Funny thing about that. In real life they don't show up nearly as fast as they do on the TV..... So far the best we have is: "All agents are busy, your expected wait time is more than 10min." Which while accurate (we've held twice for about 30min each with no pickup) is still not really helpful at all.

Bummer about the damage Moonie, but I'm glad to hear everyone is okay.

Hey Moonie, if you want to get your frustrations out, head to Minnesota:

Drive a Tank, Crush a Car, at Minn. Firm

Heck, for another $3500, they'll let you plow through a mobile home!

I've now got a new place to sell prints of my photos - courtesy of fotomoto.com and tumblr - photosbymatt.tumblr.com

Sorry to hear about the extended power outages, Moonie and Pru. I remember our ice storm in 1994. We didn't get power back at our house for 2 weeks.

*WOOT!!!*
At 8pm last night we got power back!

*sigh*
It lasted for 10min, now we are back in the dark...

One of my employees is located in Mumbai.

We were chatting today and got off on tomorrow being a holiday for me and I said "it has been 236 years, I'm pretty much over it" and his response was "your country is so old."

I guy from India told me that the US is old. But to him it is, as he said, his country, in terms of government instution, is only 65 years old. Just an interesting reminder that we're both bizarrely young and surprising old as a country.

We actually got our power back at approximately 9:30pm Sunday. Tonight it went out for about 10 minutes again and I nearly lost it because a cheesecake was in mid-prep. But it came back on so the cheesecake crisis is averted. There are definitely still homes in the neighborhood that are out, and many neighborhood streets are blocked by either trees or downed power lines. A house we drive by every day about 2 blocks from here has downed lines in its front yard.