the ghost phone

Hello again, everyone. Things are starting to stabilize again health-wise, but if it was only my health that was keeping me from blogging I would have been back a week ago. Unfortunately, I also had to deal with the technological undead--a phone line from beyond the grave, if you will.

My girlfriend and I just moved into a place together--a home big enough to house both her girls and my books--so we had to go through the usual rigmarole of transferring utilities and services to the new residence. Power, garbage, and water were no trouble, but then we discovered that the last tenant had failed to turn off her phone line. Normally, this would simply be a matter of contacting the previous person and reminding them to shut off the service . . . except in this case that wasn't going to be accomplished without breaking out the ouija boards and lighting some candles.

You see, the last person who lived here forgot to turn off her phone due to a slight case of death. So, although she clearly no longer lived at the home (or anywhere else, for that matter), it was the phone company's stance that her line should live in memoriam until such time as her next of kin could be contacted to turn it off. I finally succeeded in doing just that, only to find out when the technician showed up to set up my internet connection that the zombie line had somehow survived the cancellation order. It figures--out of all the undead phones that could have chosen to haunt me, I got stuck with one that was bent on sticking around for a few sequels.

I spent an hour or two on the phone with a bored man at a call center, after which I was told a stake had been put through the damned thing's heart. Only, not so much--it finally took another on-site tech armed with patience and a long list of phone numbers for people in the know to exorcise the stupid thing, and even then he had to spend an hour and a half making calls to people in a wide swath of different states.

So yes, the hell-spawned unlife has been extinguished, and in its place is internet access for the living. Now all I have to do is finish that two-parter I started--stay tuned...