My Home Boyz

On Sunday night, the boys decided that a little photo op was needed to show their most fierce Asian gangsta member faces. A quick contemplation of this picture leaves me with the indubitable conclusion that there isn't a whole lot to fear here. Assuming that they were total strangers and I stumbled across them vandalizing some random local property, I would fearlessly approach them, quickly flick them both on the forehead and inform them, in my most pedantic motherly tone, that they were grounded. This would be opposed to say, some really fierce looking gang members where I would be more likely to cross the street, clutch my car keys in the classic eye-poking-out position while averting my eyes lest they think I could ID them in a post attack line-up through my my own battered black eyes. With these two guys of mine, I might even grab them by the ears and drag them home to their mommas... You go my fuzzy bears: Henizzle and Geoizzle..



In other news, we have been without internet service since Sunday. Over the past few days I have had the opportunity to reflect on how dependent I am on electronic access (regardless of how crappily slow our connection is). I have been unable to do the following CRITICAL items:

One. Live my life vicariously through other people's lives on various blogs, emails and facebook.

Two. Satisfy my essential need to complete the crossword/Sudoku/Playfour on various on-line newspapers (please note I don't necessarily read the news there - - I just do the puzzles. I would also add that doing the puzzles at the beginning of the week is pivotal to my self esteem for the remainder of the week. Beginning of the week puzzles = easier = feelings of contentment and success. Later in the week puzzles = more difficult = lack of success and feelings of abject worthlessness)

Three. Respond to life-or-death emails from the school on issues such as what I want to bring for the pot-luck meeting on Thursday night, or donations for the school auction in April. (O.K. technically I could respond to these emails via my blackberry, but I am woefully inept at typing anything other than "lk342 lk03na *7hskj" on my tiny little key board. Weirdly, when I was a working stiff I could punch out incredibly long missives including font changes differentiating between "nice boss" type and "mean boss" type. I was proficient. Now I am maladroit. Like I said, weird).

And last, order a new grill cover since ours blew away during a recent wind storm and cannot be located in any of our neighbors back yards. It is likely somewhere in San Jose or choking an endangered aquatic mammal to death in the Pacific ocean.

I have also been unable to do some less-than-urgently-important things like - take care of my year-end health care spending account and re-enroll the boys for school next year. (yes, I know that these should take precedence over the aforementioned items. But, we're talking about things I want to do versus things I need to do. See the difference?)

And, so as to mention the obvious - - not having internet meant that I needed to: a) Dial AT&T for help; b) Come to grips with the reality that my idea of "help" (aka ASSISTANCE) was clearly not AT&T's definition of "help" (aka Provide-unlimited-doses-of-frustration); c) Spend 47 minutes in the que waiting for said "help"; d) Realize that those 47 minutes of static laced hold music were a total waste because the person on the other end of the line spoke English with the same level of fluency as my dog Otto; and e) Be told by the person with limited language proficiency that I now needed to talk to another department whose wait time was, in her opinion, much shorter. She was accurate that the wait time to get a "person" was shorter. She was way off on the amount of time that person (admittedly one that spoke our native language) would put me on hold while trying to figure out the problem only to finally get back on the line 30 minutes later to tell me that he was going to have to open a trouble ticket and that a line manager would call me back in 20 minutes so please don't use your phone between now and then since they don't have the capability to call me more than once. Yup. That's helpful.


Good news is that we have internet back on line. Other good news wrapped in bad news is that the speed of internet service that we have been paying for is not that which has been being delivered. This means that I may be able to quit yarping so mightily about US internet speed. But, guess what - - I got me another "Problem Ticket YN74DX0" outstanding. I cannot use my cell phone for the next several hours while I wait for them to call me back. I have decided to send my home boyz over there to rough them up about this issue. I mean, if you've got homies - - you may as well use them.