Monday, September 19, 2005

An Amended Note to Our Readers

Phone service to our house just got knocked out. I am at work, but will have to return home immediately, because I can’t be out of contact with Dymphna for any length of time, given her precarious physical condition.

Since we have dial-up, this means that Gates of Vienna will be incommunicado for a while. But we will read and respond to comments eventually.

In the meantime, go visit Belmont Club or Dr. Sanity (or anyone else on our blogroll) to keep yourselves occupied and out of trouble...


UPDATE from Dymphna: the phone magically started working again. The phone fairies were having a bit of fun and got carried away. The ones who chewed the wires were sharply rebuked by their supervisor and have been made to crawl under the house and rub fairy spit on the whole works so that service just magically resumed. In other words, I haven't the faintest idea why it quit working or why it resumed on its own.

If you'd ever met our phone repairman you'd know why I was not looking forward to a visit for repairs. That man can talk. I know his family stories now back to the last four generations..in great, excruciating detail I know them, down to his second cousin once removed and his 80 year old daddy who runs a mile every morning.

Does this mean service will continue unimpeded? Who knows? When things like this happen I remind myself I'm glad I only live in the Back of Beyond. I mean, it could be Russia and then who knows when the phone would be with us again?

1 comments:

cathyf said...

Back in 94 the phone comapny came out with a deal where they would install an extra phone line for free, and they would allow telecommuters to use home service rather than business service. I had only been able to get 1 home line and 1 business line when I moved in because there were only 2 pairs buried to my house. So I jumped at this opportunity to get a 3rd line. There was still the problem with the only 2 pairs, though, so they came and drew with orange spray paint on the ground where the existing cable was and sent the contractor out to bury a 5-pair line. There I was sitting in front of the TV feeding my 8-week-old in a new-mommy fog, and the cable went out. The baby and I went out and told the guys they had cut the cable. They said, "Oh, yeah, we know, we spliced it back together." Then they left. At which point I realized that the phone was out, too. I thought they had made a repair call, but they didn't. (And I couldn't, obviously!) Two days later my husband called and went nuclear on the poor customer service lady. I felt bad for her -- she called me to apologize personally, sent a handwritten note of apology, called the cable service repair guys and covered their bill, and knocked off a month of the phone bill! When the repair guys came out we all ended up laughing -- these guys had cut the TV cable in 3 places and the phone cable in 4. I think that they used the orange line as a target rather than a warning!

Fortunately I was on maternity leave so this wasn't costing me money!

cathy :-)