Go Germany!

Go, Germany! The German government has stepped up to help pay US military base employees their October salaries during our government shutdown. This is something like 11,000 employees they are paying. The German government is considering it as a loan, which the US government will pay back when the shutdown is over. These are US civilian employees Germany is paying, not Germans. Of course, the shutdown has extended into November, so who knows if this will help those employees now.

It seems as though the government might not even be able to pay our soldiers starting November 15th, nevermind their families and others working on our bases. The US Army website is telling our soldiers based in Germany where to get help from foodbanks. Thank the gods Germany has a good social welfare system (compared to the USA) since that's where (in part) the army is sending our soldiers to get food!

Street performers - soldiers kissing a girl while holding their flags from alamy.com

Last week's saga continues: My internet still shuts down randomly, sometimes a couple times an hour, sometimes it stays up for 5 or 6 hour stretches. Hubby and I do have a new modem, but that hasn't stopped the problems. The repair people were supposed to come last Friday (Halloween). They didn't, although we waited all day. They rescheduled for Monday, 3 Nov. A repair person DID come. Despite what all the company's emails, text messages, and online webpage said, we were not given notice, just an 9 hour long window, of repair guy's arrival time or anything. Repair guy did good work, listened to our problems. The online web 'chat' person located in India that I was finally able to 'talk' to the week before (on Wed, 29 Oct) told me that the repair person would be bringing a modem.

Well, no, the repair guy told us that he had not been told to bring a modem and it wasn't something he always did but he did happen to have a modem, just luckily. So we got the modem replaced. Great!

And the next morning (Tue) it cut out every time someone called and sometimes just at random. Today (Wed) it's cut out 4 or 5 times so far. So we got an 'emergency' appointment for... about 3 weeks from now! That was the earliest they could send someone. Later on they gave me an updated closer appointment for the 18th! But then they sent text messages and emails saying they couldn't do that, so they gave me one for the 21st. Still so stressed by this. How the heck do I contact the company if I don't have internet? I'll have no text, no email, no online web chat. And despite them being an internet and phone company, they don't really do things by phone anymore. Sheez.

Ok, here's the open thread! What's up, whatcha doing? Reading? Thinking? Listening to? Remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!