Yesterday I woke up with neither my phone nor my Internet working.

My Internet connection died Tuesday afternoon, and I'd hoped that by unplugging everything and giving everything the night off would solve the problem. When it's working, my modem displays five lights -- power, system, transmit, receive, and LAN. The power light comes on when the modem is plugged in, but even getting it to light is not as easy as one might think.

The power connection reminds me of an older audio type connector. It's round and has a number of pins and requires a fair bit of twisting to get them all to align so I can actually plug it in. Then, instead of fitting securely in the socket, it just lays there and the power LED goes from blue, which is good, to red, which is not.

Sometimes I end up by putting some stress on the power cord by wedging it against the wall so that it's shoved firmly into the socket. When it's at its worst, if I even look at the damn thing sideways, it gets loose and turns off.

I've come to terms with it, though, and it only occasionally annoys me. Live and learn, as they say.

When the satellite dish was installed and the guy got me up and running, he warned me that this model of modem had a tendency to overheat and die, and he recommended I keep a small fan blowing on it. As luck would have it, I already owned a small fan, which I used to use to cool myself before moving here, and during the summer months I keep it trained on the damn thing.

Wednesday I noticed it was quite warm on one side, but other than keeping the fan on it, there wasn't much I could do. Then, sometime in the afternoon, the modem displayed just one light, the power on one.

Without either the system light, which I take to be a sign the modem is running its software correctly, it's LAN light, which goes on when it can see that it's connected to something, I wasn't surprised that Windows couldn't find the Internet or let me connect to anything. So, I just unplugged everything and called it a day. This has worked in the past, and I figured it would work again.

So, early Wednesday morning, I plugged it back in and nothing had changed. No flashing transmit and receive lights, no system light, no LAN light. Just the power one.

I says to myself, Grrrr, and fixed another cup of coffee.

Pretty much ever since I called Hughesnet and got connected, they'd been advertising a newer, faster plan than the one I have, one which requires a different modem. I wasn't interested in it for a couple reasons, but the last time I called them about a problem, Amanda (remember her?), mentioned that the plan and setup I have is pretty much past its sell by date.

Since I wanted to keep that plan for as long as I can, my first thought was to buy a replacement modem. This required two things: One, they still needed to sell them, and, two, I needed to call them and see about having them send me one or two.

Which is when I noticed the second problem. My phone couldn't find a signal (either!) and was stuck in "searching" mode. Another Grrr, another cup of coffee.

Before my Internet died, I'd seen some posts about people up here losing their cell phone coverage. Most of the people up here, of course, live in the cities and have those fancy ass G type things that let them use smartphones, so I hadn't given it much thought. Also, I can go for over a week without using my phone at all, so it wasn't any big deal to me.

But I did catch the end of the local news on the radio, and they were saying something or other about the outtage, so I waited.

I didn't have a working phone and had no Internet, but my TV worked, I had things to do, and books to read, so I was unhappy, but not without options.

A couple hours later my phone found a bar and I called Hughesnet to see about getting another modem. Instead of the usual options, I heard a recorded message saying they were having severe system problems, which they hoped to fix by that afternoon, and because of the volume of call, the projected wait time would be half an hour before I could speak with anyone.

I hung up.

It's been rather hot the past few days and it was expected to be even hotter today (yesterday), so I figured it would be a good day to drive up to Big Bear. It's always quite a bit cooler up there and I figured since he can't go to the park and play with other dogs because of his bronchial thing, I'd see how he felt about seeing a standing body of water.

So, I loaded up the Jeep with water and things, and drove the fifty miles or so up a winding mountain road to get to Big Bear. That was done mostly without incident, but I did overshoot one corner and a thrilling moment wearing a thousand miles off the tires as I skidded around the hairpin and out of my lane, but other than that the trip was uneventful.

We made it to a park next to (what's left of) Big Bear lake, and I met some women who'd taken their dog there, and we chatted a bit. Of course, they said lots of nice things about Vinko, and after a bit of that, we headed down to the shoreline.

Vinko, to my surprise, acted as if he didn't notice the water at all. I didn't expect him to get excited about the ducks, which he recognized as birds and, therefore, of no interest at all, but he didn't seem to notice the water, either. He waded right in, up to his ankles, and walked back and forth a bit, still on his leash. I didn't let him run free.

He was fine with wading until he spotted some moss on a nearby rock, gently waving as the water lapped the shoreline. That spooked him, and he'd have nothing more to do with the water and its wiggling plants for quite awhile.

He eventually got back in, again far enough to cover his feet, and that was about that.

