Land Lines

We've been in Arizona about a month now trying to survive without a land line and relying solely on our cell phone. Coverage varies depending on if it's dark, cloudy, you aren't holding your tongue just right, you get the picture. I've ended about 99% of my conversations by hanging up on whomever I've been talking to and seeing the fatal words, "Call was lost" on my screen. I finally have had enough of the isolation and called Qwest to hook up a land line.

I've hooked up service before and it's been a fairly uncomplicated process. Lengthy at times but uncomplicated. Why I thought this would be the same, I'll never know. After about 20 minutes on the phone - all the while not moving on my end so I wouldn't lose the call - the nice young man told me he couldn't find me and wouldn't be able to continue. Then he asked me if he had given me exceptional service and answered all my questions. Oh the irony. If you mean answered the question that we have truly moved into the abyss of the Grand Canyon where no man has gone before, then yes. If you mean that telling me my home and address that has been here since the 70s doesn't really show up on any civilized address book companies use to find you, then yes. If you mean, we have moved somewhere that people don't use things like home telephones or UPS or home mail delivery, then yes. Honestly.

So, I can call them back and ask their address finding staff to actually find us and then maybe, just maybe, they will hook up a land line to our home. The funny thing is, many, many people have lived in this house in the past - all with home phone service. Maybe they used smoke signals instead and the phone jacks in the house are purely decoration.