Ah, got around to connecting, er, unconnecting, the wireless connection, er, link, between my new laptop and the wireless router I acquired 2 weeks ago. It was a matter of reading the instructions (!) and pressing the button on the laptop that looks like a microphone surrounded by double parens, a button I had previously not noticed (!!).
Now I can carry my laptop all about the house and grounds, upstairs, downstairs, to the tennis court, the pond, the rooftop observatory, and stay connected, downloading my thousands of spams, surfing the web, and ftp'ing updates to the website. (If I had a tennis court, pond, or observatory, of course. It's the principle that counts.)