Throughly addicted

I first noticed it at the airport last Thursday night, while we were waiting to leave for Ireland.

My husband went to the men's room, and I had a few minutes to sneak in a bit of e-mail check and browsing, so I instinctively reached for my Blackberry.

Not there!

Of course not.

Having made a half-hearted inquiry at Verizon, I had decided that it was going to be too much of a P.I.T.A. - and probably too expensive - to get myself Blackberried for a week in Ireland. Besides, wasn't getting unBlackberried precisely the reason you go on vacation. Besides, all my clients knew I was gone for the week, and mostly unavailable for e-mailing, and definitely unavailble for work. Besides, there was a computer in the house we were renting. So...no biggy. I'd just download Skype.

There's something about having one of those smarty-pants phones, however. Throughout the trip, there've been times when I've made a move to grab and go with my Blackberry. One afternoon it was the ash cloud to check in on. At dinner the other evening, it was trying to remember the name of a singer that was eluding us. (Fortunately, I was able to retrive it from the original computer: the human brain: Etta James.)

Even if relying on a smartphone is highly addictive, it actually is possible to go cold turkey - or luke-warm turkey - from using one. Sure, there are withdrawal symptoms - patting my jeans pocket and reaching into my Healthy Backpack whenever something that merits a google popped into my head.

Information (and e-mail) retrieval is one thing; no plain vanilla mobile phone is another.

It turned out that having a phone is pretty darned useful - and there wasn't one in the house we rented.

So, after two full days of bare naked wandering around Galway without a phone number to our names, we took ourselves to the Vodaphone store and bought a throw-away for 20 Euros that included 35 minutes of talk. Plenty enough to make restaurant reservations, arrange a cab, and call our landlady when we had a question about how the screwball locks or the screwball heat or the screwball recylcing worked. Besides, with no phone in the house, we were worried about how we were going to get help in case of an emergency. (The things you start thinking about as you get older. Did I really use to go camping deep in the woods in the pre-cell phone days? What was I thinking? Clearly not about mortality or thieves in the night.)

When I paid for the phone, I mentioned to the clerk that I felt like a criminal, since in the U.S., only criminals use throw-away phones. (I watch an awful lot of Law and Orders.) Same here, she assured us. (What a relief!)

Why not Skype, you might ask?

After all, since I'm occasionally doing a post from Eirann, I must have a computer even though I had made the incredibly wrenching decision to go on vacation without my laptop.

This is not a decision that I could easily have made if there was not the promise of a computer in the house we were renting.

Yes, indeed, Liz-the-Landlady assured us: there'd be a computer for us, and wireless access throughout the house.

The computer did not materialize until Monday afternoon, so we actually had a couple of days of unconnected, thoroughly unattached "bliss", with the exception of the Sunday Vodaphone cave-in.

Ah, the computer.

A vintage Dell desktop, running XP (with a 1995-2001 copyright notice on it, no less).

You forget what a dinosaur a ten year old computer can be.

"Hop" on to the Internet, and wait. And wait. And wait. We're paying for all those images, that's for sure.

Periodically, a pop-up appears, informing me that running IE sucks up 92% of the CPU. Feels more like 192%.

Just putting up this brief post is a laborious task. Sometimes you can type normally, but much of the time you can type 2-6 characters and the PC heaves a sigh and takes a long pause. Sometimes it just gets really and truly tired and just stops dead in its tracks, throwing us off the 'Net or going straight into reboot mode. This technology nag should be heading for the technology glue factory. And soon. We advised Liz to stop advertising that her otherwise extremely well-equipped digs come with a computer. Just say wi-fi, we tell her, and people will know they need to bring a laptop/netbook/iPad... Trust us, we tell her, they'll be happier.

In any case, the quasi-electronics-free vacation came off. Kinda sorta.

Without my laptop, there's been no temptation to get any work done, which is a plus. Without my Blackberry, I'm actually using my personal long term memory to figure things like Etta James' name out, which is a plus. With such crappy access, I'm doing more reading and less aggravating myself glancing through online comments to news articles, which is a plus.

Bottom line: I wouldn't travel again without my laptop. I'm pretty sure I could take a non-working vacation, even with the laptop available. And it is convenient to check e-mails, read the news from home (Go, Red Sox!), and have access to Skype, which we couldn't possibly get on the T-Rex of a Dell we've got here. I'm just too 'Net-addicted to do without a computer, I'm afraid - although there are still Internet cafes where I could get my fix.

I still wouldn't bother with my Blackberry. Although I might pimp my vacation with another throw-away phone - just for emergencies, mind you.

Anyway, I'm obviously as technology addicted as the next guy.

How was it that we used to actually have vacations that were of the 'get away from it all' variety.

They were really bliss, weren't they?

Alas, there's no going back...