When we got back home, my phone still worked and the Internet still didn't. I called Hughesnet and got an updated message that said the problem would be fixed later that night, and went about my business. Before going to bed, I tried Hughesnet again, and they'd gone back to the "sometime this afternoon" message, and we slept as best we could through another warm night.

Then, this morning, I plugged the modem back in and everything came up as good as ever. Also, it works and here I am, on the Internet and with a working phone, just like a regular person!

Back when I was married, my father in law would typically respond to any "How's it going?" or "How are you doing?" greeting with a shrug and "Could be worse," even occasionally extending it to the more common "Come va?"

I can't say that I'd ever heard anyone say that before, but I liked it and immediately picked it up as being not only a little different, but also true.

I've struggled with how to respond to these social niceties for quite awhile now, mostly because I worry too much about things. Yes, I know when someone meets me and asks "How are you?" they don't really mean anything by it, but something in me still makes me see it as a real question that deserves an honest answer.

Which I'm not always comfortable giving,

Because of my attitude and mental makeup, "fine" or "okay" aren't often the truth, and I don't want to lie to people and give them the wrong impression on the off chance they really are asking. And, even if I'm in the right frame of mind and have the time, I doubt whomever's asking really wants a full account of what's going on with me.

My ex-father-in-law's response, however, is a good quick way to answer. No matter what's going on with me, no matter how good or bad I'm feeling, it could always be worse. In fact, it could always be much worse, so I say "Could be worse," and feel I'm looking on the bright side.

What's interesting is how many people respond to that comment as if it's a bad or negative thing. I'm not keeping score or anything, but it seems like about half the time when people hear that, they react as if I'm saying things are horrible or at least very bad.

I don't get that.

The only thing I can come up with is they word worse and are thrown for a loop. Ohmigod, maybe they think, he's saying things are the worst, when, in fact, I'm saying the exact opposite. I've decided such people, naturally enough, aren't really listening to what I say, don't really care how I answer, and are just making idle chit-chat.

But I can't help taking even simple, everyday greetings as not being a legitimate question. Well, maybe I could, but I don't. It could be worse, I suppose.

The summer heat divides the people who visit our local dog park into those who go in the morning and those who are there in the evening. From about nine or ten in the morning until around six at night, it's usually vacant.

Let's say there's five to ten people there during the more hospitable hours and rarely more than a dozen dogs (because that's what I see). What's interesting to me is that hardly anyone who's there in the morning ever visits in the evening, which leaves me and one or two others who ever are there for both sessions.

That sort of makes sense because of how people divvy up and schedule their time, but that doesn't explain the animosity between the two groups. When the subject comes up, which it does with alarming frequency, neither group has anything good to say about the other.

To be fair, while the dogs romp and chase and play with each other, most of the conversation between the owners is just gossip. I don't know any of these people well enough to talk about them even if I wanted to. Vinko, my dog, gets along famously with both groups and he has his fans in each of them. There's usually one person who asks me to bring him around more because his or her dog likes playing with him, but these people live a lot closer to the park than we do.

As much as I'd like to take Vinko there more often, it's about a twenty-five mile round trip for me so I try to visit only when I also need something in town. So, one day I'll go in the morning and then pick up coffee, ham steaks, and tamales and then might visit the next evening when I've run out of bottled water, ramen, or milk. It works out pretty well, but it also keeps me on the fringe of each group.

They love seeing Vinko, or claim to, but we're not "regulars."

Maybe they do it among themselves when I'm not around, but I haven't heard any direct talk about politics. Sure, there's hints and dog whistles, but most of the talk is either about the weather or about the dogs and the things they do at their homes.

I don't mind talking about the dogs, especially not about mine.

Both groups get together outside of the park and have even invited me to join them, but I've yet to do that mostly because they meet up for lunch and that's not really a convenient time for me. I mean, it would be, except for being another trip to town and back and the gallon of gas I'd have to pay for and the wear and tear on Jose, my Jeep. And, to be honest, there just isn't anything I want to spend three or four hours in town hanging around to do.

I guess I'll stay as an outsider, but not an outcast, and try to juggle my involvement with both groups for as long as I can get away with it. I pretty much like both of them equally, as does Vinko, and I hope I never have to choose one or the other.

Because there are so damn many of them living up here, it's nearly impossible to go anywhere public and not have old people talk to me.

Part of that, of course, might be because I, myself, am an old person and they feel some sense of kinship, or it just might be that they want to talk. Unfortunately, what they most often bring up is how much better things used to be, as if that's some novel concept or a recent discovery they've made.

It is, rather, the most obvious thing in the world and has been so for as long as humans have been aging, but never mind that. They mention it, and I'm never quite sure why.

