This is coming to you via cell phone, because the phones — and other, similar services, like ISDN — are out here on Tino Mountain.

The hurricane knocked down a bunch of trees around here, leaving us without power for about 40 hours; not a bad time-to-repair at all for the sticks (parts of Washington, DC still don’t have power).

The phone service worked fine despite all the downed trees, though, so we fired up the generator and did fine. Taking a shower was dicey (the generator is right at its limit running the hot water heater and the well pump at the same time), but other than that, and the incredible din coming from the generator while it’s running, a power outage here is not much unlike a power… innage (?).

Anyway, at about the same time the power was restored last night, the phones went away, and they haven’t yet come back. There were some Sprint trucks around yesterday — Sprint, of all people, are the ILEC here — but there are none in evidence now.

The best part is that the 800 number printed on our bill, right next to the words “Service outages may be reported 24 hours a day, seven days a week”, goes to a recording telling you to call back during business hours Monday through Friday. Brilliant.