One week, no Internet at home.

Can you believe it, we made it through a weekend and five whole work days without the Internet at home.

You know what? It was awesome.

The good things about having no Internet at home:

More sleep
No late nights writing and surfing when, really, I could have been sleeping.

Better sleep
I went to bed with a clear brain, rather than being overstimulated from ingesting a lot of useless information.

Happier kids = happier parents = even happier kids
Every night before bed, the kids ran around the house singing and dancing. And so did we. They didn't once clamour for big peoples' distracted attention while we checked our email. Because we couldn't check our email.

More peace
One less distraction meant no cranky adults because one of us is on the web while the other cooks/does dishes/washes kids.

Reassurance
I admit, I did take my laptop out to a cafe to "catch up" on flickr, facebook, etc... And was totally underwhelmed by what I was missing. Do I really need to read everybody's status updates, every day? Did I miss any crucial emails that needed an immediate response... ummm... no.

More peace
Oh yeah... I already mentioned that one. I love getting to that point where I have to figure out what to do because I can't suck away my time online. It feels scary, and awesome...

Less chaos
There's just a lot less crap lying around the house and I think it's because we're keeping the house clean. TBD...

The bad things about having no Internet at home:

We couldn't find somebody's postal code
So I had to take the letter to work and look it up there.

J had to spend 20 minutes talking to a help desk
This rates as the biggest, no-internet-at-home annoyance yet.

I can't download the next episode of Generation Kill
But that's what friends are for...