Satellite internet, consider yourself dumped.

I am thrilled to announce that, after at least a five-year battle and many, many petitions signed by concerned homeowners, my little section of rural Virginia has joined at least the late 20th century and finally gained high-speed internet access. DSL, baby. It’s a game-changer.

When I bought this property, I had serious concerns about its lack of a viable high-speed internet connection. But I went ahead anyway, thinking I could live “the simple life” without internet and do more productive things in my spare time like churn butter from my own cow’s milk and sew my own clothes. I hadn’t lived this good old way five days before I had a nice young man sinking the post of a satellite internet dish in my back yard.

And the satellite internet was fine. Sure, each month it cost me five times what I will now be paying for DSL. And, yes, it took forever to do simple things like spend money on the Web. Paying bills online became a hit or miss affair as crucial screens timed out before I could even see them. I had to pick and choose my favorite blogs because I didn’t have enough hours in the day to download and read each post. And when snow or monster thunderstorms blocked the skies, I lost all connection to a radar map.

Case in point: I woke up one morning wanting to purchase an online yoga class to kick off a nice healthy weekend. Six hours later the class was still downloading and I was keeping company with my second beer on the couch. So much for New Year’s resolutions. Satellite internet, you brought my best intentions down.

And yet I suppose there was a flip side too. That it took forever to do anything online meant that I often just gave up, shut off my computer, and walked away to engage in more wholesome activities. Such as watching bread rise. Bread I made from wild yeast captured and nurtured in a slurry of flour made from wheat I planted, tended and harvested by hand in all the spare time I had while not being connected to the internet.

Oh well. It’s back to buying my bread and butter at the store, and now that I can rock through an entire department store’s online catalog in just a few minutes, I’ll be spending my time at nordstrom.com instead of sewing my own gingham jumpers.