RIP

Any of you who have ever tried to have a phone conversation with me will no doubt be familiar with the various quirks and irritating eccentricities of our old cordless phone. The main blight on its character was that it failed to fulfill the most basic purpose of a telephone by periodically hanging up on the person I was talking to without my permission. At the Brier house it would sometimes do this every time the fridge turned on, and, during the winter months, every time the furnace came on. It would produce a series of annoying echoes depending on who I was talking to, but always without fail when I was speaking to someone on Mercer Island. I am not making this up. Its condition was not improved from the many baths Jack gave it, sometimes in the sink and more than once in my morning coffee. The final death blow was dealt by Matteas, who sent the ineffectual thing flying off the table and onto the floor. It rings now and I can hear the person on the other end, but all they hear is static. So in the spirit of taking charge, recognizing the things I have the power to change and actually doing something about them instead of just pissing and moaning, I went out and bought a new phone while Jack was at school. I'm not sure yet how it will actually perform, but it's not a hard act to follow.