Woe is me!

Don't you just hate it when your phone and Internet connection go out and it takes FOUR DAYS for the phone company to restore full service? Not just four days, but also three evenings of wasting valuable non-work hours on the phone with their technical support department? Generally speaking, I have no beef with Qwest. However, after dealing with their automated customer service line three times too many this week, I've come much closer to giving in to the urge to run amock with a carving knife than I ever thought I would in this lifetime.

Once you actually get a human being, they really are pretty nice and do try do be helpful. Tech person #3 didn't even make fun of me when we discoverd that my modem didn't work because it wasn't plugged into the phone jack. She even spent two hours on the phone with me trying to get my wireless back up. And though she totally had me headed down the wrong path despite my helpful suggestions (It took me about 15 minutes to set it up doing it My Way. I think the singing helped-it always does!), I appreciate that she tried. I even forgive #2 for making repeat back the RMA procedures to him like I was an unruly Kindergartener with ADD, but that stupid recording has just got to go!

I'm not that old, but those "helpful" automated routers always make me feel like a dinosaur - an impatient dinosaur from a time long, long ago when human beings (who walked to school up hill both ways) answered phones and even provided customer service that was not generated via call scripts. (#2, in particular, did not like that my questions deviated from his script and kept trying to wrangle me back in.) Thankfully, I have the Internet and a blog, so I can complain to a wider audience about how rotten technology is!

But my tale of woe does not end there! Again connected to the outside world, I woke up this morning to find that my normally clear skin (whatever manufacturing defects I might suffer, I really have been blessed with good dermal health!) had errupted into what looks like the beginnings of a second head sprouting from my chin. I seriously feel like I've discovered an undeveloped, parasitic twin on my face, and I just don't cotton to that kind of thing.

Covering it is no use. I tried and ended up with so much makeup on my face that even Tammy Faye Baker would have told me to just put the Studio Fix down step away from the applicator sponge. All the makeup did was leave a cakey film of powder around it anyway. In the end, M.A.C. was no match for its scarlet majesty - might as well decorate it with glitter and little "This way to Mt. Pimple" signs.

So, I am doing the only sensible thing - sequestering myself (for the sake of the children!) and baking Chocolate and Cranberry cookies from the red chapter of Tessa Kiros' lovely Apples for Jam. Once they are finished, my pimple and I plan to eat them while lounging on the love seat (where there will be ample space for us both!) and reading Marc Acito's new book, Attack of the Theater People. If that doesn't cheer us up, nothing will!