You may have noticed that cell phones and the Internet were down last Monday.

If you do not have a cell phone or use the Internet very often, you may not have noticed their absence, but you may have noticed all the technocrats crying in a corner that day.

I did not join those crying, though I must admit to having sniffled once or twice.

It's funny to me how plugged in we are. Internet, movies, cell phones, TV, we don't really notice just how much of a part of our lives we've made these things until they're missing, even only for a few hours.

My dear fellow partakers in the electronic age, we need to unplug!

There are many different fun and interesting things we could be doing with time spent texting friends in class or watching the new "Lost" episode for the fifth time in a row.

Consider board games.

I would not recommend playing board games in class (unless you have a travel-sized Boggle cube).

Board games and board-less games such as Apples to Apples, Scrabble, Boggle, Cranium, Boxers and Briefs, Settlers of Catan, Catchphrase, Scattergories and many more are great fun especially with large groups of people.

Card games are excellent sources of fun as well.

Another fun thing to do is to head to your favorite bookstore.

Gulliver's and Barnes and Noble are both good choices.

They both have all sorts of neat books, greeting cards, journals, and even some interesting toys.

With Gulliver's you can trade books in for book credit to put toward the purchase of a used book, and Barnes and Noble has a killer CD and DVD section. They also have tame CDs and DVDs, but what's the fun in that, eh?

You could also take a walk or play Frisbee or football outside, though it is getting colder.

Those are all pretty typically suggested alternatives to all things electronic.

Here are some more creative alternatives:

• Drive through a drive-through

• Sit in your car and point a hair dryer at cars as they go by and see how many of them slow down

• Drag a desk onto an elevator and ask people that enter whether they have an appointment

• Stand fairly near to a set of doors in the Wood Center and ask passers-by where the exit is

• Take a poll to find out how many people are pirates and how many are ninjas

• Email the results to me at fskmh17@uaf.edu with "Pirates and Ninjas" as the subject

• Go to the museum and chat with the barista

• Invent a silly walk

• Learn how to sing the alphabet backwards