Letterboxing

I spent the past week partially working and partially spending some much needed time with my children. We went on some lovely excursions, checking out Southern California in a simple yet adventurous manner. Thanks to a co-worker, we discovered Letterboxing. We went on several adventures hunting for hidden boxes and checking out old favorite parks as well as tried and true parks (Like the Huntington in San Marino). We went hiking in hills I've never even noticed. This was charming and great exercise. We didn't always find the boxes, but the hunt was still fun for the kids. We even played frisbee golf at one park. We got use out of those disks we bought on Mt. Bachelor several years ago that we had been storing. It was a great way to entertain the kids on a shoestring budget. We packed picnic lunches and lots of water and sunscreen. All we spent was money on gas.

Earthlink DSL Sucks

I swear I wasn't going to do this. But I have to. I'm going to rant. EARTHLINK DSL SERVICE IS THE WORST! We've been 20 days without internet connection at my house. The DSL went down and Earthlink can't fix it for some strange reason. First its Covad's problem. Then its Verizon's problem. We've waited for service people over and over. Nobody takes the blame. Each day they tell us to check back in 4 hours or 24 hours or 48 hours. Meanwhile, we've ordered service from another service provider. They'll take 2-3 weeks to set up. So, no hope of internet at home until April. And can you believe it? Earthlink wont let us out of the contract without an early cancellation penalty. Talk about terrible customer service. (Never mind that I depend on the internet to do so much these days -- work from home, help kids with homework, etc). The DSL/internet providers have a monopoly going on. We switched only 4 months ago from Verizon DSL because Verizon couldn't offer as fast of service. Well, at least Verizon was consistently slow, instead of consistently dead.

NOTE: I found a great website with similar feelings: http://earthlinksucks.org

UPDATE: Read about my latest experience here.