you’d better watch it, phil…

Skipped out of work early yesterday… blew off a couple of obligations… no big deal. Kept the computer packed away and read all the way home on the train … Johannes Kepler’s Mysterium Cosmographium from 1590 or so… great fun… it’s such a delightfully contrived load of crap… explaining the orbits of the planets in terms of cubes and pyramids and spheres nested inside of one another… crazy stuff, but I’m gonna use it in my History of Astronomy course next semester for sure, so I filled the thing full of Post-It tags all the way through. It’s the first time I’ve had a chance to read and learn something NEW in a really long time. It was nice.

Went to Target last night… standard trip… cat food and deodorant and The Matrix on DVD… nothing particularly noteworthy… the kids were actually good for a change… but there was ONE event that livened up our evening.

As we were leaving the house, my wife realized that she had forgotten to call back a client of hers… a publisher in Las Vegas … so she brought her cell phone and asked me to drive so she could call on the way there. She checked her call-list and the number wasn’t there, so she tried to dial the number from memory. She got a fax machine. Oops. Guess that isn’t the number after all. Oh well. No big deal. She could call tomorrow.

So, we drive to Target, do our shopping. About 2 hours later, we’re about to leave and my wife’s cell phone rings. It’s some woman from Las Vegas. The conversation goes something like this…

WOMAN: Umm… hello.. is this J.?

MY WIFE: Yes.

WOMAN: Your number just come up on my called ID, I’m calling from Las Vegas? I don’t know…

MY WIFE: Oh, yes… I’m sorry, I dialed the wrong number a while ago… I was trying to reach someone at Pythagoras Press.

WOMAN: Oh… who were you trying to reach?

MY WIFE: I… it… I just dialed the wrong number, I’m sorry.

WOMAN: Oh.

(pause)

WOMAN: Were you trying to contact someone named “Phil”?

MY WIFE: Umm… no… I was trying to contact a client named Gina Carson, but…

WOMAN: Do you…

(pause)

WOMAN: Do you have a nanny?

MY WIFE: (now very perplexed) Ummm… what? No… I just –

WOMAN: Oh…alright. Never mind. Goodbye.

What the hell? Is this woman unclear on the idea of a “wrong number”? We couldn’t really figure out what was up with this person until we got home. You see, my wife is self-employed and uses her cell for business, so she announces her cell number on our home answering machine. She also gives our home number on her cell’s voice-mail. Apparently this woman called the cell once while we were “out of range” and got our HOME number as well, cuz when we got home there were TWO messages from her there!

first unplayed message…

*BEEP*

“Umm, hello…this message is for ”Jennifer”… I’m calling from Las Vegas, and your number came up on my caller ID… I don’t know who you are, but if you are in communication with a man named “Phil”… he’s a married man and this communication needs to stop. Please don’t call here again, thank you. Goodbye.

My wife and I are standing in the kitchen staring at each other with our mouths hanging open. This is too fucked up… suddenly we have been inadvertently thrust into the middle of some kind of marital strife in fucking NEVADA!

second unplayed message…

*BEEP*

“Ummm… yes… I called a while ago… I’m… I just spoke to you on your cell phone… I, ummm… I’m really embarrassed… please, ummm… I’m sorry… please disregard my earlier message… I’m sorry.”

*BEEP*

Too much. We laughed our asses off. Although the more I thought about it… it’s kinda sad, really. Phil… if you’re out there… you are in deep shit. Buy your wife some fucking flowers or something, dude, cuz either she knows about something or she suspects something, and she sounds like she’s about to fucking SNAP!! I suggested to my wife that she call back later (she knows what wrong number she dialed!) and ask for Phil in a really sexy voice, but that’s really way too mean. Probably what she should do is call this poor woman back and ask if she needs someone to talk to. Crazy.

So…anyway… that was the highlight of our day.

As for TODAY… I left my Borders tote bag at home, so I don’t have anything to read. Y’see… I carry a briefcase with all my computer shit in it, but it gets too heavy if I put books and stuff in there, so I also carry a black canvas bag for my books and papers. A little gay, perhaps, but I don’t fucking care. Anyway… I forgot it somehow this morning, which means I have to occupy myself with my laptop exclusively. Not hard actually, as you can all probably tell! But I think I’ll go do something else for a while…

D.