A boring topic, I know.  You really don’t know how boring until you live in Busan in the winter.  Sun, wind, cold.  That’s it.  Okay, sure we’ve had a couple anomalous snow flurries, yet somehow it was still sunny outside.

Did a little survey of the weather in places where we’ll be next month.  Ko Phagnan in southeastern waters off Thailand is 84.  As Nic says, “Yes, please.”  Chiang Mai in the northwest is steamy and 84.  These conditions are excellent for crotchety old knees.  In addition, humidity seems to be conducive to beard growth; fear not, the patchy left side will fill in over the coming month.  If it doesn’t, I’ll just use some shoe polish.

A bigger issue presented itself to me today as I braved the searing wind for a little jog: with no internet access, I may have to talk with my wife about the weather.  We do talk about it quite frequently here, always guessing if we can make the autobike ride  to work without a summer rainstorm catching us mid-journey; currently, we gauge how knifing a 15 degree windchill would be in addition to the wind we endure when riding.  The point is this: in a matter of seconds, I can get weather from all areas of the world and write pertinent notes to a friend near Brisbane to see if he’s surviving the floods (last I checked, all was okay for him); I can also send a note to my father-in-law in WI who gently scoffs at my thinking 1 to 3 inches of snow is a big deal.

Again, I will try to make my point: without allowing myself internet access for three months, my wife becomes the bearer of this sort of news.  All news, in fact.  I never really asked her if she’s okay with that, but she’s been supportive of my unplugging experiment since the beginning.  It is only natural that I make assumptions that she’s thought through all the pressure that will be on her.  How’s the weather going to be, honey?  How did the Sharks do in the first round of the playoffs?  How’re the Giants doing in spring training?  Did Giffords live?  Is the North shit-disturbing again?  Did I miss another first for my nieces or nephew?

There is great potential here for me to be even more annoying than I already am.  Having said that, one of my aims in this experiment is not to be distracted by things that do not immediately or urgently affect me.  The Sharks will still bow out in the second round.  The Giants will still be playing in May when I come back online.  Important people will live on and die.  The North will undoubtedly be up to their old shenanigans.  Ella, Lexi, Audrey and Ian will have more firsts that I will be there for.  The more I think about this, the more of a vacation it is sounding like.  My only hope is that my family doesn’t feel I am abandoning them; but those concerns should be allayed by the letter-writing campaign.  In the meantime, I’ll absorb my surroundings and write to people about them.  I’ll try to use my crotchety knees to predict rain or find a newspaper to glean some news (weather and otherwise) from or, gods forbid, I talk to someone other than my wife about the weather.