Here’s an odd one, we had a huge storm yesterday and I got home to find a distraught Mary Beth without phone service. MB spends a fair amount of time in our kitchen on the phone with her long distance thang. We had no dial tone, just silence and some faint crackles on the line. When I tried to call us from my cell I got a busy signal. I called SWB and went through their automated help line to schedule service. The computer promised me that service would be restored by six pm Tuesday. I then left for bowling.

Some time after I left the police arrived at our house, knocking on the door and informing MB that our non-working phone had called 911. While containing Sebastian, who unfortunately hates all people in uniforms, she explained our phone situation. This happened two more times with two additional sets of cops – that’s right, three visits from the U-City cops for the non-emergency called in by the non-phone. They weren’t surprised; apparently this happens more than you might think. We had a dial tone this A.M. so I guess it got fixed over the course of the evening, has anyone ever heard of this happening? Is it possible that I made a false assumption that the lack of service had to do with the storm? My computer was on through all this, could a virus have hijacked my dial up modem to make 911 calls just to screw with me?

In other news I bowled a 189 in my first game last night, which is the best score I can remember from recent history. I bought The Magnificent Seven on DVD and kept MB up late after bowling with this fine classic Western. She kept getting up saying, “I am not staying up to watch this,” only to return with some new beverage, actually making a pot of coffee to make it to the 1:30 A.M. finish. Westerns are childhood popcorn with my dad, and while not always having their gender issue ducks in a row, they certainly present a fascinating set of archetypes. In some future incarnation I intend to do scholarship on them, as the widely read West Of Everything by Jane Tompkins is more anecdotal than rigorous. Ah well – to work I go.