The most disturbing part of hearing that bromide is that the person uttering it rarely wants me to say anything other than "yep," or nod in agreement, leading me to think it's not so much an attempt to provide me with any information but more like some secret password that's used to determine whether or not I'm in the club.

What the people proclaiming it do not want to do is talk about its implications, which (naturally) is invariably my reaction. I immediately go through, and discard, three possible responses:

1.  Agree, and point out that all these changes happened on our watch
2. Agree, and sadly shake my head while saying "and we let it happen."
3. Agree, look down, and mumble something about how we caused it

I've never used any of these, in part because I'm afraid to and also because I've convinced myself that I'd hear back something about filthy liberals, commies, hippies, or non-white people. Any of those would only make me sadder and feel even worse.

The world is different than the one I grew up in. I'm not convinced that most of the perceived differences stem from the fact that when I was growing up, I was a kid. Naturally things are better when you're a kid. Not only don't you know what's really going on and have, as your main task, to play and learn and grow, but you're a child!

So, not only is my view of the world I grew up in skewed toward wonderfulness, it's incomplete. Maybe everyone else can, but I can't possible compare the world when I was busy eating dirt and tormenting ants to the one I now find myself in.

Yes, it's changed, and I have no idea how different it would have been to grow up now instead of then, and I'm in no position to be able to make value judgements about which is better. It wouldn't matter, anyway, the world is what it is as the young folks say. It always has been and always will be.

After a few years of living up here in the desert, here's what I know about it: Hardly anything at all.

The desert is an unpopular place to live, especially the part where I live. The most striking thing about it compared to the city where I lived before is the amount of land there is. Los Angeles is a huge city, no doubt about that, but you never get to see much of it at one time because of all the buildings, development, and overall evidence of human occupation.

The desert has hardly any of any of those. My neighbors are all over a hundred yards away, and each of them separated by at least that much from their neighbors. There are no multi storey houses within view and it's several miles to the first street light. There are a number of small enclaves of humanity between me and the nearest town, but mostly it's just desert. Rolling, lumpy, sand and rock marked with creosote bushes and the occasional Joshua Tree (for which the area is famous). Around many, if not most of the houses, foreign trees have been planted to provide shade and if you get close to them, your view of the desert is destroyed.

Those trees don't really interrupt the view, especially since they don't grow in clusters, and the bushes usually only get to about chest high.

Because of that, you pretty much can see to the horizon, or at least to the mountains that ring this part of the world. You can actually see the land, and there's a lot of it.

As I've mentioned before, this area is classified as "rural," but that brings up all sorts of associations for me that don't fit. Still, if your only options are rural and urban, it has to do. What rural means in this instance is mostly dirt roads and huge stretches of nothing between one thing and the next. Yes, there's a place to take my recyclables and one where I can buy fabric or office supplies or get water or propane services, but they're all miles from each other and often have unpaved parking lots. It took me some getting used to go to a business and find just the building with its perimeter scrubbed free of vegetation by hundreds or thousands of earlier visitors. You park where you want in those places. No one minds.

The three or four large shopping centers in the nearby town, of course, have paved parking lots with all the usual markings. As you'd expect, those shopping centers are also spaced out with naked desert buffering them on all but the side facing the highway.

I was really struck by how uneven the surface of the planet is. A two minute drive takes you up and down rises that I never noticed when all the land was developed and filled with houses and buildings or even with trees in the forests I've visited. When you can't see more than a kilometer in any direction, you can't notice it. Although the view from my home stretches almost to the horizon, I don't have to drive more than a minute to be in an area I can't see from home because it's in a dip or behind a small rise.

I expected the heat for which the desert is most famous (and famously shunned) and humbling views of mountains, but not how damn much land there is up here. I think I mentioned before how the realtor who found this place and helped me to buy it herself came from Redondo Beach and said a lot of former beach people moved here. In talking with some of the few people up here, I've come to see she's right. One of the same things that draws people to the ocean or seaside is copied in desert living: the sense of expansiveness. Quite the same state of mind that I got endlessly watching the waves come and go in the foreground of a seemingly endless body of water I feel when looking over the desert stretching out forever.

So, this ended up having nothing to do with the title, which means I can keep that idea in mind when I feel like writing next time.

Maybe I knew once how the brain remembers things, but if so, I've forgotten it. Probably something having to do with electricity and chemical reactions.

I think I once knew more facts than I do now, even had more memories, but I think what happens is that if I don't refresh them by thinking about them again, over time they fade away. I usually know that I used to know a particular thing, so I'm not completely forgetful or senile, but other than being aware of the hole where a particular name or thing should be, I just don't know.

