The Good, the Bad, and the Babies

I'm not going to be one of those bloggers who apologizes for her absence--I think that's a little presumptuous, especially for a mouthy femme who has all of about 8 readers a day (you are by far the hottest readers a girl could hope to have, though, lovebugs). I am not, however, above acknowledging and explaining my recent lack of posts.

First, we were in NYC again. Loverly. The glorious, filthy, mercurial big apple has thus far (knock on wood) never ceased to spread her legs for me, even if she occasionally keeps me from blowing my proverbial load with the odd stopped subway car. I'll spare you the "oh I did such fabulous things in NY last week" thing, but I must say how lovely it was to see (albeit too briefly) so many of my very favorite people in the world. I also feel the need to give a shout-out to the amazing Cai Guo-Qiang exhibit at the Guggenheim (muchas gracias to Miss D's cute friend Blair for the tickets). It would take at least another long post to describe this show, and since I probably won't write it, I hope at least some of you will see it and we can talk about it.

I came home energized and excited about getting back to work, which made the last few days, which would have been frustrating at best, particularly excruciating. We've had problems with our DSL (there isn't any cable in this neighborhood) pretty much since we moved in, so we'd finally got Verizon to hook us up with a technician (a process which entails "escalating the situation," according to the operator) on Monday.

I will spare you, lest I risk boring the pants off my 8 precious readers, the details. But I will say that I've moved around a lot, and had problems with cable almost everywhere I ever lived, but I have never suffered a clusterfuck of customer dis-service as unprofessional as what we've been through in the last 4 days, during which time we've seen 3 technicians (the second of whom, Greg, gave me his personal number and said to call if it went out again, which, as desperate as I was to get fixed up, I didn't recognize as a shady move until he left me hanging all day the next day and Mr. Man called Verizon for the millionth time only to find out he hadn't put me on a work order at all).

The third guy came in apologizing and told Mr. Man that we'd been labeled "chronic complainers." I guess if your DSL isn't working, Verizon thinks you're just supposed to shut the fuck up and pay your bill, or assume that every poor $8/hr operator you talk to (because it's never the same one) is going to treat you like an asshole.

If you've never seen a Gemini deprived of her primary method of communication, consider yourself lucky. I was completely insane by this time yesterday. Envision me in tears...anyway, it's back up now, has been since this afternoon, and my wrist is already sore from all the furious typing, but my trust in the communication gods is still pretty shaken.

It's hard because (like most of you, I'm sure) I really love the internet. Not only do I like to read blogs and shop and research stuff, but my career is in a much more amazing place because of it, and in fact, I really do believe (just like old Al Gore) that the web is our best hope for fixing what's wrong with the world at large. It's like the printing press and Martin Luther's 95 theses or whatever (except that there weren't global warming or nukes back then). But I'm worried that with shit like net neutrality, the nets will go the way of food and television and become a worthless corporate imitation of what they should be, and this kind of big-business bullshit just gives a girl more cause for concern.

Sigh.

In much more cheerful news, we arrived home from NYC to see that the tomatoes we decided to seed indoors had sprouted. They are gorgeous, though it's hard to believe that anything will ever come of them. I also took advantage of some net-free hours to start some more seeds (I hope you all waded your way through my last long rant of a post and treated yourself to the Lorax and if you need seeds, let me know, because we've got extras), including rosemary, basil, anise, tobacco, nasturtiums, chives and catnip. It's like having a few dozen (!) new babies in the house.