Verizon told me to simply dial my own number, when I hear the busy signal,
hang up and phone will start ringing. When I hear it stop, pick up the
phone and I'm connected with the other phone. Only catch is if my wife
hangs back up before I can reconnect because she won't hear anything there
when she answers the phone. I take one of the cordless hand units out to the
garage as I cut the phone line to the garage when I ran an underground gas
line. The old phone line to the garage didn't go where Verizon thought it
did. They even came out and marked it out.

There is actually a phone line to the garage, and a phone. When I call my own
# the answering machine picks it up and I don't get a busy signal. We have
Qwest here, and the answering service is also through Qwest. The neighbor
across the alley is a Qwest tech, maybe I should ask her.