Widgets.

Our home phone number was previously assigned to a local business owner, we'll say a widget repairman. Apparently one rather well known in the field, including having a number of past NJ governors and other bigwigs as clients. Unfortunately for us, for the past four years we have gotten a lot of calls on our answering machine and otherwise from people looking to use his services. People locally, people from New York and beyond. Credit card companies call looking to sell their services to our "business". At 10:51pm this evening I got a call (this surprised me since most people who would be likely to call us know that Miss B goes to sleep well before 10:51, so it is basically verboten to call at this hour...) well the person on the other end sounded more than harried and launched into a whole spiel about how they have this great widget that is in storage and needs to be moved *by tomorrow* or else it will be confiscated and he either needs someone who can help him move it or he'll be willing to sell this really nice widget and somebody would be getting a great deal on it. I let this man finish his story and then let him know that we're not in the widget business, and that I have an infant which he most likely just woke up thanks to the phone ringing. But, by the way, Bucks County Widgets over the border in Pennsylvania might be able to help, they move widgets for $250. He sounded a bit taken aback and said, "Oh, I'll call them."

This little episode prompted me to do some internet research on our phone number. I was hoping to find more information so I could contact the widget business and ask them to intercede on our behalf and get the phone number situation worked out. Sadly, I learned that the widget repairman passed away at age 87 in 2005. In his obituary it said that "he enjoyed painting, traveling, learning, and finding humor in everything."