I want to call it a light at the end of the tunnel, but it just doesn´t feel like one right now.

So I went down to the phone company just now to tell them I wanted DSL on my brand spankin´ new phone line.

My phone company branch of choice is in a grocery store, in a mall. Suffice to say, there was a line.

But it was moving. I seemed to advance about three feet every 10 minutes, and that´s progress. People kept leaving the line and rejoining others in the line in front of me though, and somehow after half an hour I still calculated that I was about 7th in line.

Anyway, it was eventually my turn, and I went up to the window trepidatiously (it is TOO), well aware that they could ask me for documents I didn´t have on me, or even things that I can´t necessarily access without some significant effort.

Like, for instance, a valid ID card, but that´s another story.

So, she didn´t ask me for anything I couldn´t produce (although I did meekly accept a warning about the ID card - what´s the point of Immigration issuing automatic extensions and extra years on the card, and renewal appointments a year in the future, if nobody thinks the document that Immigration faxes me to that effect in fact means anything at all?) But I´m not here to talk about Immigration.

Ahem.

She didn´t ask me for anything I couldn´t produce, but she did say that she can´t actually put in an application for DSL on that line because the work order is still open. Something about coming in less than a week after the thing was physically installed.

But she had a solution: She took my application and kept it to the side (in, I couldn´t help but notice, an otherwise empty folder that she then placed at the very bottom of the stack on the bottom tray of her three-tiered Inbox), and as soon as the work order is closed (within a week), she´ll process the DSL application. She even gave me a blank work order for when the application goes through, and said she´d call me with the number when she had one, and I´ll write the new work order number on the blank work order and post it in my window.

And then proceed to wait A MONTH.

*Sigh*

Coming to you live from my second-favorite booth at our favorite Internet café....