Helllloooooooooooooo?!

Hi everyone. Believe it or not I'm still alive and kicking. Still no internet service to speak of, but am borrowing a friend's computer in exchange for housesitting while he's in Hawaii. And at some moments I'm so happy just to have e-mail that I start to wonder if maybe I got the better end of the deal! :-)

The connection is slow and unreliable, however, and that's meant a blogging blackout of sorts. Am climbing the walls without Internet-- you never really realize just how addicted you are until your dealer cuts off the supply and you start weighing the merits of felony-level crimes in exchange for THAT. NEXT. FIX.

Streaming's out. Podcasting's history. Forget about the online German / English dictionary. Can't check addresses. No online banking?! You've got to be freaking kidding me!? Am wondering about Chui Hsia's new house and how Sloth is feeling. I'm starting to twitch even as I'm typing all of this!

If it hadn't been for an emergency music infusion from my own personal DJ I might already have died a slow, excruciating death... (Mwah!)

Got a very apologetic letter from ze police earlier in the week. They don't have enough information to go on and will have to drop the case. 1&1 is now saying that they'll be turning our account over to an independent collection agency, who from the sound of the letter will probably try to extract Mehrfacheinwahl fees in blood.

The only good news on this front is that 1&1 have stopped charging us for the Internet service that has been discontinued. We're biding our time, just dragging our feet until our legal assistance insurance kicks in and we can start talking to a lawyer.

In the meantime we're looking into cable internet. The DSL connection was very unreliable anyway so I'm hoping at some point we'll be back in business again...