Also, since I work in the internets business (sortof), I try not to spend too much time doing internetsy stuff when I’m not working. I fail miserably, of course. My name is Steven, and I am an internet addict. I mean, hell, I’m typing this at 11:05 p.m. on a Sunday night when I should be in bed sleeping or reading a good novel.

Though I started the thinking process long before I read it, this piece by Mr. Merlin Mann sums up a lot of my problems with life in the internets, too.

I’m going to unplug a significant portion of my life. The personal part, anyway. I’m on the internets hook for the forseeable future when it comes to my professional life, but that doesn’t mean I have to abuse it, right? Riiiight. We’ll see how it goes.

It feels like fall’s about to start here, and I plan to do these things this Fall and Winter:

• work in my yard
• get better at an acoustic instrument (hopefully the banjo again)
• eat better, cook more
• pay better (not necessarily more, cause God knows I spend a lot of time on ‘em) but better attention to my family
• go fishing
• read novels (not just books, but novels)
• get outside, get a little exercise
• unplug

A sort of junior Monkey Wrench Gang is a wonderful book called A Heart to the Hawks by Don Moser (also from 1975 — influenced by MWG?), which I’ve written about here before. Sadly, it is (still) out of print, but you can still find used copies occasionally. It’s about a young boy in post-WWII Ohio who spends his free time in a small wood with a pond near his home that becomes threatened by development in the post-war building frenzy. While there are other coming-of-age themes (girls! with boobs!) in the novel, the boy learns a lot about monkey-wrenching and how maybe it’s not the best method of protest, and while I can’t always condone monkey-wrenching, there are other, more effective and less controversial methods of channeling the monkey-wrenching impulse into saving our wild places.

This book instilled in me a love of the outdoors and a desire to protect it as well as anything else in my life. I didn’t encounter Abbey’s books until I was an adult, but AHTTH served much the same purpose for me.

“Real-time measurements of water movement taken Wednesday showed a volume of 30 cubic feet per second at the Arkansas 65 bridge. David Mott of the National Park Service said the minimum flow ever recorded for that date was 30 cubic feet per second.” [from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Northwest Edition]

Damn. The Buffalo is one of the best places in Arkansas (and maybe the world) to float, hike, camp, and/or fish for smallmouth bass. If we don’t get some rain soon and in significant quantity, the floating and fishing part of that is really going to suck this Spring and Summer. We are in a serious drought in Arkansas right now.

I always preferred Winter. I liked the sparse landscapes and the cloudy, windy cold days. I loved snow — as does every school-age kid and teacher. I remember reading about dogsledding and fighting through snowdrifts that towered over my head. The snow of the century in Arkansas was about twenty inches, and I’m not THAT short. Winter meant comfort, except in the few coldest weeks. In recent years, since I’ve started getting outside more, I’ve enjoyed the benefits of Winter: less-crowded trout streams, open leafless vistas on hiking trails, no bugs.

But now, after 30-odd years of living here, I find my opinions all but reversed. It’s the oddest feeling to find myself yearing for warm weather, and not dreading the hot weather to follow.

Last Winter, I hated every second of it, and for good reason: it was bitterly cold and wet. We had a post-Christmas ice storm that put our power out for roughly three days. By the time the thaw started in earnest in March, I was getting near desperate. I actually welcomed the hot weather when it arrived.

Last Summer, in the hottest time of the year, I started playing disc golf, and that got me out of the house and into the heat. Surprisingly, being out in the heat every day — for more than the made dash to another air-conditioned place — actually felt quite good. Sure, I sweated profusely, but a quick shower and a glass of water quickly fixed that. If only I had embraced that earlier in life.

Don’t get me wrong, though; I’m not a total hot-weather junkie. When the temperature hovers around 100 and the humidity isn’t far behind for days on end, I wilt just like everything else. I like my heat in small doses, but I do like it now. I supposed I still like the cold, but in small doses. It gives me a reason to build a fire in our little-used fireplace, to cook up some good soup, and to stay inside and hibernate a little.

Just as it looked like Winter was over this year, it finally dropped down to the single digits last night, and tonight is supposed to be even colder. Two days ago it was in the mid-60s — rare for the end of February, but not unheard of — and today it’s about 19F with windchills in the single digits. It’s supposed to hit five degrees above tonight. I don’t even want to think about those windchills. They say it’s supposed to warm up some by the weekend. I hope so.