Dialing for Dollars

As mentioned in the last post, I was having some more conversations with Verizon today. I have a phone line at home now, but I still don't have DSL. Now they are telling me my area does not have DSL available, and won't any time soon! So I guess I am out of luck, at least for the near future. I logged in via dial-up the other night and it wasn't as slow as I thought it might be, but it was definitely slow enough that I don't think I'll be doing much websurfing at home.
In some ways, this may be a good thing. When I first decided to order DSL, it was only because I could finally do it for the same price as dial-up. But I was still worried-- with dial-up, I always found the process of trying to do any shopping at online retailers so incredibly slow and painful that I would often just give up and postpone buying things until the next day at work, by which time I had usually forgotten what I had wanted. So inadvertently, not having high-speed internet discouraged impulse purchases, thereby saving me money! I can't say I suddenly became an internet shopaholic when I had the DSL, though, so it probably didn't make that big a difference.
This time I was looking forward to having the DSL connection so I could try using VOIP for a lot of my long-distance phone calls. That could have saved me some money on international calls, but I guess I will have to stick with using calling cards instead.
My alternative for high-speed internet is the cable company. I don't have a TV and have no interest in signing up for cable. Also, according to my neighbors, the cable company has been extremely unresponsive to everyone's attempts to order service.
We'll see what happens. I think I'll still call up AOL and see if I can get them to waive my monthly charges!