Welcome to the 21st century, Debbi

This past June our wireless phone contract with AT&T expired and we got to switch carriers. AT&T is fine for some folks, but we couldn't get a signal at the end of our driveway. Not that we made many calls from the end of the driveway, but still.

I asked local friends for recommendations and most people around here use U.S. Cellular. So I went to their store, listened to their pitch and when they dangled a BlackBerry in front of my nose, and said I could tether it to my computer for faster-than-dial-up internet service, I signed up.

The salesperson also casually mentioned this little USB plug-in thingy that would offer true 3G service. As long as my phone works here, he said, the USB thing would, as well.

Fast-forward to yesterday: Merry Christmas, Debbi.

I knew this was coming from the moment I left that store in June. Now I'm wondering what took me so long! Baby steps, I suppose.

For the past week or two I've been downloading the Fat2FitRadio podcasts from iTunes, each of which takes about an hour. I also have been using SpeedDownload to snag the first year, which the F2F guys are selling for $15 (well worth it). SpeedDownload lets me know the speed at which things are moving. Before the USB thingy? About 15K. After? 101K! Woo hoo!

The next step into the 21st century will be giving up our landline. I've really had to take baby steps on this one. Were I a single lady, it (and satellite television) would be gone, gone, gone. But my husband is not one for modern technology, and I have to respect that. (And he loves his MSNBC.)

(Case in point: While we were at the mall yesterday he decided he wanted a new music player. He's been using a portable boombox-type stereo when he works out, and now wants something with headphones. He decided the best thing for him would be a portable CD player and a set of bulky headphones. I tried to steer him to an iPod Shuffle – approximately the same price – but he wouldn't hear of it. Merry Christmas to my husband. Heh.)

So here I am, zipping along the internets, pulling up websites which were previously unbearably slow to load, downloading an audiobook (Jonathan Franzen's Freedom) from audible.com for the first time evah, and wondering what I'm going to do with all this extra time I'm going to have since I won't be sitting on my ass in front of a monitor for hours every day.

Aha! More time for sitting on my ass knitting every day… at least until it's time to start sowing and growing the garden again.