The biggest concern for me during break wasn't getting all of my Christmas shopping done (FYI, my list has been pared down to only 19 people this year -- woo hoo!), but was instead accessing the internet. My ISP went down Wednesday and still has not come back up. It has been horrible! I normally don't mind being trapped in Iowa for five days straight as long as I have my connection to the outside world. By Thursday night I was going stir crazy. To make matters worse, my mother was jonesing for the internet as well. She had a whole list of stuff she wanted me to look up, but naturally I couldn't. It got so bad I actually got an AOL trial CD from a friend and loaded it to my laptop. Sad I know, but I was pretty happy none the less when it was loaded and I was actually connected. My mother was ecstatic. You would have thought what I did was along the lines of Jesus turning water to wine.

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