cable repairman came by after searching for where the outtage is and said that a contruction site down the road is where it's at. they'd apparently piled a bunch of dirt on top of the pipes and snapped them, so now they're currently trying to dig out the ton of dirt and then they'll replace the pipes. i'd mentioned the bit about figuring it was some place close with the number of modems out in the area and the guy just got this look on his face and said "if they'd told me that we (him and a bucket truck) wouldn't have been going up and down the road looking for the problem since that break is not far from the node and we could have had things up and running sooner." as it is, we're looking at this afternoon before we're back on.

oh and to make things really peachy we've developed two sinkholes by our house. one is at the edge of our driveway by the strawberry field's retention pond (mom's got the farmer who owns it on the problem since it's on his property line) and one sinkhole that's developed just this morning at the four-way stop a block from our house. lovely.