All Quiet on the Home Front

We have three telephone lines coming into our house. Our personal line, which I also use for my business, a business line in my husband’s office, and a fax line/broadband internet.

The business line in my husband’s office went dead about 10 days ago. The phone company was doing some sort of upgrade, and the person he talked to said they didn’t have any of our account information available at the moment, so it took at least a week for the telephone person to come to the house to fix the problem.

He hooked something up at the box at our house and determined that there was a short in the telephone line some 3,000 feet away (!). So he drove off to check that out. He fixed it and told us later that there had been a lightening strike near the junction box which had caused the short.

This morning when I picked up the phone to process a credit card number a customer in Netherlands had given me to pay for editing his manuscript, my personal line was dead. I actually don’t know for sure how long the phone line has been down, possibly for a day or two.

I should have realized something was up when I didn’t get my daily robocall yesterday pretending to be from Google. I don’t answer the phone any more but let the answering machine screen the calls. Early in the day, usually before lunch time, the automated call, which uses a woman with a very soft, pleasing voice, is not deterred by the answering machine message and the beep and goes right ahead with the scam call, which says something like “Please don’t hang up the phone. We have tried numerous times to verify your Google business listing…”

There are usually at least one or two robocalls later in the day – almost always during the time we are eating dinner – but whoever this is disconnects when it hears the “beep” on answering machine and does not leave a message.

Richard hooked up the tester phone at the box where the lines come into the house, and my line is dead. So it is probably another problem at the junction box rather than a mouse or rat having chewed threw the line inside the house, which has happened more than once, and which is why just about every wire running through the house is in metal conduit.

Fortunately, just about everybody I want to talk to and who might call me is someone who I am also in contact with by e-mail, so I am not too worried that I am missing an important phone call from a friend or family member.

We will have to have them come out again and fix the line, but it is rather peaceful not listening to a ringing phone knowing that nearly all of the calls are ones I don't want to answer.