Hail Caesar!

Hail Caesar, Customer Service representative of the month for US Voice Link, my VOIP provider. He spent over an hour on the phone with me and the end result was great - I am ready to go!

Not to bore anyone with the details, but I am just so happy to hear the familiar tones of my home phone ringing that I have to share. Here was the problem, once of course I had to beg and plead my cable company to drop my dialer and enable me to connect directly to the internet via my wireless router. So, apparently, the ports were closed on my wireless router which meant that people couldn't call into me, even though I was still able to call out.

So, rather than have to call Linksys and ask them to turn on the ports on my wireless router, Caesar explained that all I had to do was have my cable connection go through my VOIP box and into my wireless router. That was it, simple. Of course, there were some complications because folks, as you've learned by now, with me things are always complicated. So, after much restarting and recycling of power (for us simple people that means pulling out the plug and then plugging back in) Caesar reconfigured my box to enable the cable connection to flow through to the wireless router. And boom, I'm in business. My internet with thankfully working and I can call out AND get incoming calls on my phone!

Now, we also discovered a complicated when he was playing around with the lines. Apparently, my upload speed here is really, really low which accounts for some of the dropped calls I experienced last week (i.e. hung up on Mom three times!!). He configured the box to work with the low upload speed right now, but suggested I call Smile and ask them to boost that number. Now, that of course will probably take 3 weeks to accomplish since this is Israel and everything takes forever (plus with the holidays and very few people working, the time will take even longer) but at least I'm aware of the situation and can take into account when making calls or dealing with the internet.

Of course, no one at home can call me right now to test out my connection but I'm going to probably wait up again tonight until after the Chag in New York and will make some calls. Also, my friend Dina sent me such a sad e-mail on my birthday that she has been calling me non-stop for the past three weeks. Obviously, she hasn't been able to get through until now! So Dina, if you're reading my blog after the Chag, give me a call when you wake up tomorrow morning! Would love to catch up!!

Today was good, I had an interesting afternoon. All the swimsuit shops here are having end of season sales and since we're going to be wallowing in the mud at the Dead Sea, I wanted a swimsuit that wouldn't get ruined. I spent 75 shekel and bought a new bikini bottom to pair with my Jcrew tankini top and so I'm all set for Ein Gedi! Then, I went to the Dizengoff mall and picked up a few items for my kitchen and my bathroom. I got hand towels and a small shower rug for my bathroom and I picked up a couple of pyrex cookware and a springform pan. I'm starting to get excited about entertaining, having spent a lot of time going through Tova's cookbooks over Shabbat, and just need a table and 4 more chairs to get started. I also changed some money so I could deposit into the bank and have enough shekel to cover my bills this month. I have to pay for my health insurance, my internet connection and my cell phone all within 2 days of each other. Because of the Chag, the banks are all closed in the afternoon so I have to wake up early tomorrow to make sure to make the deposit.

After all my afternoon errands, I headed back to the apartment and made some lunch before working on my phone issues. Not sure what's going on tonight, I texted Oren to see what he was up to and am waiting to hear back from him to see if he wants to hang out. I could really go for a movie right about now.

Song of the day is In the Morning by Junior Boys because it was the free download of the week off of iTunes and it's actually a pretty good tune. Perfect for working out!