Until the next downpour

That's how long it will take to know whether the assiduous attentions of the AT&T technician have restored rainy-day dial tones. During the most recent rains, one of us was trying to work at home and we were without a dial tone for over four hours. Examined were the telephone line at the house (rather admired for its great antiquity, I think), the telephone equipment on two nearby poles, and at least one, and perhaps two, of whatever those metal cabinets are called that sit by the side of the street and contain person-high banks of telephone-related mysteries. We don't care about not being able to receive incoming calls but for some reason the inability to dial out is a great irritation.