Another day of struggling to lose that one lousy pound I gained on my “day off,” and another day of not being able to get online half the time. And when we do our connection is slow as hell. Every day we call and every day they continue to get a kick out of “pranking” our service. Yesterday they left Tom on hold ignoring him completely. Then when he went to research other means of contacting them, he found that AT&T has absolutely no numbers or email addresses online whatsoever – WTF?

So along with complaining to the FCC, he came up with a couple of ideas. One was to call them as a new customer in hopes of finding out how to contact the “real” customer service, and maybe going to yell at them in person. I’m getting so fucking fed up I’d like to do a lot more than just yell at them!

The connection was out when Tom got in at 3:30 and was still out when I got up an hour and a half later. He put in our daily service call and while he was able to get a $70 discount this time and was told they were working here in town, they never called back like they said they would and our connection is still horrible. It was back on right after I awoke, but it’s still cutting in and out and is horribly slow. Every 2-3 times I go to post an entry I have to wait a while till the connection can hold long enough to do it.

People have taken me to court in my life. Sometimes I deserved it, sometimes I didn’t. But even when it was suggested that I counter-complain, I refused to do so. I either just didn’t want the hassle, didn’t want to stoop to their level, or I feared it could come back to me somehow in a bad way. But that was then and this is now. In other words, if you give me a reason to, I’m going after you. You can count on it. :) So if I can ever find a way to file suit on these incompetent, pranking bastards at AT&T I won’t hesitate and neither will my husband!

I don’t know what to think anymore. On the one hand, we’ve been stuck here for years with seemingly no way out. I also get the feeling something’s using us for Jesse’s benefit. He’s having a tough time of it as well even if it’s not nearly as bad as we’ve had it, and there’s no way he could re-rent this place that fast partly due to the economy and partly because most people don’t want to live in a secluded spot in the woods. Any time we step out there, well, we just might come face to face with a bear. But people can’t shut up and that’s why we’re out here.

On the other hand, I’d say it’s safe to say that something up there wouldn’t hesitate to jump at the chance to drive us back into the city. Circumstances have forced us back to the city 3-4 times in the past. Every time we thought we escaped it for good starting in 1999, we got dragged back into it. Well, this place may not be perfect, but I’d rather be here than back with the welfare bums and other degenerates in some scummy apartment complex I couldn’t even hear myself think in just to get reliable service. But if this continues to get worse we’ll have no choice but to move. We stand to lose too much money and other things by not having internet access and we’ve come too far to simply disconnect our online lives and call that part of our lives a closed chapter because AT&T doesn’t feel like giving us service until something or someone forces them to.

I hope they’ll let me sweep tonight! I’ve been sweeping late at night whenever possible figuring they’re less likely to fuck with the connection when no one’s around.

My miraculous diet ain’t so miraculous anymore, and I just have to accept the fact that there’s a good chance I may not lose any more weight no matter how much I work out and no matter how little I eat. I don’t know if my body feels it needs the extra weight or what, but I do know one thing. I used to think those who would claim their bodies wouldn’t respond to diet and exercise was just a poor excuse and that they didn’t want to admit for some reason that they’d rather just eat and stay heavy. But my own body has stopped responding to diet and exercise so maybe some people really can’t lose weight or there just comes a point in our lives where we’re no longer able to. Why not? There comes a point when we’re no longer able to build muscle. I just hope I don’t go back to gaining consistently. In order to hopefully combat that I’ll keep dieting and exercising even if my weight/inches never go down anymore. Tom says I’m losing at a normal pace but no, I’m not. If you diet and exercise you should lose 2 pounds a week. I should be coming down to 134 pounds by the end of the week, not struggling to get back to 136 pounds. That’s ok, though. I don’t mind being fat so long as I don’t get any fatter cuz then it will hinder my movements. Being a big girl keeps me safer from anyone who might get it in mind to mess with me since most people associate size with toughness, like it or not. I have never been threatened or harassed since becoming full-figured. I never got taller, of course, but my waist has got to be something like 35” if I had to take a wild guess. I’m a size medium for the most part.

I added this really cool gadget to my blog that made me sorry for a minute there that some people don’t like coming to Blogger thanks to the spies out there. You’re safe coming to my blog, but if you don’t like the possibility of being tracked, then I highly advise you not to visit other Blogs. Most trackers can only see your general area, but sometimes they hit it right on the money and land right smack on your rooftop. The instant you access a site that’s plugged into one of these things it will see you.

The cool gadget I added is an MP3 player that randomly selects songs from its song list and starts playing as soon as my blog is accessed. I’ve only got a few on it right now, and if AT&T will let me I’ll load more songs later. I got the idea after seeing that Tumblr allows audio posts where you can upload one MP3 file a day. It got me wondering if Blogger had a way of adding that to its Blogs and so I researched it by putting in Blogger and MP3 player as keywords and found step-by-step instructions on how to install one there. It seemed to take forever to start when I had it at the bottom of the blog, so I tweaked the HTML coding a bit and placed it at the top after having started with fresh script. It loads pretty fast that way though it also depends on one’s connection.

When I was browsing through some of my old entries I was like – WTF? Why are some of the pictures not what they’re supposed to be? Where there were supposed to be flowers I’d have cats, and where there were supposed to be angels I’d have palm trees or something. Then it hit me that of all my blog pics, some have the same name. So it would choose at random from whatever file with that name it felt like choosing from. Because of this, I spent the last few days renaming them so they all have unique names.

No troll views since Alison sent me that email saying she shut down her nasty little WP Blogs and picked up on Tumblr without bashing anyone. So far she’s only written about the usual things going on in her life, she told me. Her weight, her niece, K-Mart. So she’s been scared off if only for a little while.