I had the exact same experience! Almost verbatim. Nowadays, after one very long weekend spent changing my email address across dozens of different websites and services, I just use name@name.red instead of anything service-specific. Even now, though, the fact that it's a ".red" rather than a ".com" is too much for some people (e.g., my student loan servicer doesn't support .red domains at all). It's fun being special until it isn't.