I have my precious broadband back. Monday morning, the same customer service rep at Time Warner's office had no problems with giving me my self-install kit for Earthlink. The installation was about as easy as the DSL install was three years ago. I connected the splitter to the cable modem and to the cable box, ran an Ethernet cable to my laptop, and plugged in the modem. The modem ran through its setup process and once the lights were on in the correct order, I had my connection back. There was a minor snag when I disconnected my laptop and plugged in my wireless router instead. The router couldn't get an IP address because the modem had already assigned its IP address to the MAC address of my laptop. But my router has a convenient "clone MAC address" button that lets me spoof the MAC address that the modem sees. Once I did that, I got right back online. My wireless network worked right away, since I didn't have to reconfigure that. The only drawback to the entire setup is that both the cable modem and the router sit in the living room, but the desktop computer is in the office. I've had to run a network cable behind the couch, through the tiny foyer, and along the office wall to reach the PC. I still need a longer cable for the living room so I can get the wire off the floor. But at least the broadband is back.

I had to stop by the old apartment on the way home to pick up a few things the movers forgot and to take some pictures of the little damage we did to the place in four years. It's still really too small, even with all the furniture out of there. I can see how easy it would be to furnish for one person -- there are lots of creative ways to arrange things to create more space than we had. I'm just so happy to be out of there. My real estate broker says that it's been shown a few times already, and he's confident that it will rent quickly. It had better happen soon; the only thing preventing me from enjoying this new apartment to the fullest is the nagging fear that the old apartment won't rent, and that we'll be on the hook for the rent for another few months. Anyone out there looking for a cozy 1 BR in the heart of Greenwich Village?