The night the lights went out in...Mongolia.

It’s been an interesting week what with all the moving into our apartment that we didn’t move out of and so forth. But, thanks to the Parents Shaffer, we are wired up now. Well, not now exactly – we were wired up for about 10 hours. Then, something went horribly wrong.

Even still, there’s a pretty bright silver lining.

If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll know that we share an ADSL internet modem with our NGO neighbor by running a network cable out their window and in through our window, into our apartment. When they’re not around, they are kind enough to swap out their cable from the modem so we can use it. Also, we had a brand new 280 gig external hard drive crash with almost all our music, pictures, movies and TV shows.

Leslie’s folks sent us a care package to help solve these problems and more, but since it had been six weeks since they sent it, and we’d received other packages with much earlier departure dates, we were pretty sure it had been plundered - arrgh.

Last Friday, after a pretty short, but trying week, we got the package we’d been especially waiting for. – We convinced ourselves with half-empty glasses that certainly, since it had come so late, things would be missing. Also it had been cut open, re-taped and had a bunch of Chinese writing on it. But, much to our surprise, our faith in humanity had been restored. In it, not only was there peanut butter, warm socks, assorted dried fruit, hair ties, and a PILLOW, but there were two couple hundred gig external hard drives (flash, no moving parts), and the crown jewel of the package – a wireless router. Ta-da!

My body was buzzing, I was so excited. Really. We jumped around, high-fived, screamed like little children and then got to work putting it all use. We made a date with the director of the NGO and he let us set up the wireless network. Twenty minutes later and viola! Poof! Abracadabra! Shoot-bang! We both had internet at the same time. We mused about starting an internet café and all hassle this new device would circumvent. All was right with the world and we were wired to it.

Meanwhile, our dead hard drive sat lonely in the computer bag like a genie in a bottle ready to be coaxed back to life. But instead of rubbing it, we put it in the freezer compartment of our mini-fridge. As the theory goes, there were some moving parts in our hard drive that either got gunked-up with dirt or had been jostled around enough that they were quite connecting right to make the magic happen. When you freeze it, those minuscule, microscopic parts shrink enough to do its thing. Sure enough, it worked! We now have over a hundred gigs of mind-numbing entertainment back at our fingertips.

Soon, we were watching old episodes of “The Office” from our hard drive and ravenously downloading free NPR podcasts with the newfound glory of our wireless router – and we could do it from anywhere in the apartment! We checked our email, sent mocking messages to our friends on Facebook, and taunted our mere mortal site mates. We had conquered the power of the interwebs, moo-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Then, around midnight that night, the world went dark. Our NPR podcasts stopped downloading. No more taunting on Facebook. There was no signal from the modem. What happened? What happened?! Leslie jumped up and checked the locked door of our neighbors, who were of course not there working at midnight. Oh, bother. Rats! Dodbabit!

No problem, we told ourselves. It’s late. We’ll figure it out tomorrow. Then tomorrow came and went. And then Sunday came and went. Still nothing doing. Then, early Monday morning when our neighbors returned to work, Leslie ran over there to reconnect the router. Surely a cable was unplugged or the power had come loose from the wall, as can happen. Maybe the modem just stopped, as can happen. Whatever it is, it will be an easy fix. Soon enough, we’ll be able to find out what stupid thing Sara Palin said now or whether oil was selling ridiculously high or ludicrously low these days. We’ll absorb all of Terry Gross’ “Fresh Air” and almost know the news and pop culture answers on “Wait…wait… don’t tell me”. It would be just a matter of minutes be we’ll be able to read all the interesting happens with Shane Victorino and the rest of our NL Champ Phillies as they prepare for the World Series. Yes, easy fix. No problem. Reconnect a cable, that’s the ticket.

That was not the ticket. Soon, she discovered no life in the dead white box; the giver of inter-continental joy; the bastion of normalcy; the way we get our news. Then she plugged the network cable directly into the modem – forget the router, let’s go straight to the source. It logged on just fine, but nothing was downloading. After a while, we learned that the internet was down in the whole town, so there was hope yet. We’ll just wait it out. Yet another tease.

But what’s the deal with that wireless router? Was the whole thing fried? Did Carl Cassel explode it with his awesomeness?

It’s interesting how out of diversity comes opportunity. When we left Leslie’s parents in May, we brought all parts of our computer but its power supply. There was no turning back to get it after we got to Buffalo, so we went across the parking lot from our hotel to a Best Buy and claimed ourselves a universal charger with myriad tips for all your PC laptop needs. Back in Mongolia, a light bulb went off in my head. I got it! I rifled through the computer bag for the supplementary charger tips. I eyeballed what looked like the right size and connected it to the charger. I then picked up the dead carcass our reneging Netgear and with one sweeping and dramatic movement of my hands, I breathed electronic life back into it.

It turns out that the old universal power strip on the floor of the NGO that only had two of the five plugs in working order fried our AC/DC adapter but left our precious router unharmed, for now. We’ve sent a friend on a hunt in Ulaanbaatar for the appropriate adapter. If we can’t find it, we’ll have to wire something up.

Here’s to hoping…