life in the BOG

1. Two night ago, Jimmy and I were co-playing Words with Friends (online Scrabble for those of you not in the know) when movement in the neighbors' apartment caught our attention. Turns out Rackosaurus's husband has decided to get into the action of exhibitionism.

He fully disrobed - FULLY - right in front of the window.

Full frontal nudity.

Thank the Lord we have sheers so it was blurry, but still. Then we watched him put on his pajama bottoms (with no underwear, I might add), a t-shirt and a bathrobe.

Does he think he's Hugh Hefner?

The lady who cleans our apartment building's common areas talked to our building administrator, who was supposed to talk to their building administrator about the need for respect in tight spaces, etc. Apparently either that talk didn't happen or it didn't take. We've obviously got to ratchet up the discussions.

2. Also two nights ago, I called the Arabic restaurant around the corner for takeout. I accidentally used our Vonage phone instead of the local landline. To my surprise, some little old lady in Charleston answered in English. And to her surprise, I asked in Spanish if this was El Khalifa restaurant.

What are the odds, really, of a restaurant in Bogota, Colombia having the same 7-digit local number as a Charleston number being called from a Charleston-based Vonage line?? Pretty slim. Obviously 7-digit phone numbers can be re-used in different countries, but to be the same as a local number so I didn't have to dial the US area code is crazy. Probably like a 1 in 40 billion chance or something like that.

Once we got on the same English-speaking page, I explained that I'd dialed a wrong number, knowing that there was no need to explain I was calling on a Vonage line from South America. I apologized and hung up.

And then, as our Vonage phone is sometimes want to do, the phone rang back. Now most times, when you pick it up to get it to stop ringing, there's nobody there and you just hang up again. But not this time. I picked up, there was no dial tone, so I said "hello...hello....hello?" until I heard that confused woman's voice again. Apparently it must have rung back at her house too because she thought I'd called her back.

Oh Lord.

She got kind of mad at me but again, I knew it wasn't worth trying to explain this internet-based phone system or that I was calling from South America because then she probably would have thought it was some scam that preyed on old people to get their money. I apologized again, hung up, and prayed the phone wouldn't ring back.

It was like an adolescent telephone prank call gone very, very wrong.