I don’t need a toaster much these days but, when I do, nothing else will suffice!
In other news, my Internet service is back.
The router quit on me yesterday when I was cleaning in anticipation of dinner with guests. I picked it up to dust the shelf it sits on, and poof! The radio — on a satellite station — went silent. I tested the plug and swapped the power cord, but to no avail. So I put on a CD and went back to work; everyone knows that dinner guests inevitably examine the parlour rug for cat hair content.
Fast forward to eight o’clock this morning and me on the phone with Wightman Telecommunications, the local internet service provider. “Okay, since the problem isn’t the outlet or the power cord, would you please press the power button?” I turn the device back and forth, up and down, side to side, looking for a button marked “Power”. No such button is in evidence. Then I look again at the left-hand edge of the device and examine it even more closely. (Imagine 70-year-old eyes struggling in dim light.) Sure enough, I finally spot two tiny, almost invisible, matte black buttons, one of which is labelled “On/Off”. I relay this information to the technician and press the tiny button. Instant lights. Within five minutes, much humbled, I was back in the 2020s.
When I picked up the router to clean the shelf, the palm of my left hand squeezed that edge of the device and pressed the button that I did not know was there. All the ensuing confusion was what happens when we don’t do “Naming of Parts” with every new machine.