The one thing I do not like about living way out in the country is the frequency of power outages. Ours went out at 7:30 p.m. last night and has just come on again at 2:45 a.m. Of course, everything that was on when it went out came back on and so now I am awake earlier than I would have liked.

When we first bought the farm the first thing we discovered is that the old copper phone lines were so old and in such a poor state that land line service was imposible and a waste of money. So we made the transition to exclusively cell phones which I had been avoiding being the creature of habit that I am. Of course thet meant finding a cell provider that actually worked inside our house way out here. We had had Verizon for what seems like a lifetime but it did not work here even though their service map said it should. Finally, after many calls and arguments they sent a rep out to verify we got no signal, which proved us right, and allowed us to cancel our contract with them.

Finally we had to settle for ATT who I abhor and are very expensive. When Robert died our 200  dollar a month bill had to go. Since we had satified our contract requirements with them I began seraching for a new and more affordable provider. Finally I discovered Consumer Cellular who sells the same high quality equipment and acctually runs off the ATT towers, so extensive coverage and they give me an AARP discount.

Oh, and a few months ago I really splurged and got an iPhone 13 Pro Max which I am still learning to love having been an Android user for my entire cell phone existence. Yes, I actually got a cell phone that cost over a thousand dollars which I swore I would never do. But they are letting me make smallish monthly payments with no interest so there is that.

So, what did I do in the dark last night. I read. With my extreme love of books you might be surprised that even I have a Kindle Paperwhite and a Kindle Fire so I was able to spend several hours in absolute electric white noise free and total darkness reading. A while back, as my financial situation caught up in the inflationary spiral, I had to admit that buying books willie-nillie was probably not the thing I should do. That I could spend 99 cents on an ebook copy, read it and determine if I wanted to add it to my library on paper before I scraped together the 35  to 75 dollars that so many of my books costs.

Now I am trying to decide if I what to shell out 99 cents for a e-copy of Proust and committ myself to actually finally reading it as my Fall/Winter readathon.