How to Stop Worrying and Live on 15 Gigs a Month

Screen shot of my computer with Blurb software to make a photography book

When we first started coming to Lake Medora, we had no phones.  There are no land lines where we live and no cell phone access.  Sometimes if we stood on the end of our dock, we could get a few bars, but it was unreliable.  Last year Verizon erected a cell tower near Lake Medora.  The only catch was that it only uses phones equipped with LTE.  (Don't ask me what that means.)  Our old clam-shell phones (someone once asked me if I was Amish) definitely didn't make the grade.  So we decided to join the 21st century and get smartphones.  But because we had to have an LTE smartphone, we had to buy something very new (and expensive).  Tony and I are now each the owners of an iphone 6.

One of the features of an iphone 6 is that you can turn your phone into a personal "hot spot."  (I actually didn't know such things existed.)  That means you can access the internet on other devices (like the Dell laptop I am now typing on) via wifi that works off your phone.  Doing this, we cancelled our wonky satellite internet provider and our old cell phones and are actually paying about the same price.

The only catch is that we now have to buy gigabytes that are only good for one month.  Since everything works off our iphone plans, we decided to buy 15 gigs a month--i.e., they don't roll over.  (There was also a special deal with Verizon that made this not as expensive as it would normally be.)  We had no real idea if 15 gigs was too much or too little, and we were consequently very meager in our internet use.

Well, lo and behold, it's almost the end of the cycle and we have gigs left.  So I have been hurrying to finish projects that will take a lot of gigs while I still have some available.  One of these is a book of pictures of Budapest, which I have composed on Blurb.

I am now a little more relaxed about internet use and will feel easier when I blog and read blogs.  Whew!

Along with trying to finish the Budapest book, I have had lots of company.  One of the best things about having a house on a lake in the U.P. is that your friends and family want to visit you.  I love this. However--not unreasonably--everyone wants to come around the same time:  end of summer when it's warm and the bugs have gone.  So I have had wonderful company and am looking forward to more next week.  Dickie and Cindy and the dogs are also leaving next week.  So come end of next week, Tony and I will be pretty much on our own.  We do have some Lake Medora and Houghton friends, who we will see.  But it won't be on a day to day basis.  That will give me lots of time to return to projects and to be a better blogging friend!