Swallows and Amazons in Space

Reading a bit of space opera this week, to put me in the mood for finishing my book (well, as soon as I write an 18 page paper for my literacy class). I'm reading the Heris Serrano books by Elizabeth Moon, and finding them rather fun. Nothing deep, just adventures flying around space in a yacht that gets into trouble. Except yesterday I came across a Swallows and Amazons reference in the book Hunting Party. !!!! (In case you don't know, these are some of my very favorite classics from my childhood and early teens.)

"That's what it was," Bubbles said. "I told you; we all camped over here. My cousins, too. About-oh-five years ago was the last time I remember. We'd stay here while the grown-ups were on Bandon. We'd sail over in little boats. My father thought it up- it was out of some old books from England on Old Earth. Kids went camping on an island--"

Brilliant.

Cox was out all weekend. Literally, the entire weekend. So my apologies to anyone who thought I was dead because I wasn't on IM and didn't blog. I thought the internet would be back on Saturday night when I got home from work. No such luck. I certainly thought it would be back the next morning, but I awoke to Mike ranting on the phone with customer support about how we both work from home and we'll switch to DSL. Not that any of the public services or utilities in New Orleans are great, but we've had so many frustrations with Cox. Every time Mike calls, they tell him something different. The last time the cable was out, they tried to tell him we needed a new modem, and they would send someone out to look at it on Friday. He said, "But the cable is out. As in, the TV is not working. The internet is not working. THERE IS AN OUTAGE." They chose to ignore this and said, "It sounds like your modem is old." He gave up. Yesterday's idiocy was: "Oh, yes, there is currently an outage in your neighborhood. But we don't send someone to fix it unless three customers call." ???$*&%(@#!! I could go on about how in January we signed up but they didn't turn it on for a week and a half because someone didn't document that they signed us up, and Mike had to physically go to the store to take care of it because no one on the phone could supposedly do this, or how they forgot to bill us the next month, then shut off the internet for non-payment... but those are stories best left alone. Suffice to say that now we shrug in annoyance and say, "Guess we'll have to call Cox(uckers)."

Tags: science fiction, books, swallows and amazons, rant