To my credit, I didn't stomp the modem into dust

I missed my very first Thursday's List this week since I began my blog, but it was through no fault of my own. My internet connection has been down off and on (mostly off) all this past week, taking our telephones with it.

I have already started doing the research to get us switched over to broadband internet and our cable provider's phone service. Broadband is so fancy-schmancy, I didn't think we'd be able to afford it, but it turns out from my minute scrutiny of a mailer sent out by Insight and several telephone conversations with our friendly local Insight agents (whose office is only about four blocks away - I love living downtown), it's going to turn out to be cheaper than our DSL and telephone service through Some Big Annoying Well-Known Phone Company. Who knew? The savings is $10 a month, which isn't enough to even buy us a pizza when all's said and done, but still.

Still.

My husband has a broadband internet connection at his desk at work, of course, and he can hardly bear to use our computer at home, which he believes is powered by a little gerbil running on a wheel inside the tower. I have told him a thousand times that I leave carrots and cabbage leaves there for a snack, not to feed some mysterious form of rodent power. Our computer, he complains, is slow beyond belief. And older than dirt. Possibly even laughable.

I have to agree. The DSL has not turned out to be as fast as that Annoying Phone Company promised. In lots of ways, it isn't much different than my old dial-up, back in the days when connecting to the internet meant listening to the computer go "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! Squeeeeeeeeeeeeak! Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek! Grrrrrreeeeeeek!" before it finally grudgingly allowed me view my local weather.

So this has not been a good week for the internet. However, it has been a GREAT week for improving my cussing skills. No profanity, Mom. Just bunches and bunches of good, solid Anglo-Saxon epithets whose origins I learned at Ball State University as an English major. So, see, it isn't really cussing so much as it is a literary endeavor, like speaking a second language. There! Aren't you proud?

This week also marks the time when I lost my cell phone, my brand-new cell phone. It was so new, it only had two numbers programmed into it and I still hadn't figured out how to take a picture. The last time I had it in my hand was on Tuesday evening, when I was using it to make a call. And then, no more. We've tried calling my number, but all calls go straight to voice mail, which means that I either turned the phone off or the battery has run down. It is true that I hadn't recharged it in a couple of days, but you wouldn't think it would run down that fast, would you?

At any rate, I can't tell you how upset I've been about this. I have a stupid $20 Tracfone that I've had for something like four years, and have I lost it? Heavens, no. But now I get a "real" cell phone through a real cell phone service provider, and what do I do? I lose it. After nine days. NINE DAYS.

I am encouraged by the fact that my husband hasn't demanded an immediate divorce or at least a separation from my whining, moping, cell-phone losing, internet-access complaining self. He must like me a lot more than I suspected.