The woes of getting wired

Well, we still don't have the internet.

This is becoming somewhat of an interesting saga. First, we ordered the internet from Qwest. Charlie was on the phone with them for nearly an hour. First came the identity verification test. His information failed the first time, then went through the second time (what, you have to have a green card to get the internet now?) for inexplicable reasons. Countdown: 20 minutes verifying information. Then, upon giving the associate our address, we apparently did not exist as an apartment building. We were listed as an "institute" of some sort. To remedy this situation, they need to contact our property manager and have her vouch as to the fact that we indeed have a bed, a stove, and a couch in our domicile, and that no, there weren't padded walls or any officy goings-on in our space. Once these two hurdles were cleared (countdown: 30 more minutes of waiting) the associate thanked Charlie profusely for his kindness and patience, and promised to send a box with the internet to our doorstep.

That was, I believe, Monday morning. With the giddy patience of kindergartners on Christmas Eve, Charlie and I checked our front porch daily to see if the internet had yet arrived. Finally, come Friday, it showed up. The irony of waiting for a snail mail box to bring us the internet was not lost on us--in fact, the chuckles we shared over it made the wait that much more tolerable (as did the free wireless at the Library!--that's how it's officially written here: always with the exclamation point). Charlie unpacked the box and we petted and ooh-ed over the sleek cords and fancy wireless modem router.

Then we set to locating the phone jack for the long-awaited consummation of our internet hopes. Funny thing is, there wasn't one. We've searched our apartment high and low, and unless the phone jack is hidden behind the refrigerator, we've discovered that there simply ISN'T one in our apartment. THE PAIN THE AGONY! It seems like a strange thing to be lacking, since these have been apartments for, oh, the last 99 YEARS or so. We have a call into our property manager (late in the day on Friday) so hopefully we can get this ironed out sometime this week. We asked another building resident whether he has a phone jack in his apartment, and apparently they do, so hopefully we're just not looking in the right drawers or storage closets for ours.

More about Boise and our experiences here once we're wired, I promise! For now, things are going well, and I hope they are well for you too.

We're both missing you all but having a great time here so far, too.

x's and o's,

Ariel and Charlie