My kingdom for internet service that works

This post is coming to you via my dial-up connection of a whopping 28.8 kbps from beautiful Maryland where the weather is warm and lovely.

Wait a minute. Did she say dial-up? Why, yes I did. I'm temporarily back on dial-up. Actually, I've still got the old account until the 11th, so it's there for the using. And I'm being forced to use it because guess what? My satellite internet connection that was installed just two days ago is not working.

It hasn't worked correctly since the guy left on Monday evening. It's been intermittent at best, and tonight it gave up. Oh, it says it's connected, and I've done the usual things to check. But it's not. So I finally gave up and called the hotline and after waiting for almost a half hour on the phone, spent another half hour listening to someone say "now, let's see here" about 24 times. I swear, if she said it one more time, I was ready to go crackerdog.

Extra points if anyone knows what that means.

Anyway, I live out in the middle of nowhere. Actually, somewhere is nearby, but nowhere is closer. Hope you got that. A couple of years ago, I saw on their website that Verizon Internet Service was available in our area. I was excited! Elated! I checked their site again and sure enough, we were eligible for service. Yay! So I ordered it. A modem arrived immediately with instructions and nothing worked. My computer geek son was still living here at the time, and it still wasn't working for him. After spending a total of 4 hours on the phone and on hold over the next few days, I was finally told that a service man would be able to come out and troublecheck it for me, but I'd have to stay home from work all day just to wait for him. I opted to cancel the whole darn thing and returned the modem.

Turns out that Verizon never was available in our area, and it still isn't. It was just showing otherwise on their computer.

Suffice it to say that I haven't had much luck with internet service, except for the trusty old dial-up. Hopefully, this too shall pass, and my service will be fixed soon. The repairman is coming on Friday and then I have to deal with billing, when I tell them I'm not paying for all these days of no service. See how fun this all is?

But hey, it could be worse. I could have no internet at all. Thank you so much for listening to my little rant. I'm feeling much better now and I promise not to make a habit of this.

Oh, the picture was taken last week of a little one asleep near his mother. It makes me feel soothed somewhat to see that life is gentle and sweet, and good internet service or the lack thereof, does not mean it's the end of the world . . .