Tonight, the unthinkable happened.

Our DSL was disconnected.

My little world has fallen apart.

A few months ago, I changed our home phone number to a "metro line". "The only thing that matters," I told Jim, Diana, and everyone else I spoke with in the SBC order department, "is that we don't lose our DSL."

They all assured me that we would not lose our DSL.

And, the telephone number changed, and we still had DSL.

But, that was just a cruel joke designed to make us think all was well. After a few months of not paying for the DSL (and not knowing this since the phone bill gets billed to a credit card), the DSL was disconnected tonight.

This always happens at night when you can't do a damned thing about it for hours or sometimes days.

So here I am on a ridiculously slow dial up. I am going through withdrawals for my broadband connection. I have some kind of odd pains and I feel like kicking someone.

I don't think I am going to be able to sleep tonight.