinating to watch. Just the other day, over at Grandpa's house, I wandered into the backyard and found myself surrounded by dragonflies. Huge, beautiful dragonflies, at least five at any given time. They circled and swooped and cornered and dove, moving in manners that seemed contrary to the laws of physics and nature. Not a one ever landed. I quickly gave up trying to capture them on camera. Instead, I simply stood there in there midst, letting them weave their aerial magic around me.

Okay, back to the title...

I'm writing this blog entry on the Little Black Critter, which has been sadly neglected of late. My excuse was that I didn't have a wireless connection to keep it updated, and I got tired of it constantly nagging me for something I couldn't provide without heading out of the house. (Yes, the ability to take one's computer and camp out at any given Starbuck's all day is one of the chief attractions of laptops for most people, but I'm a reclusive and antisocial beast who doesn't think nearly so well when surrounded by cell-phone yakking, caffiene-addicted people. Or most any people, to be honest.)

Back at Xmas, I received a gift card from a relative, which I'd intended to spend on remedying the LBC's connection woes. Alas, time kept slipping away, as time is wont to do, and I kept putting it off. The times I looked online for help, I only got more and more confused by an inpenetrable wall of terminology and conflicting product reviews. And so I cowered, and I waited, and yet more time slipped through my less-than-agile fingers.

As June arrived, the long-awaited digital conversion left us with an unexpected complication. We had thought, as cable customers, that we'd be safe from hassles. According to an e-mail sent out less than three weeks before D(igital)-Day, that wasn't the case. We ended up having to get cable boxes and digital converters installed, a process that turned into a much bigger headache than it ought to.

So I thought about it. It was six months into 2009. We're already wrestling a bunch of new boxes into the house. And the old router seemed a bit fidgety now and again. So, I figured to heck with it - I'm gettin' me a wireless router.

And so I did.

And if this blog entry, written in the living room on the Little Black Critter, publishes, I'll know everything is working right, leaving me with one more toy and one less excuse.