Can you hear me now?

Last week was not a pleasant week in many ways, the least of which being without power intermittently, and phone service indefinitely. The brilliant minds of our local borough decided it was high time to use the $5/mo "electrical wire maintenance charge" to replace some of the lines. (This fee is helpfully labeled EWMC on our bill, resulting in riotous laughter between the hubster and I. If I could charge someone $5 a month to maintain my similarly-acronymic you-know-what, well, count me in).
Anyway, somewhere amidst the blackouts, my phone went dead. Just mine. Not my neighbors', no one else in the neighborhood had complained. Just me. Took several CELLphone calls to the phone company to convince them that I did have a problem (nothing was showing amiss at their end), I have no little grey box on the side of my house (everyone has one, they scolded me), and I could be persuaded to pay their $91 charge if someone would just fix my effing phone already! Friday afternoon, about 4pm, the dude shows up to have a look-see.
Turns out I was right - I didn't have the typical modern convenience of an outside box, so he installed one; and, the problem was the dropline from the pole, not inside my rat's nest wired home, so it was f-r-e-e. Yay! I didn't make one call all weekend. But dammit, I could have if I had wanted to. So there.
Yesterday there was a message on my answering machine, encouraging me to call them back if I still was without service.