Now that we’re back online and up to speed I have quite a bit to catch up on, so this entry’s going to be a quickie. It’s so wonderful to be able to zip around the web once again! It’s not like cable, but it’s no longer slower than satellite either. Before I couldn’t play the radio, couldn’t do much work, couldn’t stream videos, and if I was lucky enough not to get kicked offline altogether, pages would take forever to load. I’m just glad they took care of the problem because we couldn’t live here otherwise.

Tom’s not up yet, so I don’t yet know exactly what the problem was, but we both suspected a leaning pine tree towards the foot of the drive that was leaning on the wire. The drive is hundreds of feet long with lots of twists and turns. Near this leaning tree, the driveway is at its steepest. So steep that it’s paved to keep the rain from washing it out. What a workout it was walking up and down that part! But fun, too. I felt every muscle from my calves, hamstrings, and quads, right up on to my ass, working like crazy. I doubt my parents could’ve done it.

Jesse and the dogs came down for a few minutes to check the pipes and tell us that he once tried to get them to cut a tree that was interfering with the wires, but the lazies wouldn’t do anything till it actually snapped the wire. Brilliant, huh? He said if we could get them to take down the leaning tree, he’d be happy to come by and drag it away.

Brandy ran up and greeted me, then shyly moved on while Whiskey happily let me rub his belly.

Jesse then said something about having to get a tire balanced, and he later passed us along the drive as he and the dogs were leaving. They probably would’ve been quiet had they stayed back since it was getting hot by then, but I was glad to see them go. Jesse probably didn’t want the dogs scaring the internet workers anyway if they showed up while he was out.

They didn’t show up until 3:00, and by then I’d been up 16 hours and needed to sleep. I expected to get woken up along the way, but I didn’t. I just woke up to pee around 7:00 and was surprised when Tom said they were still working on it but had gone out to get gas. So since no one came inside that I know of, it probably was the tree that was the problem. I’ll find out for sure in a few hours. Although it would’ve cost us $100, the easiest problem to have had would’ve been a bad modem. Instead, I’ll eventually be spending the money we saved on a new keyboard and microphone adapter. I’m sick of these keys sticking and not being able to do the speech part of my language lessons since I’m running Windows on an iMac. It’s just that I hate OSX with a passion! Worst operating system ever. I refuse to use anything other than Windows.

Why they’re suddenly sending me Spanish lessons to review on the language site is beyond me. Shouldn’t native Spanish speakers review those no matter how much Spanish a non-native may have learned?

They finally got their own shit together on the language site after having tons of tech issues themselves, and so I could finally enroll in the Esperanto course I’ve been wanting to check out. The sound files aren’t as good as those of the major languages, but it’s not nearly as horrid as the Catalan was. I also like this language a lot so far! It seems even easier than Spanish because there’s not much in the way of gender words which makes for grammar that can be harder than in English. I like how they put “mal” in front of words to make them have the opposite meaning: alta – tall, malalta – short. So Esperanto will be language #7 for me – woo-hoo! I’m really excited about it. I don’t know why I’m such a language fanatic, but at least I have something fun to look forward to despite being stuck in the usual rut.

Things have been running smoothly for the last couple of weeks, and while I’m enjoying it immensely, it also worries me because I know the shit’s going to hit the fan any minute now and God will once again have His fun tormenting me with some kind of stressful situation. It’s bad enough that I don’t know if we’re going to survive the year, but would rather not have to deal with any shit until the end comes, if it’s coming. Yet we just can’t seem to get ahead in life, and when we do, we get kicked back. Sometimes I’m not sure I want to own a place again. Sure it would be nice for various reasons, but wouldn’t God find a way to take that place, too?

Paula sent an email confirming that she got the package and loves it, so that’s nice. She said she was glad to have a friend in me and hopes to visit someday. I’d like that cuz I sure as hell ain’t going back to New England. I haven’t been back since I first left it 18 years ago, so why go back now?

Ok, so maybe this entry wasn’t a quickie after all. But now I’ll definitely be off to catch up on things, which means the next part of my story may be delayed a bit.

Sharyn checked out my blog today. At least I think it was her. Someone from New York came in from Facebook, and while anything’s possible, the odds of it being someone else seems unlikely since my FB page isn’t as exposed and in people’s faces as my tweets are, for ex. Besides, I’ve been posting more things to FB lately, and that shows up on your friends’ activity feeds. The language scores and blog posts would be more attention-grabbing than just an occasional comment on someone else’s posts which was all I’d mainly post for a while.

Later…

I wasn’t going to do another entry today, then said why not? We just got back from the grocery store, and I even splurged a little on some Chinese take-out. Why not? We’re going to be forever poor anyway. It is damn good, too. Especially their fried chicken. Something about the batter that’s just totally awesome.

It’s hot and dry out there just the way I like it.

Earlier I felt like I was coming down with a cold and found I had a temp of 99.1, but I think whatever it is is going away. It better! I almost never get sick. Besides, I haven’t been around any sick people.

The problem didn’t turn out to be the tree, but a bad section of wire instead. First they called him to say they’d have to send a crew out tomorrow, but then at 6:00, a guy called saying he was at the foot of the drive. He was here for nearly two hours replacing the line. I was really starting to think we’d never get them to come out here! But now our connection is faster than in all the time we’ve lived here and we don’t have to move. Before, if one of us wanted to watch a movie, it’d slow the other one down. But now we can both watch movies on our computers! I don’t watch movies very often, but it’s nice to know I can do that now if I wanted to.

I’ve been making up for lost time at the job site. We decided not to list anything on eBay today so we can get caught up on work and things we haven’t been able to do online in a while.

I might not pick up with my current story till next week, but Alison tweeted that she’s on chapter 8 of my last book and loving it so far. Especially the journal parts.