Verizon 'accidentally' cancelled my DSL without my permission, for no apparent reason. My bills are all paid automatically and on time. I have spent, literally and without exaggeration, more than six hours on the phone being shuttled from tech support to billing to customer service to, inexplicably, Apple (twice!) and back again. Literally: hours. I watched the unedited Fellowship of the Ring. I made bread. I organized my digital photos by year. All of this while on the phone with people from Verizon, half of whom had accents so thick I couldn't understand them. One of whom hung up on me.

Yesterday when the problem became apparent, they told me that before my service was restored, it had to finish going through the process of being canceled. They gave me "complimentary dial up" (which I'm now responsible for canceling). Gee, thanks. Not that the dial up worked. More calls to tech support. Finally, while on hold, I hung up trying to put the fellow on speakerphone. I'd been pleading for them to expedite the service restoration, and I suppose it finally went through, though the IT people apparently didn't see that. I reset my network preferences and everything finally started back up again, mysteriously.

I am so, so, so aggravated and frustrated and, well, angry! I missed a day and a half of bookselling (though when I mentioned this, they told me technically I'm not 'allowed' to use my DSL for work purposes). I probably went over my alloted minutes on my cell phone.