It was a very rainy, very wet, and unfortunately very cold day today. Unfortunate not for me — I was warm and snug inside all day — but unfortunate for the two AT&T technicians who came to connect fiber optic cable to our house. And unfortunate that it couldn’t be put off any longer. It had to be done before the end of the month, when AT&T would discontinue service over the copper feed. Pretty wild not having a copper telecom connection to the house any longer. End of an era.

When the tech said he would cut the copper wire and take it down, I asked if he would please take them both down. That confused him a little bit, so I explained further: The last time AT&T came over to run a new copper connection to the house, they left the old one. It’s been hanging over the back yard ever since then. After the tech checked it out, he told me it wasn’t a copper telecom connection, it was a cable TV connection, “probably left over from whenever you had cable TV last.” “We’ve been living her twenty years and we’ve never had cable,” I said. “Can you still take it down?” He said he would, and he did.