Slow Internet & A Few Questions

My internet is super slow tonight.  It either times out on pages, won't let me click on things, or makes things show up funky.  It has really put a damper on my blog stalking. 

Do you have an external hard drive?  I don't think we have too many things on our computer but I just can't figure out why it is so dang slow.  Maybe we need to reboot the router.  I'm sure you're enthralled with reading about my slow internet, but I had big plans for tonight's post.  Okay, maybe not big plans, but I had plans. 

For example, Laura from Kinder Kraziness awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award.  I'm pretty sure I'm a bad award recipient.  I've noticed lots of blogs that have received awards and they have them all on the sidebar so nice and neat and it's obvious they've gotten the award.  Well, I've actually received this award before, but it was back in like September.  However, when I received it, I'm not sure if I ever actually told those 15 people I nominated them.  In fact, I'd be willing to bet I didn't.  I would link to the post, but again, the slow internet prohibits me from doing so.

Here are some questions I have:
1.  See above-do you have an external hard drive?  I have a USB flash drive, but am curious about these hard drives...are they good, would you recommend, etc.
2.  Blog design-I put a butt load of work into designing my button (which I'm not even sure if it works) and my header, but I'm wondering if I should totally redesign it all.  I would ideally like to figure out how to do something on my own, but that takes a lot of time.  I know some of you have paid to have someone do yours-were you pleased?  Did you think the price was worth it?  I'm also 99.99% sure if I tried to do it myself, it would totally look like I did it myself.  Yeah, you know what I mean.
3.  Do you already feel like Winter Break never happened?  I totally almost fell asleep on my way home from work today.  Which is really sad because a had a Cherry Coke Zero at our faculty meeting after school.  The hot topic today:  uniforms...do we strictly enforce?  What about kids that don't have them, etc.  I have to admit, as I sat there nodding my head, I felt a teeny tiny bit like Kristin (pun totally intended).  Again, I'd link to her post about this, but I refuse to wait 10 minutes for the page to load. 
Speaking of Kristin, I was super excited to see we have the same taste in books.  I totally feel like we could be BFFs IRL if she didn't live on the other side of the country.  I know she does since I totally read up on the beach meet up her, Hadar, and some other fabulous ladies had.  And she took a day trip to Malibu. 

So I suppose those are all of my questions.  I can't believe I've been on the computer since I got home and haven't done one thing for work.  I spent a good 30 minutes photoshopping a goofy family picture to send to my MIL...ahh, the time I can waste :)  We're almost to the weekend!

P.S.  I REALLY hope that is the correct link to Hadar's blog.  If not, I'm slightly embarrassed, but I blame it on the internet...it wouldn't open it up for me!

P.P.S.  Do y'all use the spell checker on blogger?  It drives me batty.  Why does internet need to be capitalized?  And I had some spelled correctly and I guess it just chose to ignore the last letter.  Okay, just wondering if anyone else noticed these idiosyncrasies.