Every few weeks I like to reach out and give my friend Nikki a phone call.
I check in and just make sure that she’s doing okay because she lives a fairly isolated life.
It’s unlikely that she has had any human contact since the last time that we spoke, so I just like to be an ear for her to rely on. The problem is, since she has no other ears to abuse, she tends to dominate the conversation and talk endlessly about mundane things. Whatever is going on in her life, no matter how trivial it is, I’m going to hear about it for hours. Recently, this was even the case when it came to her faulty thermostat programming. I should have known better than to call her that day because it had been extremely hot and humid out for the past several weeks. Nikki tends to complain about her indoor air quality on a regular basis, and that’s especially true when air conditioning is being used. I didn’t want to talk about her failing AC window units for hours, but that’s always what takes place anyways. On this particular phone call, she was telling me that she had finally switched over to a central cooling system, instead. I thought that meant I was off the hook and wouldn’t have to hear about AC for the next 3 hours… But I was wrong. Instead of telling me about her low-quality AC window units, Nikki spent the entire phone call telling me about her buggy central thermostat. Apparently, she didn’t do a lot of research about the air quality control device before it was installed. Now, she can’t figure out how it works and she’s getting upset with the fluctuating hot and cold indoor air temperatures. Ah well, maybe we’ll talk about my engagement next time.