[Magdalen] Marathon phonecall.

[M J _Mike_ Logsdon]

He finally came out shortly after midnight and ~9 hrs.  Turns out it was a fellow he'd spent three of his four years with (one-room special ed, recall).  And it was said fellow who called him, out of the blue, literally for the first time since since Ev graduated.  Seems he kept Ev's number all this time, and (apparently) had 9 hours to kill.  What didn't get killed was his battery.  Down only 50%.  Not bad.

As for long-distance, no one's mentioned the "evenings are cheaper" concept.  I used to beg Anna to be willing to just wait a few hours till 5:00 pm when even "local long-distance" was cheaper.  The concept of local long-distance has been mentioned, but maybe I've got a weirder than normal twist.  Salinas and Marina (the northern tip of the Monterey Peninsula) are only 15 mins apart with good traffic, 10 as the crow flies, or even less maybe, but back in the olden thymes of PacificBell (now AT&T), it was long-distance for Salinas to call Marina, but not vice versa.  I once had a long chat with a PacBell cust serv rep about that very pissy phenomenon, and all we could agree on was that it was laughable at best.  (Mea culpa, but on occasion I would set up a conference call on my work phone of me, Anna, and a Marina friend, and I would, cough, ahem, simply drop out.  The county phone system to this day operates on an extreme discount, per se, so there wasn't really much to feel bad about.  Then, that is.  Today I wouldn't even consider it.)

As for texting, I swore I'd never descend to such a level, but it's often swifter in producing a response than email, and (at least if you're like me) no one *really* likes leaving a voicemail.  And entire conversations, albeit somewhat truncated in the end, are (for me) more comfortable because in my physical dotage long voice chats leave me hoarser than ever.

M J (Mike) Logsdon.

"Aaugh[.]" -- Charles Brown.
"Avoid dull needles and use a soft cloth." -- E Kovacs.