I notice it often with words. I used to have a lot more words readily available to me when I went to say or write something, but that number has dwindled and I hate how often I know a word but can't think of it and have to use another one that doesn't mean the same thing (or what I want to say) at all.

What I think is happening is all between my own ears and behind my own eyeballs, obviously.

What I think is going on is, like I said, that I'm not refreshing the memories often enough, not keeping the path to that memory open and clear. I'm not sure if its being overrun or overgrown by other things, or if it's simply neglected and I don't have the ability or tools on my own to resurrect it.

When I've forgotten something, like today's name of a movie I saw years ago, I know it has a name and I can even remember parts of the movie. Just, not its name. It's not like I sit around wracking my brain trying to recall it, either, I know it's not there for me to pick up any more and that makes me a bit sad.

But, also like today, when I'm reminded what the name is, I get the feeling that I'll know it again for a good, long time.

A few years ago I had a similar hole in my brain when I needed to know what eight times nine was. It only took me a few seconds to remember (seventy-two), but what was weird is that the answer didn't feel right. I even did the math (subtracting eight from eighty and nine from eighty-one) to confirm the answer, but it just didn't feel like the right answer, not the way twenty feels like the right one for four times five.

Maybe if I start writing every day again I'll get some words back. Or, maybe they're gone for good (or at least until someone or something reminds me). I know there are many books and characters and movies whose names or stories I no longer have readily accessible, but I think that's just the way it's going to be. I don't have time to read or see them all again. Besides, there's too many new ones.

If I'd had a job or been surrounded by people who talked about them, maybe I would have remembered a lot more of them. Instead, I know the boot code for a DEC PDP 1170, the IP address for a useable Class C license and my ex-wife's bra size, but none of those come into play much any more.

Maybe, by working at it, I can keep my memories alive and even get back some that are long gone. The good news is, in the end, it won't matter much either way.

Just after the Memorial Day Weekend I spied a small mouse who had taken up residence inside the cabin, or who was at least "just visiting."

I checked with my dog, Vinko, and we both decided that small as it was, there just wasn't room here for a third resident. Although, unlike lizards, Vinko ignored it, I thought it best not to tempt fate and bought a trap to capture the rodent.

I've killed countless mice and rats during my life, easily over a hundred all told, and even shot one with a .22 inside a place I was renting, but the desert is a harsh enough environment without me adding to some poor creature's struggles. This time, I got one of those "catch 'em live" traps, baited it with peanut butter instead of their recommended (and pricey) special attraction formula stuff, and spent the next few days passively hunting.

It worked.

Once I confirmed that I had, in fact, a mouse stuck inside the black plastic box, I had to decide where to release it. When I lived in Los Angeles, I'd occasionally catch a live mouse and there it was an easy decision: near that restaurant I didn't much care for.

Up here, however, there was no such place nearby.

The easiest thing to do, of course, is to just take it a ways off in any direction and let it go, so I ruled that out immediately. With my luck, I figured it would find it's way back here and I wanted none of that, but there honestly isn't much nearby except desert and homes.

I don't know any of my neighbors well enough to dislike them enough to foist a plague of varmints upon them and I rather like the post office and the service it provides, but, fortunately for me, there is a third option.

World renowned for its psychic and spiritual cleansing and healing powers, the Integratron would obviously make a fine home for a mouse. I have no idea if they have any food there, but it's surrounded with the same desert plants that surround everything else up here, and any desert mouse who's worthy of the name should be able to find something to its liking around the Integratron itself or even in the adjacent buildings.

So, about a week ago, I set it off to live at the Integratron.

It didn't take me long, maybe even during the drive home, for a couple things to occur to me. The first, and most immediate, is that I'd set a creature to live on its own in an unknown place. Even if it could find or make a home and find food, I'd doomed it to a sad, stressful. and lonely existence. Even if it could survive in the shadow of the mighty Integratron or could find a way inside, it would die lonely and unloved, its life a mockery of all that we hold valuable.

The good news is, I was also sure that I had not, in fact, caught the only existing mouse in the cabin. I've never heard of them living a solitary existence and, if there's one mouse, there's gotta be more. I hoped to capture another one and let it loose, also near the Integratron, so the two could frolic, swap tales and tasty seeds, and maybe even set up home and flourish and thrive in the natural vortex of cosmic energy.

If they were lucky, I'd even get one of each gender so they could mate and raise a family of Integramice.

And, yesterday, I trapped a second one, and after taking it to my now designated mouse freedom zone, it scurried off into the same bush where I'd freed the first one. Maybe they'll meet up, maybe they won't. All I can do is my part.

And worry about where the hell they're going to find water.