Thanks for your responses everyone!
Hal, the NID does have two jacks to connect network side to customer side (and for testing), but the way it's wired now it ought to be fool proof (famous last words) -- wiring consists of just a 3' length of 4-conductor station wire connecting R/G and B/Y from the customer side of the NID to a jack on the opposite side of that wall where I have a 2-line cordless phone plugged in, no DT on either line.
That, combined w/ the lack of ~48VDC at the network side of the NID (and from the telco drop itself), has lead to me believe the pairs are just dead...
In theory Verizon has a technician coming out today to look at it, so we'll see what happens, hopefully just something at the pole needs connecting -- today is appointment #2, they didn't show up to appointment #1, when I called and asked why they no-showed they said that the #1 appointment wasn't actually for a technician to go on-site, just for them to do their work at the CO, and that I had misunderstood their original request that "someone over 18 be present at the home" for that appointment as meaning that someone would actually come to my home
...more than than likely they are correct that the #1 appointment was not a technician visit, it was probably a service start date for billing but the phone rep I was talking to muscle-memoried the "someone over 18 must be home" phrase into the conversation by accident.
