Internet facilitates life

I have entered the age of the Internet and am loving it. I could easily be swept away in the convenience and luxury of it all.
Last month, I quit window shopping at my favorite on-line bookstore, filled up a book bag with a heap of books and audio book tapes and paid for it with an online account. Within minutes I received an e-mail message verifying my order and a projected shipping date. The day the books arrived was Christmas all over again as I anticipated hours of immersion into written and spoken words.
Tuesday, I left work early to attend a board meeting held in Little Rock. As board secretary of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in Arkansas I was expected to take notes of everything said and done. While the other members converged on the office in Little Rock, I headed southwest to my home, fixed a sandwich and curled up in a comfortable chair in front of our computer near the phone.
I spent the next coupe hours at home communicating with the other executive board members who sat around the speaker phone. They talked and I typed notes of the ongoing meeting into the computer.
Later that evening I pulled up the notes I had saved, edited, copied, pasted them onto an e-mail message and sent the finished text to the desk of the executive director of NAMI-AR.
It was so much easier than driving five or six hours, painstakingly taking notes by hand for a couple hours to take home, type up and then e-mail. If it weren’t for the fact that I missed seeing the other board members, I would meet that way every time.
My most recent descent into the world of the Internet came the day I realized I didn’t have to keep checking video store clearance racks and garage sales for that video my son wanted for her personal library. I could check the Internet auction sites and see if anyone else is selling his favorite movie: “Allan and Naomi.”
I checked out the on-line auction site everyone has told me about. I found three or more copies of the video waiting for the count down of the days and hours left to go in the auction. One auction was due to end in a few hours. I made my bid and received an e-mail saying I was the top bidder, followed a few hours later with an e-mail saying I had been outbid.
I raised my bid five, then 10 dollars. I was still outbid by the other person’s hidden maximum. I gave up: If they to pay more than that, I would let them. I checked out another, not as popular online auction. They had one copy of the video I wanted. I tried out my second highest bid for the first auction an received an e-mail saying I had met the price the seller wanted. The video was mine for about a tenth of the catalog price.
It’s amazing: Through the Internet I can lounge at home, do volunteer work, go shopping and find great bargain. My Internet experiences have been so rewarding that I am trying to figure out how I can persuade the editor that I really don’t have to come to work every day. Surely there is some way I could do my job sitting at home in front of the computer, wearing my jammies and slurping cereal. I just have to figure out how.