And now my cable modem is down at home. Harumph. I actually had some stuff to do last night, and I was unable to do it. Damn these giant communications consortiums! Damn them!

Huzzah! Another Monsoon rain on the way home. It does just make me break out laughing. Today's musical selections whilst tromping through puddles (and no doubt fatally injuring another pair of shoes): Madonna's What It Feels Like For A Girl -- I have no idea why -- and James' Sometimes (Lester Piggott), which centers around rain, and rain, and more rain. Unfortunately, the bits that I could remember also involved a lightning strike, and there was quite a bit of lightning going on on my five-block walk home, and I got to thinking -- does the house have a lightning rod? How does one determine this? Hmmmm. Granted, I'm not going to try to figure this out now, while the lightning is still striking, but it would be something to know.

Last night was Jude and Chad's send-of at Roscoes -- a good time was had by all, and I stayed up past my bedtime (hence, no post).

Not much going on today -- my phone was completely dead last night, so I guess the problem was with Ameritech, not MCI. I apologize for being nasty to MCI. Their customer service still leaves much to be desired. At least when i called Ameritech this morning, I got through quickly and they ironed out the problem quickly. Whatever.

The one thing that put a spring in my step today was the news that Jesse Helms is scheduled to announce tonight that he will not run for office again. Huzzah! I wanted to link to a political cartoon titled "The Conscience of the Carolinas", but I could not find it in my cursory sweep of the web this morning. I'll have to do some further looking.

My long-distance phone service has gone down, for no reason I can figure. When I try to call out, I get the message "We're sorry, the carrier you have chosen cannot complete this call at this time." When folks from out of the local area code try to call me, they hear the phone ringing, but it doesn't ring through here. And obviously, they never get to my answering machine.

I called MCI to try to find out what the problem was. One of the messages: "Good news! You can now use MCI as your local phone service!" Harumph. Not bloody likely, thanks very much.

So I've mentioned Jude and Chad are moving to Boston, which depresses me mightily. Alas. My pain was somewhat assuaged when they invited me and a few others over to pillage their CD collection, as they've burned all their CDs onto their computers and no longer need the puny physical manifestations of music. So I got to pillage. Yippee! Now, of course, I need more CD storage space....Jude was taking it rather personally when we weren't snapping up some of his favorites. You were right, Jude, the live Natalie Merchant CD is pretty kick-ass, and the version of Ophelia is stunning. Thank you for convincing me to take it.

For those who know me, no, they weren't getting rid of books, so I didn't end up with more of them. Fear not. (Although if you do have books you're pitching, Jude and Chad, let me take a crack at them, ok?)

Did I mention that The World's Slowest Cab Driver on Wednesday kept calling me "Good Girl"? Arrgh. Best as I can remember, I was not, in fact, rolling over to have my tummy rubbed or begging for a biscuit during the ride home. .