pain in the neck

I spent all of yesterday inside due to excruciating neck pain. What fun! You know what made it even better? My internet was out and had been for the last three days or so (the recent blogging action you've seen was courtesy of Braeden's wifi at the Batcave) so there wasn't much I could do other than lie on the couch with a hot water bottle, an ice pack, or a hot wet towel on my neck and upper back all day.

Luckily a few days prior Braeden had brought over his DVDs of Better Off Ted, season 1, so I watched the entire thing. No big deal. It was hilarious! It's another one of those shows that is so funny and so clever and so great that you wonder why you never heard of it before it got canceled. I vaguely remember seeing commercials for it on tv and thinking to myself, "I have absolutely no desire to see that show at all." What a sadness. Clearly someone is to blame in the marketing department. Come on, guys! Get it together.

In the afternoon Braeden came over after his classes to work on one of his end of the semester papers—a 15 page essay in Spanish, no big deal—and when he would take writing breaks he would come over to the couch and massage my neck and back to help me feel better. I seriously have the best boyfriend in the entire world. Did I mention that during another writing slash lunch break he emptied my dishwasher and washed the dishes that were still in the sink? He is so great about anticipating my needs and being just generally helpful. He had a dinner date last night with his co-workers, and when he got back before he came inside he de-iced my car, something I'd been dreading since it's just been sitting in the driveway for the last couple of days accumulating ice and frost. I am so in love with him...

In the evening I felt well enough to get off the couch so I braved calling Quest to see if I could get the internet fixed. It's been going in and out the whole time I've lived here, and I was tired of it. These three days without internet was the last straw. I'd bought a new router at the pawn shop last week thinking that would fix the problem but it didn't, so instead I had to brave two hours on the phone with technical service. In the end I was glad I had the new router though because the old one wasn't so old it wasn't under warranty any more and they wanted me to pay 30 bucks for a one-time customer service call. What? Luckily the second router was newer so they could help me free of charge. Also, it looks like it's from the future.

Can you tell which is the new one and which is the old one? It's like Wall-e and Eva. Adorable.

It's still not a perfect connection, and I think that must be on the end of my computer, since it's also getting up in years, but I'm so glad to have it actually working again. Isn't it funny how dependent we can get on things?

Luckily today my neck is feeling a lot better (due mostly to the wet heat and generous neck rubs a la Braeden) and I feel like I can leave the house and even go into work. Yay...?

PS Gloria curled my hair for me on Sunday and she did a great job! It held the curl all day, even without any kind of added hair product and looked pretty dang cute with my new hat, if I do say so myself. But don't take my word for it, check it out yourself:

This was taken at the end of the day, almost 12 hours since it had been curled. Not bad!