My Fortress of Solitude
My peculiar situation is that I get my Internet service from a satellite whose signal winds it way through Charlotte, North Carolina. On most days, that isn't a problem. However, with Hurricane Sandy (a boyishly lame name for a storm) bearing down on us, that signal has been silenced. As a first resort, I am sitting in the Gloucester County Library with my work laptop getting caught up on my month-end bills, e-mails and miscellaneous web crawling that somehow seems necessary. I went to college as an adult, graduating in 2006. It was necessary for me to leave the house in order to get anything serious accomplished. Pending household chores, a whining cat, the blare of the TV and other home-bound distractions were left behind and my mind could focus on the task at hand. Usually, it was a paper I had to write or some mathematically challenging homework. To write my papers, I used antiquated devices known as a pen and paper. I would feve...