Ladies and gentlemen, our long dark days are OVER! Oh, wait, we just came off daylight savings time, so really they're just beginning. This fucks my game up every time, but on the other hand, I've had nearly two weeks off from writing, so I can hardly bitch.

Okay, time for me to bitch!

As I mentioned briefly in the previous post, we successfully made the move and are reasonably settled in with our ridiculous new pad. Already we've enjoyed three fires, two of them in our delightful fireplace.

The move itself was actually just fine, for the most part, mainly because the move itself was done by two guys, who were pretty awesome despite physical problems of their own--one of them had an orange-sized lump on the back of his neck--and you know, if I'm going to have a huge fucking lump on my body, why not where I'll never see it?--and the other guy casually mentioned to the wife that he recently suffered a prolapsed neck or something and he almost died. Interesting! That bookcase should be downstairs.

But as I said, they did a good job, such a good job, in fact, that we tipped them twenty bucks apiece shortly after lump guy tore a rear wheel off the entertainment center. "Fucking particle board!" he screamed. He looked at me in the deeply earnest way of someone who doesn't want a customer dumping poison into his boss's ear. "You can just glue that and clamp it," he explained. "And maybe drive in a couple screws," he mumbled. He handed me the wheel. I stared at it and sort of helplessly kneaded it like maybe I had unbeknownst healing powers over media furniture.

Whatever. It's this hulking rolling thing (not anymore, though!) we got at Ikea six years ago. I can't be bothered hassling this belumpen geek about it, much less get into some gabbling argument with the movers over the damage amount. I stuck some books under it--books, of course, I'll never read again and yet moved anyway, despite my solemn oath not to.

And so we lived in a box floe for a couple days, but I must say, we kind of kicked the place's ass into shape pretty quick. (Except for the one room full of unopened boxes.) Today we achieved wireless! Comcast, thrifty folks that they are, sent me a handy, do-it-yourself setup for the modem in the mail! So I could DO IT MYSELF! I'm paying them . . . to do it myself. They are geniuses.

I of course did nothing myself. After a torrential session of helpless weeping as I opened the boxes--which contained no less than three installation disks for the various dongles and whozits--I cradled the mysterious toys in my hands helplessly, like an L-DOPA patient discovering a box full of superballs. Then I called my friend J., who actually knows helpful things such as how to do . . . things, and speedily set everything up. He performed all sorts of digital acts of Santeria on the laptop, none of which I understood. I saw him type "ipconfig" once, if that helps. I distinctly felt the laptop purr with pleasure at his ministrations, and I also felt the poor little machine glaring over at me a few times, sending me the clear message that it would prefer I never touch it again. Jesus, can you get me the fuck out of here? pleaded my laptop to J. You're not going to hand me back to Joe Bob Mengele here, are you?

Finally, with all the hardware installed, it was simply time to "register" with "Comcast" and get a new "email address" that I'll "never use!" Oh boy! This required a simple download; in fact, Comcast made sure you got this download by redirecting my browser implacably to its download site. INSTALL! commanded the window.

It failed, and threw out some awful, incomprehensible error message. J. pounded (but nicely) out some more baffling demands and commands and crap, but to no avail. J. snarled and grabbed the CD included in the system, which was presumably the same software. It gave the same error.

At one point, through some process I could not, well, process, though, it DOWNLOADED! (Secret: I do know what the hangup was: Comcast evidently hates Firefox.) Success! I set my password, username, all that shit, and finally--finally!--finished up. We reloaded the browser.

We got the familiar INSTALL! page. It was still redirecting. J., looking a little hunted at this point, tried a workaround that initially looked promising. Then we got--of all things--a 404 message.

Looking good, Comcast!

After a few minutes of this, I blindly suggested "Look, try just going to comcast.com. See what happens."

The comcast.com home page opened up like a horrible flower, I signed in, and that was that. "That was the worst thing I've ever seen," pronounced J. He was bleeding slightly from his ears, and he said a feeble goodnight as he tottered out the door.

"Thanks, man!" I called distractedly. I couldn't be bothered with him any more.

I had wireless! It was the best experience of the whole move.