As mentioned, last month we lost our internet service for an entire week. Of course, we had called our cable internet provider as soon as service went out, and we called again when the problem was not resolved. When told that it would be several days before a repairman could come out, we fussed and fumed. We grumbled aloud about it every day. Life was rough, I tell you. Boy, were we glad to get it restored.

A week later, our phone service went out. We hardly noticed. We'd pick up the phone to make a call, hear no dial tone, say "Oh yeah, I forgot that our phone must be out," and pick up our cell phones instead. It was three days before we thought to contact the phone company.

Does that speak volumes about our priorities, or what? (Granted, I think we'd have been a tad more concerned about the phone had we not had our cell phones to fall back on. Still...)

Our internet, phone, and TV actually come through the same company. Here's hoping the TV will go out next. I might simply forget to call about that one altogether. Unfortunately, my HGTV-addicted Hubz would be all over it, with the help of lots of friendly reminders from the kids.

(Note, accompanied by deep *sigh*: Once upon a time for many years, we had one TV, with rabbit ears only, and it was hardly on. Cable TV was, in our book, a foolish matter of "spending money in order to waste time." Alas, combining business and residence on one property rendered high-speed internet a necessity, and with it came cable TV. Or to put it more simply, times have changed, and so has Hubz.)

Oh well.

Back to the phone business. Here's the clincher: There was not even a problem with our phone service. The reason we didn't have a dial tone was that someone unplugged the phone cable box, quite possibly for the purpose of plugging in a video game accessory.

And it took us 3 days and a call to the cable company to figure this out.

You can bet that if it had been the modem which was unplugged, we'd have figured it out in about two seconds.

Sad. Very sad.