from the "sunday morning musings" dept.

The internet continues to work at SKYY, which is a wonderful thing. It's been up for a week, which must be a record of some sort.

It's been so nice having unfettered access to the outside world that I've been downloading up a storm, fearful that the data connection will drop again.

I've been using a service called Newsstand to download the entire issue of the Globe and Mail every day. It's slow and for some dumb reason, you can't read the paper until the whole thing is downloaded into the reader. I have to wait for hours and hours for the download to finish the last page before I can dive into news from home.

The other slight drawback is that I can't select the edition. I am stuck with the Toronto edition. However, I can't say as I blame them for that. The cost is cheap too: C$1/issue.

And it looks like my NY Times news reader is working today as well. The entire copy of the Sunday Times is being downloaded for later reading offline. Tasty!

I'm also having a great time downloading all the video clips from Crooks and Liars. The site has the best clips from The Daily Show, Colbert Report, Olbermann and even episodes of 60 Minutes. And I've got 3 months worth to grab!

After downloading all the delicious political goodies to my computer, I watch them in the evening at home. This is especially enjoyable during a power cut.

And speaking of power cuts. We're supposed to be on a 12 hours off - 36 hours on rotation. But the power company isn't sticking to the published schedule and it has become impossible to predict the outages or their length.

For example: the power went off Friday night at 6 p.m. We figured this was the start of a 12-hour cut. Nope, it came back around 10.

On Saturday, almost the same thing. Off at 6:30 p.m. on around 9:30 p.m.

I'm not complaining about the shorter than expected outages, just the frequency. They now seem to take place during the evening and almost daily. I've missed 2 episodes of the Sopranos due to the cuts... and I don't hold out much hope for tomorrow night. Wah! Poor me!

Today (Sunday) is a cool day. There was a little rain this morning and there is now a cool breeze blowing. Thick cloud is blocking the heating rays of the sun and it's nice to not be sweating buckets for once.

The neighbours were quiet this morning as well. No sweeping the compound at 5 a.m. No washing the car at 6 a.m. No "warming" up the car and filling my room with exhaust at 7 a.m. (they park outside my bedroom window). And the baby hasn't been howling, thankfully. We have a shared area between our flat and the neighbouring flat upstairs. The noise travels like you wouldn't believe. More on that later.

I'm working on a longer post offline and hope to post that in the next day or so.

Until then...

Cheers!