For one sweet sweet day, I was re-connected. Replacement phone, new internet, new computer in the mail, empty wallet.
As near as I can figure, my current laptop (Sloppy), jealous of my incoming desktop and egged on by all the international attention Los Angeles got for setting itself on fire, decided it would be cool to break down. She will now go no farther than the startup screen... she just stays there patiently, the stripes on her little loading-bar swimming eternally to the left.
Luckily I caught the scent of death on Sloppy last week, and had the unprecedented good sense to back almost everything up. So I'm not panicked... only bemused that every day this week I've spent over an hour exchanging pleasantries with Customer Service. I've discovered that by maintaining an unsupportably cheery, hakuna matata tone, tempered with a VERY SLIGHT genteel southern accent, I can actually convince myself that I am having a Voluntary experience with these folks. Like a picnic or a cocktail party. It works out great: they try harder to help me and I don't want to kill them!
My birthday is coming up this weekend (goodbye, 25) but if I do by some miracle have a computer, I'll post something anyway.