Panic in the streets.

Sam and I woke up this morning to a power failure in the study. I was the first one into the room, and it was pretty easy to know we had a crisis because nothing was blinking or humming. Not the router or the cable modem or the blue light on the front of my huge external hard drive or the green flashing display on my credit card terminal. The printer was dead, our computers were off, and the lights were out.

No Internet access. No email. NO NOTHING.

Sam always has the cool head in the family and takes a flashlight into the garage to check the circuit breaker, but I’m flailing around in a pitch black room staring at a blank computer monitor. I’m hopeless without Internet access. Holy crap ... I can’t write email, I can’t write a Howdygram post and I can’t even read Dear Abby! Then Sam flips a switch in the garage and the study flickers back to life ... all except the router, which is basically the kiss of death because everything in the room connects to it.

I formulate a serious plan of action and the only logical solution: let’s rip the damn router out of the wall and then go to brunch to Blue Mesa ($16.95 per person), stop at Fry’s in Garland on the way home to buy a new router ($79.95), and I’ll call my Macintosh consultant this afternoon to come over and set it all up ($99 an hour plus overtime charges for working on Sunday). I’m figuring this is a decent bargain costing somewhere around $265. Sam, who never panics about ANYTHING, decides just to sit back for a couple of minutes and drink a cup of coffee, which turns out to be a smart move because the router suddenly comes alive all by itself, and in an instant my universe is back to normal on Bonnywood Drive.

Except I still want brunch at Blue Mesa. They open at 9.