For we are back online! In case anyone was wondering, cable companies are, indeed, the most inept, useless and aggravating entities known to mankind, and unfortunately we recently learned that this is the case around the world. Last week Cliff had a Wednesday deadline to turn in a large bundle of information for the book he was working on. He was at work, preparing files, and I was at home, preparing files for the project as well. Shortly after I had spent a chunk of time getting one file to send off to Cliff, and he had sent me two more files to work on... the internet disappeared. I was out of the picture; Cliff worked into the evening at the office, and went in early the next day to do the whole thing himself. After 45 minutes spent alternately on hold and "troubleshooting" with various NTL (our phone/cable/internet service provider) folk, someone finally told me that the service had been cancelled. Our landlord has recently moved to a new residence, and his phone hasn't been installed yet, so we wrote him a letter explaining our plight and asking for help. He gave us additional account information, and we were back on the phone Saturday. Which, it turns out, was a waste of time, because NTL's computer systems were down the entire day. [What is really revealing about our experience on Saturday is that each time we called on Saturday a representative would answer the phone and ask for our full phone/account number, and then tell us that the computers were down and they weren't actually able to do anything useful, as if this were a sudden discovery.] Computers were still down all of Monday morning. When Cliff finally got assistance from yet another NTL person, she assured him we would be up and running in 24 hours. Well, you guessed it--Tuesday afternoon we called back and the latest representative told us that he needed to speak to the landlord personally to sort out the account. We mailed another letter. Our landlord, bless him, came over this morning as soon as he heard, got back on the line, and we have internet! Yahoo!

Otherwise we have been pretty boring. Wales--and the UK in general--is undergoing a massive surge in cold and flu viruses, and in our continuing effort to assimilate, we (Hannah and I) have been fairly ill. Hannah caught a "rubella-like virus" which gave her a head-to-toe rash and an earache that lingered for twelve days. She missed a week and a half of school, and when Hannah is sick, she snuggles up to me and the two of us sit through endless hours of cartoons. Once she recovered and was back at school, I remained moderately sick for another week or two. Our friends now make apologies for their country's spate of ill-health, lest we think it's some plot to make us unwelcome.

Last Wednesday was March 1st--St. David's Day, when all the little girls dress up in a "Welsh Lady Costume." It's an elaborate affair, layers of a white blouse, a skirt, a jacket, an apron, a shawl, and a hat. The boys miss out on all the fun, as there is no agreement on what a traditional Welsh costume is for men, so they generally wear red rugby shirts. The kids have assemblies, sing Welsh songs, and eat Welsh cakes (a bit like flattened scones). It's good fun.

In general other news, my knitting group, the Swansea chapter of Stitch-N-Bitch, has been meeting steadily at the Starbucks at Fforestfach Shopping Center every Wednesday, and we're expanding our horizons next Monday by meeting at the Uplands Tavern, which has the dual advantages of being walking-distance from out house and having Guinness on tap. They may never get us out of there.

Finally, we'd like to pass on a discovery: www.radioparadise.com. Good music, folks!